Humbly Hastening Righteousness? #COVID-19UGANDA DAY 118

First, the weekend was exactly what we longed for. A spot of untouched rugged beauty, wild animals just living their lives wandering by, an unexpected respite of wind and cloud that gave picture to the Spirit's refreshment, books to read and prayers to offer sitting in camp chairs which we moved to catch the shade of a cactus. Remembering redemption, and how it comes in hidden slow ways. And just to keep us on our toes, the challenges of reality: encountering a whole new kind of tiny stinging ant that swarmed under our clothes when we inadvertently washed dishes on their territory, a lone pesky hyena that kept wandering back after being chased away with rocks and a panga and in his curious boredom chewed through our tire cover and gnawed on our tea pot at night. And, the requisite car issue. We went on one game drive (it seemed superfluous asa the the game kept coming to us, why go to them, but we do love the motion of the savannah and looking for lions . . ) in which we're pretty sure we were the lone visitors in the park (the lodge was closed, so only campers and we didn't see any other campers).  So when we ended up on a newly graded track in the rain . . and the black topsoil turned to slick muck that quickly filled our tire treads and left us fishtailing like we were driving on ice, and we ended up in a ditch, we were envisioning being stuck for hours. We chopped small branches from nearby clumpy brush to get some traction (while keeping an eye on nearby buffalo) and the 4WD mercifully got us going our first try. Yeah. The highlight of the weekend was perching our chairs on the roof rack and watching an elephant circle our camp, spraying clouds of dust on his back. We saw easily over a hundred elephant and buffalo, and dozens of warthogs, waterbuck, kob. Not to mention 3 lions and 9 giant forest hogs. Ever since we really READ Job, we have embraced the concept that God's answer to suffering is to go look at creation. So we are grateful for the time we could do just that.

We packed up camp in the rain Monday morning, which means we actually just threw the wet tent and muddy tarps into the car for later cleaning/drying/sorting. A real blessing on the way back was the opportunity to have a leisurely porch lunch with the Fort Portal team, recounting griefs and blessings. They are our neglected stepchild, independent strong women who rarely ask for attention and for whom we are grateful but wish we had more to give. That time was a good choice with some consequences of a rushed minor re-supply shopping time in order to beat the curfew and return to Bundi.

Which brings us to the last 48 hours. If you put down your work for a weekend, it gathers strength to pounce upon return. Hundreds of emails, a few meetings, some brewing issues, heart-to-hearts, a flurry of cleaning, visitors ... .plus the news that we were to appear for an annual District Health- NGO Coordination meeting on Wednesday with reports on our activities and plans for the year. A late night Tuesday creating a presentation, an early morning Wednesday unsuccessfully trying to push through rounds (I think I rounded and wrote notes on about 10 patients out of 80-ish), and then we were called and told to get to the meeting.

All masked, socially spaced at tables, open windows . . . still odd to be in a meeting these days. The district health team was joined by another dozen or so representatives of the NGO's focused on health, all Ugandans and mostly NOT from Bundibugyo who work for major organisations. Person after person put up impressive, articulate slides, with tables and work plans, goals and dates, numbers and percentages. Pathfinder has a five-year 11-district USAID grant to improve access to family planning that involves universities, research, highest levels of government. Save the Children procures mama kits (delivery packages of helpful items) and supplies village health teams with basic medicines, but also heavily facilitates the work of the district health team in supervising and planning. World Vision has an ongoing project in one area of the district that includes peace-making and literacy activities. Baylor University employs a team of data gatherers and analysts to make sure HIV/AIDS care is evidence-based, up-to-date, accessible, monitored. As the hours went on with these presentations, all with their slick urban representatives, their impressive funding, their buzzwords and acronyms, personally I was feeling more and more like a failure. What are we even doing here? And how does all this heady office-based assurance match up with what we see on the ground actually happening? I started googling the budget sizes of these organisations. Wow.

We were called up last. While Scott connected the computer, I had a Holy-Spirit moment. Instead of trying to look just as competent as everyone else, I was able blatantly say that we are NOT equal to them and to just reflect thanks to them all. Save the Children and World vision are 2+ billion dollar organsations; Pathfinder and Baylor are 50 million dollar enterprises. Meaning they are all 25-1000 times larger than Serge. And what I saw was, everything they are doing here, we were struggling to start nearly 30 years ago. Community health teams with Dan Herron, immunisation outreaches, the Kwejuna Project that initiated HIV testing and care and mama kits and safe delivery capacity,  BundiNutrition that educated and provided food for kids, education with CSB, kids' outreaches, relief after war, epidemic response. It used to be us, and the government, pretty much alone. So what a blessing that now there are multiple organisations with more funds, more personnel, more expertise, investing here! It's not our territory to defend, it's our home and family to rejoice in the opportunities. We are nobodies, who made simple attempts and began some good works, that we now have the joy of seeing grow beyond anything we could have accomplished. After that we made our presentation, admitting our limited capacity, but connecting our work in the hospital, nutrition, water, relief, sponsorship to build up the
health of this place.

Then we sat down, and the whole air of the room changed. Immediately the local-Bundibugyo person running the meeting transformed the fact that we went last from "now that the major people are done we'll get to World Harvest" to "you know in African culture, the elders speak last, so we saved Dr. Scott and his wife for last." It's as if our sincere acknowledgement of how far we have come together with recognition of the incredible input from everyone allowed us all to stop trying to impress and to just relax into nostalgia. And perhaps as the lone foreigners in the meeting, by not taking a superior role we let everyone just breathe. Or maybe it was just the importance of history, so the few who knew us were then empowered to remind the others of our long shared experience. As the meeting closed the local leaders were (verbally, in a COVID - friendly way) embracing our presence. It was very sweet.

God answered my question, what are we doing here? Mostly, just. being. present.  Getting older, and remaining. In an almost simple monastic way, doing hands-on care that people with less training or experience could do but doing it alongside them even when it is long and tedious. Sometimes speaking up for justice. Sometimes pulling in research or ideas from outside. Sometimes carrying the memory of what has and has not worked, or of how far we have come. Sometimes praying, and noticing that God brings in Save the Children and Baylor. Sometimes pushing the younger people forward, with boosts of advice or help or visibility.

I am sure the weekend of peace set our souls up for the unexpected day of collaboration for District Health. This morning, the phrase I read in Isaiah 16 jumped out. Isaiah is pronouncing judgements and warning of dire days, but then speaks of shelter, a throne established in mercy, One who seeks justice (v. 5). That one will sit on the throne in truth, "hastening righteousness". God is going to put this world right, including destroying COVID and racism and poverty and cruelty and oppression and everything that is NOT RIGHT. In the meantime, we're about hastening that right-ness where we can. Getting a jump-start on preventing AIDS or feeding the hungry or proclaiming the Kingdom. Yesterday was a glimpse of how this team has been doing that since the late 1980s and how the pace and scope of change has accelerated. Now we have the opportunity to be back in this fray to protect the gains from being lost to the difficulties of 2020. Here we go.