June 20th, 2001

June 20th, 2011


How do you fix the broken? How do you heal the sick? Where do you start if you can’t seem to see the end?

Today we went to visit one of our kids who got hurt playing soccer yesterday at the government hospital in Iganga. This place took me for another trip down unbelievable alley. I was blown away by the people needing help and by how they were being treated. Our boy had broken his foot during a scrimmage yesterday and today had finally gotten the cast on. Hopefully he will be released tonight because this place was something out of WW2. Apparently it could have been way more crowded, which was true because there were some extra beds available in the men’s ward. I still thought there was a good amount of people there for the type of facility.

As soon as you walk into the ward, you are greeted with a stale air of sickness. There was absolutely no privacy for anyone. Just looking around you could see how sick, injured, or close to dead, some people were. There were no dividing rooms or even curtains that kept patients separate from each other. Each bed was only a few feet from the next. Patients only get a sheet to cover them unless family members give them more. If the patient doesn’t have any family, then they were certainly suffer because your family is suppose to keep you fed while you wait for the doctors and nurses to take care of you. These people are also on African time.....so you may have to lay in the bed with your injury for quite awhile. American hospitals easily outdue the situation I saw today. If I were born here in Uganda, I would certainly try my hardest, to first, earn a living so I could eat, but in a close second, take extreme care that I don’t severely injure myself. Your life would certainly get much harder as soon as you got hurt. The gov’t hospitals here are free, but once again there is much corruption within even the health system. If you have money, and are willing to pay, you will definitely get better and faster treatment. Seeing all of this made me want to become a doctor just so I could treat and help everyone, but we all no an English degree is a far cry for a PHD in medicine.

As I asked before, how do you fix the broken? How do you heal the sick?
The end still seems so far away. I hope the little I am doing for the Musana kids actually impacts them in some way. The world seems a lot larger when I think of all the people in need....