Comfort is painful
I am sure that like me many of you feel saddened and frustrated as you read the accounts of Rwanda or see the pictures on television. It is difficult to watch it all unfolding in front of our eyes and yet be impotent to do anything about it.
Eight years ago those were the feelings that I had when I read about Uganda. I read how people had suffered under Amin and how the violence had continued after Amin was ousted. I knew that many of the people who suffered were Christians and it made me restless and ill at ease - until I finally went to Uganda to see things for myself. That was at the beginning of 1987 and by then the situation was relatively safe, the latest civil war having finished in 1986.
I have to confess that I was ill equipped for what I met, as I had no previous experience of Africa and my medical experience had been almost exclusively in general practice in Northern Ireland. I met a young Christian doctor in a hospital in Kampala and tagged along on ward rounds. The medical needs were overwhelming and I found my heart touched by the people in a way which I had not expected. I was taken to the Luweero Triangle north of Kampala where the worst of the atrocities had been committed - a place which had been called the killing fields of Africa. I saw piles of skulls and bones - 250,000 people were estimated to have died. I saw houses without roofs or fittings and overgrown abandoned farms. I Saw people who had nothing, trying to pick up the pieces and put their lives together again.
When I went back home I knew that I could not stay in general practice. I knew that I must go back and that meant the whole family. My wife Robbie and I were one in spirit in this. She was prepared to give up the security of life in suburbia and move to the bush in Uganda. We were not the ideal people to go to a post war situation in a third world country. We were green in matters of living in another culture: it did not appear to be a wise move financially. I was inexperienced in third world medicine, I had no specialist experience. Possibly our only qualification was that we were willing to go to Uganda and there was definitely not a queue. CMS Ireland accepted us and I did a diploma in Tropical Medicine. We arrived out in the bush with a tin box of drugs and not much more, except good intentions.
The living proof
As doctors today we are all so professional in our approach. We are organised, we have our lives worked out, our career plan for the next ten years. We have our mortgages and our financial plans, it is all well circumscribed and controlled. Heading off into the bush does not fit. It is easy to find all kinds of reasons why it would not be a good idea and why we would not be useful. Tell me about it - we have wrestled with it The amazing thing is that the Clarkes are the living proof that it can be Ordinary people like us can be u drastic situations like Luweero or Rwanda. I challenge you - if you have put your faith in God, He can make use of you in any situation. He used me despite myself. It is we who the limitations on ourselves, not God. - We cannot leave our job, our training rota, we cannot take our children out of school, we need financial security. I am no different, I still tell myself all those things, but how do they weigh against children dying from measles. How do our problems measure against mothers who weep for their babies.
When we went to Luweero there was nothing. There were no medical.' facilities, there was no maternity ward, no laboratory, no means to treat many common conditions. I was a GP with a tin box of drugs - not terribly adequate.
You all know the story of the feeding of the five thousand. There was Jesus and the disciples and five loaves and two fish and apparently not much planning as to how these people would be fed. It was a situation tailor made to make the disciples uncomfortable - there was obviously nothing they could do. Jesus's response was - use what you've got. As Christians I do not think that in present day crisis situations Jesus would give us different advice. Then why does it seem so difficult?
In Luweero we had no option but to give the people what we had. It was often not adequate, but it was more than what they would have got if we had not been there. Over the next few years, in ways which we least expected and which sometimes involved a lot of sorrow, we saw a hospital come into being. It arose out of the ashes of the war. Today there is a one hundred bed hospital in the place where we first treated patients, with no better facilities than two three legged stools. Thousands of people are treated there every year and where there was death, apathy and despair, there is life and hope.
Another chance to live
Two years ago I almost died, when a chest X-ray revealed that I had secondary metastases in the lungs. Robbie and I faced death together. When we looked back over our lives we were so grateful that we had the opportunity of serving in Uganda. We had seen so much death and dying that we no longer thought that it was our right to be immune. We no long said - Why Me? but - Why not me?
I did not die, the diagnosis was advanced seminoma and I have been given another chance at life. I wonder if I will start to rationalise again and organise my own life and make excuses. I want to continue to put my faith in God and continue to be available. When I see Rwanda on television I have a deep sadness, but I know now that even people like me can be useful.
As Christians we need to be relevant to these extreme situations. We need to break the mould, to be radical in our thinking, but above all we need to be prepared to use what we have got. There are many agencies who will take short term health professionals and there are always opportunities to go for long term. In the world as it is at present we are never going to run out of places where there is a need for our skills. The questions is whether we are willing to use what we have got.
(For further information contact Friends of Kiwoko Hospital, Holy Trinity Church, Amersham Road, Haslemere, HIGH WYCOMBE Bucks HP15 7PZ also see the book by the author 'The man with key has gone' by Dr. Ian Clarke published by New Wine Press at £5.99 Ed.)
I am sure that like me many of you feel saddened and frustrated as you read the accounts of Rwanda or see the pictures on television. It is difficult to watch it all unfolding in front of our eyes and yet be impotent to do anything about it.
Eight years ago those were the feelings that I had when I read about Uganda. I read how people had suffered under Amin and how the violence had continued after Amin was ousted. I knew that many of the people who suffered were Christians and it made me restless and ill at ease - until I finally went to Uganda to see things for myself. That was at the beginning of 1987 and by then the situation was relatively safe, the latest civil war having finished in 1986.
I have to confess that I was ill equipped for what I met, as I had no previous experience of Africa and my medical experience had been almost exclusively in general practice in Northern Ireland. I met a young Christian doctor in a hospital in Kampala and tagged along on ward rounds. The medical needs were overwhelming and I found my heart touched by the people in a way which I had not expected. I was taken to the Luweero Triangle north of Kampala where the worst of the atrocities had been committed - a place which had been called the killing fields of Africa. I saw piles of skulls and bones - 250,000 people were estimated to have died. I saw houses without roofs or fittings and overgrown abandoned farms. I Saw people who had nothing, trying to pick up the pieces and put their lives together again.
When I went back home I knew that I could not stay in general practice. I knew that I must go back and that meant the whole family. My wife Robbie and I were one in spirit in this. She was prepared to give up the security of life in suburbia and move to the bush in Uganda. We were not the ideal people to go to a post war situation in a third world country. We were green in matters of living in another culture: it did not appear to be a wise move financially. I was inexperienced in third world medicine, I had no specialist experience. Possibly our only qualification was that we were willing to go to Uganda and there was definitely not a queue. CMS Ireland accepted us and I did a diploma in Tropical Medicine. We arrived out in the bush with a tin box of drugs and not much more, except good intentions.
The living proof
As doctors today we are all so professional in our approach. We are organised, we have our lives worked out, our career plan for the next ten years. We have our mortgages and our financial plans, it is all well circumscribed and controlled. Heading off into the bush does not fit. It is easy to find all kinds of reasons why it would not be a good idea and why we would not be useful. Tell me about it - we have wrestled with it The amazing thing is that the Clarkes are the living proof that it can be Ordinary people like us can be u drastic situations like Luweero or Rwanda. I challenge you - if you have put your faith in God, He can make use of you in any situation. He used me despite myself. It is we who the limitations on ourselves, not God. - We cannot leave our job, our training rota, we cannot take our children out of school, we need financial security. I am no different, I still tell myself all those things, but how do they weigh against children dying from measles. How do our problems measure against mothers who weep for their babies.
When we went to Luweero there was nothing. There were no medical.' facilities, there was no maternity ward, no laboratory, no means to treat many common conditions. I was a GP with a tin box of drugs - not terribly adequate.
You all know the story of the feeding of the five thousand. There was Jesus and the disciples and five loaves and two fish and apparently not much planning as to how these people would be fed. It was a situation tailor made to make the disciples uncomfortable - there was obviously nothing they could do. Jesus's response was - use what you've got. As Christians I do not think that in present day crisis situations Jesus would give us different advice. Then why does it seem so difficult?
In Luweero we had no option but to give the people what we had. It was often not adequate, but it was more than what they would have got if we had not been there. Over the next few years, in ways which we least expected and which sometimes involved a lot of sorrow, we saw a hospital come into being. It arose out of the ashes of the war. Today there is a one hundred bed hospital in the place where we first treated patients, with no better facilities than two three legged stools. Thousands of people are treated there every year and where there was death, apathy and despair, there is life and hope.
Another chance to live
Two years ago I almost died, when a chest X-ray revealed that I had secondary metastases in the lungs. Robbie and I faced death together. When we looked back over our lives we were so grateful that we had the opportunity of serving in Uganda. We had seen so much death and dying that we no longer thought that it was our right to be immune. We no long said - Why Me? but - Why not me?
I did not die, the diagnosis was advanced seminoma and I have been given another chance at life. I wonder if I will start to rationalise again and organise my own life and make excuses. I want to continue to put my faith in God and continue to be available. When I see Rwanda on television I have a deep sadness, but I know now that even people like me can be useful.
As Christians we need to be relevant to these extreme situations. We need to break the mould, to be radical in our thinking, but above all we need to be prepared to use what we have got. There are many agencies who will take short term health professionals and there are always opportunities to go for long term. In the world as it is at present we are never going to run out of places where there is a need for our skills. The questions is whether we are willing to use what we have got.
(For further information contact Friends of Kiwoko Hospital, Holy Trinity Church, Amersham Road, Haslemere, HIGH WYCOMBE Bucks HP15 7PZ also see the book by the author 'The man with key has gone' by Dr. Ian Clarke published by New Wine Press at £5.99 Ed.)
