Medical Camps

“It takes years to find the words to tell others your experiences of Uganda,” say many interns who have previously worked in Uganda. Sitting in the VIDEA office in Victoria, Canada I could not understand what they meant. I could only guess at what stories they could not express in words. Yesterday was one of those experiences. I am going to try to describe to you, as best I can about a medical camp the Uganda Rural Fund organized, but I don’t know if my raw feelings will come across to you as honestly as they feel to me.

As usual it was raining yesterday morning, which according to the Uganda unspoken rule, means no one leaves their house until it ends. After two hours it stopped, and our team quickly grabbed our pens, medical supplies and jumped in the van, swinging the door shut as we bounced down the road.

After a five minute car ride we stopped in Kyetume to pick up Jayhan who had gone to see what time the soccer match would be playing at the cinema (the cinema looks like a barn constructed with only 70% of the necessary wooden materials). After driving 10 minutes we stopped again so Martin could buy Rolexes. 30 minutes later we were back on the road.

After a combined total of a 20 minute car ride we arrived in a small village. I was surprised to notice that dirt and sweat caked the villager’s clothes and many adults were shoeless. I was surprised by their appearance because in most places in Uganda, tidy and pressed clothing is the last stand against poverty. Recently someone back at the organization had come into financial trouble and been advised to sell their clothes. The person had refused, saying that if they sold their clothes, they would truly become impoverished. The foreign volunteers had not understood because they thought He was already poor, even if He kept his clothes, but the locals understood, and agreed they would never sell their clothes, no matter how poor they were. Looking out across the poverty of the village, one house stood out: made in the latest design, with working windows and beautifully painted in turquoise, black, white and orange, it was a foreshadowing symbol of the juxtaposition of poverty and privilege I was going to experience that day.

Without buildings or classrooms we set up stations for the medical camp under trees and borrowed a two room mud house. People in the village quickly lined up and received their weight, temperature and blood pressure and wrote their name and age of a piece of paper. Jane (the URF nurse) and I greeted the patients, read their vitals on the card, listened to their situation and then quickly wrote out a prescription. We saw 60 people that day until 6 pm. We had a couple obstacles: firstly, no one packed the thermometer ( luckily I had an extra one in my first aid kit) and secondly, we didn`t get lunch because one of our teammates, instead of helping us with patients, fell asleep in the van and never left to get our lunch until 5pm. Later he asked me if he had saved me like Jesus Christ by getting me lunch, and all I could think was maybe if he had left 4 hours ago.

The day started off well. Our first client was 9 months pregnant and I made sure the baby was in the head down position. When I placed my stethoscope on the baby’s back and found the heartbeat I passed the ear piece over to her so she could listen to her baby’s heart. Another volunteer told me later she left with a smile on her face. The rest of the day wasn`t so productive, I could list off what we saw but it wouldn`t mean much to you. It would just be a list of terrible things that you would store away and then continue on with your day. This isn`t anything against you or your character it is just means that I do not have the right words to communicate to you how deeply these visits affected me.

 I do not want you to find excuses, to say death is a part of life over here or explain this to yourself. I don`t want you to brush it off. I don`t want you to find a way to justify this so you can feel more comfortable and better about the world. I want you to experience it, I want you to taste it, I want you to be uncomfortable and to feel sorrow. I want you to feel these things so that we can connect, it will be like the two of us were in that dark hut together, peering into a small section of someone’s life, someone just like you or I, someone that could be our aunt, our grandmother, our brother, our son. This is not “`life in Uganda,” this is a life that is affected because free healthcare and money is out of reach. I do not want anyone to be so high and mighty as to decide a girl like Josephine, whose parents died from HIV/AIDS and contracted Tuberculosis at 2 years old, should become adjusted to living with a barrel chest. Her caretakers could afford the surgery for TB but couldn’t afford the medication to fix her resulting expanded chest cavity. I want something done about it. In Canada we can afford planes that can`t fly in the arctic but we can`t afford to help Josephine. We can afford hair dye and oranges from 5 different countries and diamond necklaces and earrings but we can`t afford to help Josephine. We think Josephine should expect that in a place like Uganda and then we carry on, expecting her to adjust. I saw children with polio, malaria, children affected by malnutrition, urinary tract infections and fungal infections. A 67 year old woman with a blood pressure of 207/109 because she can`t afford the blood pressure medication. And at the end of the day, when I wanted to give a cookie to an elder, I was told `no, we`ll get swarmed, everyone will want some. When did we start becoming ‘us’ and `them?  As humans the hurt of one is the hurt of all and the triumph of one is the triumph of all.

There was a man who was blind and used a walking stick but his right eye was equal and reactive to light, if he could afford glasses, he would be able to see, a child who had polio who would be really helped by a pair of shoes available at the hospital. A woman who had a botched abortion and now has an infection that has been raging for 2 months. “Can we get her to the hospital today?”  I asked. I was told that it takes a week of waiting to receive care at the hospital, so you have to pack a bag and then you need to buy your own food for the stay and pay medical bills. The person describing it to me made it sound like an almost insurmountable feat.  A modest trip to the hospital costs 10,000 shillings, about $5, and no one can afford it here. $5. Five dollars to better or save a life.

The answer is not to send money because I see that when people get a lot of money that they have never had before, they quickly spend it all on frivolous things. I have only been here two weeks and do not pretend to know the solution, but believe a sustainable healthcare service with lab testing, nurses and doctors with an outreach system is more important to build than donating money to short term fixes. Saying I do not believe in short term solutions makes me a hypocrite because I secretly donated a bit of money so that woman, who reminds me of my grandmother, can afford her blood pressure medication. But that money will run out and she`ll be no better off in the long term. It is not that I want you to send money to this project, I just want you to know it is out there, that  you can travel and volunteer somewhere and help or just appreciate what you have at home in Canada.

After our day at the village our organization wanted group pictures taken, to document all our good work and pat each other on the back. Maybe we did do good work today, maybe it was a contribution, but all I can think of is that woman with an infected uterus.

At the end of our day we headed home, quickly ate dinner and went out dancing at a night club, where few people can afford to go visit. Much like that expensive house surrounded by poverty, I spent the day in one of the most impoverished rural villages and ended the night in luxury. It is not hard being in poverty, or luxury, but it is hard to see the inequalities. I wonder what the cost of a pop would afford someone else.

Josephine