How can I paint a picture for you that could convey the magnitude of the disparity I witnessed Saturday? How can I possibly bring you with me to Gulu Regional Hospital? To let you try and take it all in as the interpreter explains that the family right there jsut lost their mother. To let you stand beside me in a small room brimming with cribs and heartbreak? To allow you to feel that same helplessness as I did in the AIDS ward where death hangs heavy like blanket over every bed? To go outside to a crude patio where patients are lying on thin mats and concrete? To join me in the "lobby" - a dirt yard with no roof where family members or even patients themselves must cook their own food? To see the look on Pricilla's mother's face as she begs me to pray for her daughter who has cerebal palsey and can't move from the waist down? To become totally enamored with Pricilla's radiant smile and infectious laughter as we play together? To hope with everything within you that this little girl could dance in the sunlight vs being paralyzed in a dingy room?
To visit three hospital wards, all bursting at the seams with humanity, and only see two nurses and no doctors? To try and understand how the medical cubboards at a hospital could be as bare as Old Mother Hubbard's? To stand still for a second as the enormity of the needs swims around you? To let yourself take that moment to be totally overwhelmed? And then, to take a deep breath, and promising to allow yourself to grieve later, to somehow, someway, put all of THAT somewhere, so you can begin to DO SOMETHING? To lessen, even an iota, of the suffering? How can I show you all of that?
I can't. In fact, I'm still pretty sure that I haven't really even processed it yet. But for my sanity and yours, allow me to tell you what we we were able to do.
In a situatution like the one above, there is no one day fix. No quick cure. No solution that can bring salvation in a day. Any help we can offer seems greatly inadequate. My friend Pauls says it's like dropping water into a bucket with a giant hole in the bottom. True. And that hole is draining 10x faster than we could pour. Still, something is better than nothing. So armed with hope, we set about offering our "something."
We gave soap. Salt. Clothes. Stickers. Sugar. Prayers when asked. Laughter when appropriate. Compassion. Medicine, lots of medicine.
We sat. We listened. We cried. We held.
My favorite part of the day's events was when we simply served tea and sweet rolls. It was not some mechanical distribution process. It was personal. A way for us to honor their dignity as human beings. To take just a moment to have tea. A non-essential. A luxury. An unhurried moment in a sea of chaos.
And that one moment was beautiful.
I guess that's what I'd tell you if you asked me about Saturday. I'd tell you about the moment we had tea, human to human, with those that suffer more than I can even process, much less understand. And then, I'd weep.
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I can't even begin to try and comprehend all you have seen and done. However, it puts the biggest smile on my face to imagine what an angel you seem to these people in such a time of desperation and need. It takes a special person to go out and do the things you are doing...YOU are SO very special to me, to these people and to our Father!!!
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