The Week Starts

The week started with an infant dying of anemia as we were trying to connect a blood transfusion, a tragedy, a wailing flailing inconsolable mother and a resigned tearful grandmother wrapping up the body, while our new crop of interns hovered outside waiting for their tour of the hospital.  Welcome to Bundibugyo.  A teenage girl who drank “poison” in a suicide gesture after someone stole the thirty dollars her father had given her to pay her school fees.  A fifteen year old mother with a two pound baby who was AWOL this morning, either she decided that she could manage on her own with the formula we had provided or she gave up.  A shrinking baby slipping away from life who turns out to have sickle cell disease.  No news on our cancer patient Kabugho Margaret.  Scott off to Kampala, 16 hours in the car, two days away from home and kids, all because the new bank WHM works with has failed to manage to transfer money to Bundibugyo, so he has to go to the capital and deal in cash to keep the water project, school, hospital construction, Kwejuna project, etc. all moving along.

Then as always, signs of hope, postings that remind us the Kingdom is coming.  Motherless infants came today for their monthly assistance . . . What a satisfying joy to see formerly skeletal babies plumping up on the breastmilk of their aunts or grandmothers, smiling and playful.  A patient whose teenage sister used to bring him for TB therapy came back, she still cares for him though she’s now married with a child of her own.    New skin growing into a severe burn, the puffiness of kwashiorkor dissolving in the tide of nutritious milk.  Anti-retroviral medications (ARV’s) for patients with AIDS finally arrived in a two-week-delayed shipment from Kampala.  Perhaps most amazing of all:  two of our staff decided to get “ringed”, meaning have their marriage officially recognized in a church service, on Sunday as they were baptizing their newborn baby Judith (named after my mom because I told hem she was born on my mom’s birthday!).  Church weddings are very very rare as everyone would prefer to keep their options open and not feel so committed, so it is fun to see our lab man sporting his new wedding band.  We sponsored both of them in nursing and lab programs over the last few years, and they are back now at work in Nyahuka.  No doubt their marriage will be attacked, but for this moment we can be thankful for their step of faith.
 
Someone threw a mostly dead snake onto the end of our driveway this morning, which I discovered in the dim light after Scott departed.  Maybe it was random chance, maybe it was maliciously meant to intimidate me.  But I choose to interpret it as a positive sign, like the bronze snake in the wilderness.  I’m thankful to the unknown protector who struck the snake.  I’m thankful too that like our other “near misses” it was left to remind me of God’s care.  I lifted it on a stick and threw it into the ditch by the road.  The serpent is crushed.