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Despite the COVID-19 situation, Shitomi’s strong desire to become an instrument of helping Ugandans compelled her to serve as an interpreter in an effort to communicate with the people.
Akiho Shitomi, from Tokyo, Japan, said she had no hesitation to “seize the opportunity” to be involved in the project to help Ugandans, which is 11,349 km from Japan. After talking with the project’s head, Mr. Ozawa, she had become more interested in the subject after hearing his enthusiasm for sharing his technique.
Through Mr. Ozawa’s project, Ugandans will learn shoe shining techniques, thus increasing their number of customers and increasing their income.
Having never been to Africa before, Shitomi was excited about learning about its cultures and different values they have.
“I began to feel the atmosphere provided me with the peaceful feelings since people there seem to be in harmony with nature.” She commented.
After she arrived in Uganda, she had to assume her role as interpreter immediately to proceed with the project. She said, “With my limited language skills, I’m grateful for this chance to get involved in this role and the support I had from a local Japanese staff member who was assisting me.” She prepared necessary documents and communicated with locals in order to carry out the project with her team.
Shitomi said she had a great time talking with people in Uganda in English. Though most of the people she interacted with spoke Luganda, she mainly used English.
Reflecting on her experiences in Uganda, she said, “The problem I noticed in Uganda is that people tend to have this narrow perspective on what they see and do. For instance, when it comes to their daily work, there were many people who were selling vegetables or whatever they harvested on the street, but they were constantly doing them only in one way. Because of that, there were large quantities of vegetables that were thrown instead. I felt that we could help Africans see things from different perspectives so that they could learn to solve the issue in another way instead of just sticking with one solution or way that they have been utilizing.”
She felt that the project was able to meet its goal by benefiting local people by helping them develop their skills. Since the two-week project was conducted by four individuals with distinctly different personalities, she said they needed to learn how to work together and have cooperation toward each other. They had to learn how to communicate in a way that would enable them to resolve things so that the project could be handled smoothly. She is an emotional type, while the others are logical, so they had to learn how to communicate effectively so that the project could be handled smoothly.
In addition to the teammate’s cooperative matter, she went on to say that she wishes she could have “studied English more.” She said, “That’s all I can say,” about something she felt she should have prepared more before going to Africa. She expressed regret that she had not been able to communicate with locals more effectively and fulfill her role as interpreter in a more effective manner.
Besides the shoe polishing mission, Shitomi said the desire to go to Africa stems from her personal matters. “First of all, the reason why I wanted to go to Africa was because I wanted to see how others view the same issue from their point of view since I only see from my stance including my countries”. She added.
She went on to say, “I felt this mission to identify the similarities and differences between our countries in terms of how we both see things. I’d like to apply my experiences to combat social problems including how to assist third world countries because I’ve learned that sometimes what we feel we’re helping developing countries are counterproductive to those nations.”
She said the importance of doing one’s best in the given circumstances and expanding one’s horizons is important. From her experiences, she feels that people in Uganda tend to have a narrow perspective since they don’t have the opportunity to travel outside their country or continent.
According to her, it’s essential for every individual to have a vision for who they’d like to become and this might only be possible if they step out of their comfort zone.
