act 6 scene 1

I’m sitting on the veranda of the house I’m staying in at the moment. We’ve been here for just under two weeks. As I look over the countryside I see absolutely stunning rolling green hills covered with banana and pineapple plantations, dotted with houses and punctuated by the very occasional dirt road. Closer to the house there are various buildings that belong to the clinic we are working with.

It’s good to be home. Spending three weeks in a Kampala - Jinja - Kampala sandwich was slightly frustrating; even when the time there was usefully spent learning about the culture and making plenty of new acquaintances. It’s good to be home. Since we have been here the time has been spent creating a place to live in and starting to create opportunities to serve the local community. The last week has been hard going; working in the heat of the day in clinic wards that are, quite frankly, upsetting. Children and adults with pneumonia, malaria, malnutrition and a few other diseases filling up the small in-patients ward; to the extent that they must place mattresses and patients that don’t fit on the limited number of rickety beds on the floor. It’s good to be home. The question that I’ve been thinking this week: what on earth can we do? There are twelve of us assisting at this clinic and we cannot and will not make much of a long term impact in the seven weeks we are here. We can make a child laugh and smile for a few hours with a pot of bubbles and some colouring crayons, but we cannot markedly change the rest of his life. If I didn’t believe in God I would feel helpless here. We can transform this ward, this clinic, this town, this district, this country and this world. Just not on our own. It’s good to be home.

Wandering around in the town goes to show that not foreigners show up in the neighbourhood. It’s a tiny town that is difficult to get to - by no means a tourist destination. We have yet to see another white. As I walked around the market last week a group of kids followed me - I’m guessing to see what I might buy or do with my crazy western ways. It wasn’t just me, but all of the team - when I ran into the others they too had their devoted crowd. Novelty very quickly wears off to reveal claustrophobia. I’m pleased to report that the fruit they have here is beautiful. Today I bought a bunch of 16 or so top quality bananas for 500 shillings (about 14p) and yesterday I bought a fairly enormous pineapple for 600. It is all beautiful to eat as well. As a quick aside, and to conclude, for some reason I thought pineapples grew on trees. I’m not sure what part of my education failed me. They don’t.

Internet here is scarce - there isn’t internet down the road in the town and we didn’t find internet in the town that is one hour away down a bumpy un-surfaced road either so the closest internet is a good two hours away. Fortunately, we have been able to get access via a mobile phone - it’s very slow but infinitely faster than nothing :-) Having said that it’s not so cheap and so I won’t be posting here that often (that and my effort is redirected towards the team). Check out what the whole team has been doing over at the Kitwe Team web-site where we will be making (slightly) more frequent updates.