September 29
Today was a slower day at the hospital, not an incredibly sad thing to me. After last week’s craziness the slower pace was a welcomed break, as was being able to send most patients with their films today. I really love being able to tell patients that they can come back in only an hour or so, and then handing their films to them. To me it should be this way, so that they don’t have to return to the hospital. And though the day seemed normal, there were a few things that stuck out to me.
One of the other radiographers and I were talking about culture. About the culture in the hospital, in Gulu and in Uganda, in general. And we began to talk about wartime culture, especially as it pertains to the IDP camps in the surrounding area here. Because people didn’t have anything to put their energy towards (work, school, etc) they began to seek out friendships. Sometimes this meant sexual intimacy. Because of that, the prevalence of HIV/Aids and other diseases is pretty high here. However, the mindset of violence and chaos has been more overwhelming, and so why should I care about some disease that might kill me in ten or fifteen years? And please don’t read what I’m not writing. I’m not saying that everyone has that mindset, but as a culture within the camps, it had been accepted. And a whole generation here only knew the camps until just recently. Its really a problem, as the late teens and early twenty somethings have no concept of what their culture had been before. There is a depth to this place that I don’t even begin to say I understand or can comprehend.
I also shared with him that I have had a couple really hard times since being at the hospital because I am seeing these atrocities to humanity, and then realizing that right now the country that I am from is engaged in a war. And apart from the ‘reason’ that the soldiers are there, people in those Middle Eastern countries are being affected the same as people here have. Innocent people will forever have their lives changed because of things that my country is doing right now. That messes with me...
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