Part and Parcel, Ear to Ear

I found myself yesterday afternoon in a long and tedious meeting which Scott was supposed to attend by virtue of his appointment to a community-based committee that manages the health center.  But he was being overwhelmed by 25 ultrasound referrals at the hospital (either the overzealous referring of unsure visiting doctors-in-training here for the month, or the passive-aggressive action of the usual ultrasound staff refusing to screen out the routine cases and only pass on questionable ones to Scott, in protest against action to stop them from illegal surcharges, or divine opportunities for him to serve and teach . .. he was never quite sure).  While I struggled with the restless sense that the hours were slipping through my hands leaving much left undone, I found I could not easily slip away.  For one thing, these are the people among whom I have spent most of the last decade and a half, and I care about the issues they are raising.  For another, the elected official chairing the meeting made me sit right beside him and gave a speech about how we are “part and parcel” of the community and the work.  Sigh.  So I listened and even challenged or supported various points.  Instead of “shoulder to shoulder” the idiom for cooperation I heard was “ear to ear”.  Sort of an interesting picture of us here, ear to ear with our colleagues, a meeting of the minds and a cooperative physical pushing against disease and poverty. The day only got more ear to ear as it drew to a close.  A couple of newly-weds came to greet us, and as we chatted I reflected on the privilege of moving from a relationship of parent/sponsor to one of colleague/friend.  Am I getting old?  I guess so.  Perhaps the wisdom of age or the whisper of the spirit, I decided to offer the wife prenatal vitamins, sensing she might need them soon if not immediately.  I called her aside and learned that her last period was two weeks before the wedding . . . So we did an impromptu ultrasound with our portable machine, and once again had the fun privilege of introducing new parents to the waving limbs and fluttering heart of their tiny fetus.  But this time it was not American team mates, but Babwisi friends, with whom we could share the same joy, and hug, and pull them into staying for dinner with our family.  And the due date:  Christmas Day.  Fun. By the time we cleared up from dinner and the long day and got the kids down to Friday night clubs at school (they attend games club where Jack teaches his friends great short English boggle and scrabble words, crafts club where Julia nestles in with the girls and learns to crochet and knit, and math club where Caleb reluctantly rises to the challenge of interesting problems) . . . We were exhausted, and ready to relax, settling down on the couch with Luke after about 14 straight hours on the go.  But as soon as we hit the couch there was knocking on the door, a bit ominous in the dark.  Particularly when the dark face at the door is covered with blood.  Our neighbor Buligi and his wife stood there with a knot of relatives, and we immediately sat Buligi down.  His face had been mangled from a motorcycle accident.  Scott ended up taking him down to the health center to do a little plastic surgery by flashlight with the cheerful and competent help of the theatre nurse, who was one of our original “Mother and Child Survival Project” community volunteers more than a decade ago.  Buligi’s is the second case this week of stitches in the operating theatre after a motorcycle accident:  the other was our lab technician.  Both are responsible adult men with one wife, married in the church, with jobs, families (which makes them far from average).  They are not reckless teens out for joy rides.  One was taking blood samples to the central lab, the other coming from taking soap to his boy at a boarding school.  But the crowded road, the meandering goats and pedestrians, the deep rusts and jagged loose rocks, the sharp turns and bushy roadsides . . . Make for danger.  So Scott ended the day ear to ear with our worried neighbors and our hospital staff, part and parcel of the night’s work.