When the Homily is about Immunology

The Remains of the Day

Two days in Uganda and I can see already that I am going to be a changed man for the experience - at least for a month or so. (Sad to say this is probably being brutally honest...but I hope not.)

I'm sitting in the "veranda" (apparently I was incorrect in simple referring to it as an enclosed porch) watching another African thunderstorm rolling in from the west and contemplating the day's events.

It started with my first trip to my workplace at the Infectious Disease Institute up at Mulago Hospital. I recognized portions of the hospital from the the film "Last King of Scotland," but clearly in that film only the very best areas were featured. By spoiled American standards, many portions of this facility would be deemed unacceptable, a place you might see while passing through a desperate inner city, but certainly no place that you would stop to receive healthcare.

Much of Uganda is this way. I will not call such regions slums because it seems to me that the spirit of the people deny such a title. Speaking with my colleagues today at lunch we discussed the horrors of seeing children with fully treatable diseases...FULLY TREATABLE...dying not so much from the illness as from lack of money to treat it. I consider my own children and how agonizing it must be to know that for a little geographic distance and little money (or a lot in both cases) my child would live. No child in America dies of EBV or HHV8, but they do here. Michael Moore did his documentary in the wrong place.

But despite the hardships (or maybe because of them), its seems most of the Ugandan people bear a soft spoken joy that I rarely see at home. A smile, if not already present, is always only a heartbeat away. It is amazing. Of course, they are a people riddled with problems that are not always a function of their poverty, I do have to wonder about how they might actually benefit from their poverty. What an odd thing to suggest.

But walking around the Hospital/University complex today, it occurred to me that I was very likely the only person noticing how dilapidated much of it was. I suppose in a third world country, such is understood to be the case and it would seem few entertain notions of being able to change it anytime soon.

Thus, their is little to no hope to be found in material or technological goods. As I watched the people go about their business, I wondered what one does when you cannot so easily and quickly lean upon our stuff (which as you know, we really do do), and the answer was clear to me: you lean on God and on each other. These people, it seems to me, have great faith in both and indeed they must.

Do we lose that in having the technology and finances to save children from curable ailments? I hope not, but I suspect we have...I suspect *I* have. Two days in Ugandan and I am already seeing so much. So little of my money would make such a huge difference to any given family here. On average, a Ugandan household earns around 40,000 Ugandan Shillings a month, which is about half of my DAILY food allowance here...or about $24.

Can you imagine doubling a family's monthly income and having it affect you so little? So I guess today's lesson: Check your faith in your material and technological well being. AND, what can we do to help people who truly...TRULY suffer from a lack of money and technology. I hope, in meeting up with some church contacts this weekend, to have some clearer ideas of what we in America can do.

Despite how homesick I am and how much I miss my wife and kids, I am very much enjoying meeting the soft-spoken, smiling, and generous people of Uganda.