January 11th, 2016: Powerball Perspective
These past 14 months have taught me so much about this world we live in, relationships, life, myself and I’ll be the first to say that Peace Corps is far more qualitative than quantitative. That being said, numbers have always fascinated me. I know that’s the science half of me speaking but numbers tell us so much about our health, our lives, and the world. So this morning as I waited for the rain to pass, I decided to do a little rough analysis.
I woke up to a hashtag trend tweet thing (whatever it means when everyone is talking about a popular topic) regarding the Powerball Jackpot being 1.3 billion USD. Minus the astronomical taxes and fees (which is just a small chunk of change comparatively) the final cash value is 806 million USD. Holy Moses.
Converted to Ugandan Shillings (ush or /= ), when today $1 equals about 3,400/=, that means the taxes removed from the Powerball Jackpot are 1.68 trillion Ugandan shillings alone. Which leaves the final Powerball cash value to be 2.74 trillion Ugandan shillings. Yes… 2,740,000,000,000/=.
But, why does this interest me? I digress.
At my school, 1 year of school fees for 1 pupil is roughly 200,000/= (which would include supplies, lunch, and uniform) so that’s about $60 a year. Most of my pupils don’t have supplies, uniforms, and lunch throughout the year so they pay about 100,000/= (or $30) a year, if they can manage to pay at all. But in a dream world everyone could have clothes, notebooks, and food so I focused on the first value, 200,000/=, because this is all theoretical anyways.
Primary school in Uganda is 7 years, P1 to P7. So 1 pupil pays 1.4 million shillings to finish their primary school education, which is a huge success especially for girls here. That’s a lot of money to pay for every son and daughter you have (a typical family here has anywhere from 4 to 12 children) which is why many children cannot finish school, and boys tend to get a preference when money will allow. So math, math, math… 7 years of school for one child (being fed and clothed, too) is a mere $411.76.
That’s less than the price of my Organic Chemistry textbook in college.
If we take the overall Powerball cash value of 2,740,000,000,000/=, when converted to Ugandan shillings, and divide it by 1,400,000,000/= (the rough price of 7 years of primary school education for one child in Uganda with supplies, uniforms, and lunch included) then the Powerball earnings could send 1,957,142 children to primary school in Uganda.
Almost two million children.
With the approximate population of Uganda at 39 million, and 48.1% of the population being under 14 years old, that means 18,759,000 humans in Uganda are primary aged. And to offer my “on the ground”, in the classroom insight? A whole lot of those 18 million kids are not in school right now.
Math, math, math. Our Powerball could put 9.6% of Uganda’s primary aged children (and 19% of the overall population currently) through seven years of school with a uniform, supplies, and lunch. That’s roughly 20% of primary-aged youth if they didn’t eat lunch or have uniforms like the majority of my pupils at school do each day.
[Side note: In 1996, the Universal Primary Education (UPE) program made “education free for children in Uganda” so that everyone could have access to free primary and secondary education. Wait, “free”? But, but, but? Well, that’s a much bigger discussion for a different day.]
Anyways, I know that was a lot of math and you are most welcome to double-check that, I won’t take it personally. And to be honest, I don’t really know where I was going with this. I guess all I wanted to do was offer you another perspective in life that I have happened to be lucky enough to learn. By no means am I saying “don’t go buy that Powerball ticket tonight,” because you better believe I would be the first person in line to test my luck if I was in America right now, too. Just as you hand over that $2 tonight, or perhaps $14 this week, think about what you just read and that those 14 dollars are one-half of a year of school for 1 of my pupils here.
But really, what I guess I am trying to do is to encourage you “to be grateful for having all that you have and for being all that you are,” which is the same thing I tell my pupils every day. For being able to read this right now or to own that space phone you may be reading this on or checking my math with. Be thankful for your life, regardless of the issues you might be facing today, because you just so happened to be born into a realm of privilege in this world. Just like my pupils are alive and in school with friends and a community around them, which is more than some people out there can say.
Lastly, know that my pupils once told me that they pray for “us.” I don’t know if “us” means Americans, or westerners, or adults in general. They pray that we can one day focus on our friends, family, and the time we spend together just as much as, if not more than, we focus on money, power, and things. They pray we “can smile, laugh, and be happy” each day.
If that’s not the most insightful way to start your Monday, I don’t know what is.
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