Juxtapositions

Although I am attempting to not compare the United States to Uganda, I cannot help but to note the role I play here in Uganda and how I can never be and will never be a Ugandan, understand what it is to be Ugandan, or truly live in their country as they do. This is due to the color of my skin. The standards and expectations I have due to my culture. The amount of money in mine and my parents' bank accounts.

These facts and the role I play cause many interesting and contradicting juxtapositions in my everyday life.

Last night I went out to dinner with Alexander, his three guests, and our Ugandan friend, Lindsey. The restaurant we selected was an Indian restaurant and was full of non-blacks. I say this because every else I go in Kampala, besides the fancy restaurants in fancy hotels, I am the only non-black person. Seriously. The scene actually made me feel a tad uncomfortable. It felt too posh, which I am not and I did not come to Ugandan to become. Regardless of my discomfort, dinner was tasty and we had a very nice time.

After dinner, we went to Mulago Hospital, the national hospital that is ran by the Ugandan government. One of the other places in Kampala where I feel quite uncomfortable, but for totally different reasons. This seems like and actually is an odd after dinner rendezvous, but over the weekend Alexander and APP received a phone call regarding two patients who needed alot of help and Alexander's guests came to the rescue.

The first patient is Charles. He is an inmate and was somehow badly injured, as in many broken bones and scars all over his head. Up until yesterday he has been handcuffed to his bed in a large ward with many other patients. The other patients were less than thrilled that an inmate was being cared for and expressed that it was probably better we put him outside to die. Regardless of their protests, we cleaned him the best we could. See the hospital had no running water, soap, or rags for us to use, so he essentially received a cold water rub down with an old t-shirt we ripped in to pieces. Charles seemed to have a very bad fever, and also seemed delusional. I am worried that he has an infection that is causing the high fever. We brought him water and put blankets on his bed. It was all we could do.

Then there is Robert. Robert was in a car accident awhile back and had surgery on his pancreas. When the doctors were closing up at the end of surgery they just so happened to forget to take the gauze out of the wound. Sometime after the surgery, the area was infected or something and Robert now has a hole in his stomach near his belly button. I will leave it up to your imagination to imagine what comes out of this hole in his stomach. It was miserable. I could barely stand the smell and the sight of this man who was all skin and bones. Laying naked, letting two strangers clean him. He is slowly dying.

I am not a doctor, but I do know a few things. Patients, human beings, deserve medicine when they are sick. They deserve to be clean and to be helped to the bathroom when they need to go. They deserve somewhere to sleep where there aren't rats and it doesn't reek of urine and feces. They deserve running water. It just shouldn't be so complex, but it somehow is.

So I spent the first part of the night at the nicest restaurant I have been to in a month and the last part in the worst place I have ever been in my life.

 

Note lack of blankets and the patient's medical notes/file taped to the end of his bed.

 

Patients or patients' family members sleeping on the floor.

 

A bloody syringe and blood bag sitting on a shelf in a treatment room.