Every Tuesday night, the missionary team with AIM in Mbarara (plus some adopted missionaries) has a dinner and team meeting. Usually we share some business and prayer requests. We generally laugh and sometimes cry together as we share stories of the goings-on. During the prayer time, when I manage to focus on the prayer and even God instead of myself, I often get choked up in response to the Spirit moving through someone's words.
Tonight, I was moved by a prayer about how God gets things done when we think there is no possible way to resolve a situation. This was a referral to the destruction of about half the hospital wards in preparation for a new and expanded facility (with a few stories even). The memo for relocated the affected wards, inc. TB, Emergency, and Burns wards as well as the Radiology dept. designated the places where to move (or "shift" as they say here). However, beside the list for Orthotic Workshop (which serves for 10 districts in Uganda) and Physiotherapy were these words: "To be determined after consult with the contractors."
Haha! All I can do is laugh, since the contractors have no idea and just go back to the hospital administration, who wrote the memo. Now these departments (or ministries of health--MOH) are not actual buildings. They are "containers" bought and placed by Italians. The physio dept. will get a space in the new facility, but the orthotic workshop cannot; it has large and heavy equipment that would vibrate the floors and walls and crack concrete ones after some time. So there's no space for any of us in the meantime--meaning no outpatient physio for a year likely and no workshop at all once demolished.
We've done inventory in our dept. so are ready for a move when we know where to go. Otherwise we've been literally watching ourselves get fenced in by the construction while the wards beside us are hammered and chiseled to bits.
Now, thankfully, God has worked by mobilizing the Ugandan association for the disabled to raise concern and funding for our reallocation. It's a grassroots movement! They got the Minister of Disability (or something to that effect) to chat with the Minister of Health about this. When we are helpless, we have the Helper.
Which really is how I feel many times in the hospital: helpless. I have a mental struggle between the positive benefit of me coming as a learner and the wearing feeling of not having the knowledge to really DO something, medically, for these patients who tug at my heart when no one seems to pay them attention.
See, coming in as a learner, not as an expert, is a key for transformational development. By asking the nurses to teach me, their confidence in their work gets a major boost. I'm enabling them to show me what they can do (which sometimes may not get done). And I'm bringing attention to needs without telling them what is wrong. In essence, I'm encouraging them to take control and realize they have power to make a difference in their own country. Even Zillah has told me what a change she's seen in Janet, my coworker physio assistant, since I've come. I can't take credit for that--I didn't know it was happening. It's all God's work.
On the other hand, there's a patient vomiting and cool to the touch, but all the physicians on surgical ward are either med students who can't help me or surgeons who are busy in the surgical theatre. Patients in surgical ward may have a doctor look at them once a week as they await surgery, which can be a wait up to months. For instance, the lady whose name sounds like Elevator. She suffered from malicious acid burn and waited over a month for mobilizing surgery before heading to her village for Christmas. She's just come back in January to again wait to move up the list. It's just really frustrating. I have to stop comparing this to what I've known to be the case in America.
Well, I hope these jumbled thoughts strike a chord with you. May God lead you to pray for his ministry at the hospital in Mbarara--from the physiotherapy work Zillah and I do to the HIV testing and lab work Lou does. I'm challenging you to think of someone besides yourself and say a prayer for him or her every day for the next week. Let me know how it goes--that is, if you are willing to accept the challenge.
Much love from Mbarara, from your sister in Christ, Lindsey
