Phil and I headed down to the Drop-in centre with Aurelia. It was good to see the boys get excited about Phil being back in town. We hung around for a while until Erica came and picked up Aurelia to take her to the local clothes markets that only operate on Mondays and Fridays. Phil and I went to Edirisa and caught up a bit. It was good to hear how things in Jinja went.
When I was in Kampala I picked up a couple of books about Africa, one which I was already half way through was about the Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda and the response by the International Criminal Court. It is amazing to think that I used to live the comfortable life that I did in Australia and did not even know the smallest things that actually went on in the rest of the world. And being here in Kabale the reality of some of these things is really starting to hit me. The visit to the refugee camp a few weeks ago is still in my mind. While at Edirisa I got a chance to read the local paper with this front page heading:
This is in the same region that Quinton took his parents to visit George, the Ugandan doctor that they met in Caboolture. Quinton had mentioned that there were a couple of cases that where suspected to be Ebola, but that the W.H.O. had taken one week to come and get samples for testing as they did not know how to transport the samples and that they did not want to go to the villages that the cases came from because they were concerned for themselves. This is meant to be the ‘world’s’ governing authority on these sorts of things. I am sure if it happened in a western environment then the rest of the world would know about it before the 6 o’clock news. At least one month later it finally makes it to the local papers. Phil commented he had a thought while at the babies home about how in the west a life is valued so much more. If someones baby was born with complications then hundreds of thousands of dollars could be spent on them. Which is only natural to do. But to bring it to perspective that money spent on one life could possibly save many, many more lives if spent differently. Not saying that we would not look after the child in the west, but how much money gets wasted in other ways. Phil was saying about how many of the children that are born with complications are just abandoned as death seemed just a matter of time to the parents. Each child at the babies home would have a heart wrenching story as to how they arrived there.
Edirisa also gets the ‘Economist’ magazine which is always good to read. The latest copy said about things that were happening just over the border from us in DRC. One UN person said that what is happening right now in the East of DRC is worse than Darfur. Though this is one person’s opinion, it must be pretty bad for someone to think this. In the last two months alone 160,000 people have been displaced, many seeking refuge in Uganda or Tanzania. This is also happening after the government claimed that the civil war had ended and that the country was at peace, so one can only imagine what it might have been like before it finished. To say these things is easy but to actually think what it would be like to be a displaced person is another. To choose to leave your home, your town and country is a big enough thing in itself, but to do it because perhaps you saw everyone else around you being senselessly slaughtered and running for fear of your own life. Perhaps even seeing relatives and friends being killed before your own eyes. On top of that you have no idea exactly where you are going or how your arrival there will be received. How easy it is for us in the west to get upset when we run late for a train and are going to be late for work or something life shattering like that.
