Doug Van Pelt

A conversation overheard in Uganda

When we were at the airport in Entebbe, Uganda, waiting for our flight to Brussells, Belgium, we were sitting down after going through the gate check. One of the Compassion staff, Tom Emmons, was sought out by another Compassion worker that happened to be in the same city at the same time. She introduced herself and they had a nice conversation about what they had been up to. Tom was sitting in a row of chairs facing and across from me, and this woman (I think her name was Amy) was sitting to my left. I couldn't help but hear every word and occasionally be a participant in the conversation. She told us about her times in a run down and somewhat infamous hospital in Kampala.

It's called Mulago and it's apparently not as nice as the open air (?!) hospital my wife visited (International Hospital Kampala) when she accompanied our photographer to another hospital. So, anyway, Amy worked there for a couple years and she discovered early on that Malaria was killing tons of people. She described mothers carrying their dying children in their arms, down a long hallway to an emergency room or something, and the children would die before they arrived. She said she would come in during the morning and see a pile of dead bodies in the hallway -- stacked 4 or 5 feet high -- of all the children that had died over the night and earlier that morning. They would be discarded later that day.

Can you imagine that? Nurses are tough, but I can't fathom dealing with something like that. If I was Amy and had experienced that, I would probably have to tell that story over and over again, too (just for the therapeutic value of getting it "out of my head" or something). Oh my.