The internet as a research tool

Despite what you may think, I occasionally do engage in intellectual pursuits.

Such as arguing.

I was embroiled in a fascinating one recently, stemming from the Pastor’s Hummer. I posited that Uganda is massively poor, and that the Ugandan who is not daily crushed under the colossal weight of our poverty is not a typical Ugandan by far. If this point survived contention, I was prepared to place hand on hip, raise my chin and deliver the coup de grace-- something along the lines of “How do you be there saying that simanyi you are a true Ugandan when your life doesn’t resemble the lives of the overwhelming majority of Ugandans in the least, si ku your fully-loaded iPod and your cappuccino at Café Pap, not to even mention your fucking Hummer?”.

(I was going to censor that but then I thought that would be ridiculous, given that the word Hummer is dirtier than the word written before it.)

Anyway… this is where the facts failed me.

The way I remembered it, Uganda was the one of the ten poorest countries in the world, with staggering rates quantifying this.

I had to quote numbers though. I had to ask the Internet. This is what it told me:

Uganda has a per capita GDP of $1,800.

The 20th poorest country in the world has a per capita GDP of $900.

In other words, we are not that broke.

I was so pissed off! I mean, like, Shit! When did this happen? You guys just go and develop and mess up my debate positions! Man!

Hate when that happens.

For the record, my future home, The Seychelles, is the third richest nation in Africa: $7,800 baby! When I go there I will be stuntin!

Caveat. Don’t jump on my case, I know GDP per capita doesn’t prove that everyone is Madhvani. I was trying to win a bar argument, not presenting a paper to the UN. Chill me on that.