Working Abroad: To go or not to go?

I was a high school senior the first time I travelled outside Uganda. The experience of being in Europe for the first time was quite an adventure; the food was amazing, the roads were perfect and the malls were really colossal—I had never seen a shopping mall as large as IKEA.

As I toured around, I kept thinking—this country is so much better than Uganda. I could make a life here. In fact, I did make plans to move to Europe after graduating from high school. I also got a chance to visit a few universities and planned which course I could potentially pursue.

My mind was set. I was going to move to Europe, make a lot of money and return home as a millionaire. I was so convinced that Europe had better opportunities than Uganda. They had a higher minimum wage and more job options.

My personal philosophy at that the time wasn’t so different from what most Ugandans hold today; they blame the government for unemployment and high taxes. They also blame the corporations for low wages. They believe that things would get better if the government changed. But would they really?

Why do people want to leave?

More than half of Ugandans would make the choice to move to another country, if given the opportunity. Currently, there are over 140,000 Ugandans working in the Middle East alone. They are employed as house maids, security guards, taxi drivers…

According to information from UAERA (Uganda Association of External Recruitment Agencies), maids in the Arab peninsula earn between $200 and $500 per month, more than 3 times the salary of a professional primary school teacher in Uganda.

Also, out of the $1.4b that Uganda receives in remittances from all over the world, the migrant workers in the Middle East countries contribute upwards of $500m

Most of what migrants send home goes directly to dependents; it is often intended for education, housing and business. In Uganda, it is believed that children in families that get help from a relative abroad are 50% more likely to stay in school and complete high school.

So, there is no doubt that working abroad has been a huge blessing to many. Some of these young people that travel to the Middle East were once hawking merchandise on the side of the road. The graduates were seated at home, with not much to do with their time—-so leaving the country in search for better opportunities would seem like a smart move.

The life of immigrants.

There is a lot of pressure from families placed on Africans that travel for work abroad. These immigrants usually take-on the role of the families’ savior. Once they settle and start earning some money, they usually have a long list of dependents; the wife and kids, parents, in-laws, friends…etc.

Many of these people find themselves sending most of what they earn back home. But unfortunately, money sent back to buy land, build a house or start a business is often misappropriated.

It is wrong to assume that you can empower your family by giving them free money. It is counter intuitive. That is precisely why the Museveni government has failed in their plan of making Ugandans rich through operation wealth creation.

For this reason, many in the diaspora decide not to go home unless they have accumulated enough capital to take care of all the dependents and also start a business. Unfortunately, most never reach that goal and choose to keep working—so the 5 years become 10 years and before they know it, they’ve been working abroad for 20 years.

After working for several years, some are lucky enough to save a sizeable fortune. So they return home with a few millions, hoping to start a mercantile business or a farm. Within a few years of operation, the business fails, because they failed to master the trade craft.

The problem with our brothers and sisters in the diaspora is that they believe it is okay to trade their time for money. So they trade away 5-20 years of their time, in exchange for a few millions.

Returning home with a few millions doesn’t make you a millionaire. It simply makes you someone with a few millions. And if you don’t work on your personal philosophy, you’ll find yourself losing all your millions to dependents and low return investments.

My advice to those planning to travel for work abroad.

Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money but you can’t get more time. Once I understood that, I had to abandon my plans of moving to Europe. If you spend 20 years working in a foreign country, at a job you don’t even like, that’s 20 years of your life you can never get back. I believe that Uganda has a lot of opportunities to explore.

Anyone who wants to get rich can get rich here. In his book the science of getting rich, Wallace D. Wattles says, “There is a science of getting rich, and it is an exact science, like algebra or arithmetic”. If you fail to get rich in Uganda, it’s simply because you refuse to follow the science.

Our biggest problem in Uganda isn’t Museveni’s dictatorship. It’s our personal philosophy. In all the other African countries where dictators have been deposed, things haven’t changed much. That’s because the problem was never the dictators—the problem was the philosophy of the masses. Our focus should be to educate the masses about the benefits of personal development. We need to train people on how to become more valuable.

The market place is all about value. If Ugandans don’t have jobs, it’s simply because they possess skills that are not very valuable to the market place. We need to teach them ways in which they can build and grow high income skills.

Income does not far exceed personal development. Income sometimes takes a lucky jump but unless one grows to where it is, it will usually come back to where you are on the personal development scale.. This is the case with most of the Ugandans that return from abroad. They comeback with lots of money but the money gets blown away in no time.

It is true that there is a lot of tribalism in Uganda. One ethnic group supposedly has more than half of all the country’s wealth. But tribalism is not the reason Ugandans are poor. The problem is our personal philosophy. Our personal philosophy is what defines our thought patterns; it is what shapes our goals for the future. Half the youth in Kampala slums don’t have any tangible goals—they just want Museveni gone.

Everything starts with philosophy. We don’t need a better economy or a better president; we need a better personal philosophy. Even if the government were to change today, Ugandans will still be jobless, and will still feel the need to go abroad and trade off their time, for money.

If we can’t change the economy or government, then we have to change your personal philosophy. We say the country is messed up— Museveni is messed up, but what is really messed up is our personal philosophy.

If we could change our personal philosophy, we could turn around our income, our skills, and health habits. Don’t try to move to another country, try to read up on personal development. Uganda’s problem is not unemployment or underemployment— it is personal development. To have more, you have to become more.