Fatma Tanis

I really got the sense of how the U.S.

is just viewed as this major superpower.

I remember one community elder who kept referring to Donald Trump as Father Trump when he was talking about the aid cuts.

And I asked him, why are you calling him Father?

And he said, well, he's the provider.

In Uganda, you still see the remnants of

of USAID everywhere you go.

Posters and murals with, you know, the American flag, guidelines about how to deal with like the COVID-19 pandemic.

You kind of see that, see that everywhere on the ground.

And then on the other hand, in the big cities like

The shopping malls are Chinese-built.

The roads that you're taking to go everywhere are Chinese-built.

The GPS in the cars that people are driving are Chinese GPS.

And people are definitely sort of aware of what's coming from where.

And, you know, the Chinese...

strategy of aid has long been focused on infrastructure, these big, big infrastructure projects.

But they have also run into some issues with that, issues of quality.

When we were driving on those roads, there were a lot of places where they had been pretty messed up and nobody was fixing it.

So at one point, that road was beautiful and paved.

But now when you're driving on it, it's like potholes everywhere.