Baggas’ Blog

Time to update after a busy few days.

We spent the weekend down south in Manjimup visiting Jen’s brother. Stayed in a farm stay cottage which was nice for the kids, getting to feed and play with all the animals - donkeys, ponies, sheep, cattle, birds, an alpaca and others. Did a bit of four wheel driving in the Karri forrest down there and overall just had a good relaxing time. On the way back I trusted the GPS to take us the shortest route however this was not necessarily the quickest - we wound up driving along the “Blackwood River tourist drive” which was an incredibly beautiful winding drive along the river through hilly forest and farmland… but very slow. Lesson for the future : if the GPS says go one way and my judgement says go another, trust myself instead of the computer (assuming of course I have a fair idea of where I am and where I’m going).

The last few days have been busy with work and other things. Yesterday I got my car serviced and went to Perth to do a few bits and pieces. Sure glad I don’t live in Mandurah - the drive from Perth to Mandurah is just that little bit too long for my liking.

The other thing which may or may not be happening is that there is a chance I may be going over to Myanmar (Burma) soon to help in the relief efforts in the aftermath of the horrendous cyclone. Of course this is dependant on whether their government decides to issue visas for foreign workers to come and help. But my name is on the list with an organisation who are hoping to send a medical team in so we will see what happens. I would have mixed feelings about going and leaving Jen and the three kids including baby Mia, so it would necessarily be a fairly short trip but hopefully I would be able to do some good for people. For this sort of thing it’s Jen making much more of a sacrifice than I would be, by allowing me to go. So please pray for both of us, and the entire sitatuation over there.

Anyway for the time being there’s work to be done here and patients waiting to be seen, so I’d better get on with it.

Excellent ‘blogalogue’ series here at Beliefnet, between skeptical religious scholar Bart Ehrman and Anglican Bishop N T Wright on the problem of pain and suffering and it’s relationship to the claims of Christianity. Ehrman describes how his struggles with this issue ultimately wrecked his Christian faith. He comes from a Christian background, he knows his stuff, and he raises questions that we should take very seriously indeed. Pat answers just won’t do.

EHRMAN : Suffering increasingly became a problem for me and my faith. How can one explain all the pain and misery in the world if God—the creator and redeemer of all—is sovereign over it, exercising his will both on the grand scheme and in the daily workings of our lives? Why, I asked, is there such rampant starvation in the world? … If God is concerned to answer my little prayers about my daily life, why didn’t he answer my and others’ big prayers when millions were being slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, when a mudslide killed 30,000 Columbians in their sleep, in a matter of minutes, when disasters of all kinds caused by humans and by nature happened in the world?

He even provides a pretty good answer to the question himself, but for him it was ultimately still not strong enough for him to retain his belief in God.

EHRMAN : God himself is deeply concerned with suffering and intimately involved with it. The Christian message, for me, at the time, was that Jesus Christ is the revelation of God to us humans, and that in Jesus we can see how God deals with the world and relates to it. He relates to it, I thought, not by conquering it but by suffering for it. Jesus was not set on a throne in Jerusalem to rule over the Kingdom of God. He was crucified by the Romans, suffering a painful, excruciating, and humiliating death for us. What is God like? He is a God who suffers. The way he deals with suffering is by suffering both for us and alongside us.

Fortunately we have one of the best theologians/scholar/pastors in the world today to try and address these questions, and Wright does a good job - although I (like Ehrman) found his first post was not entirely convincing, in his second entry Tom really starts to approach the heart of the matter :

WRIGHT : If one believes, not merely as an intellectual assent to doctrine but as a living relationship with God through Jesus Christ, then the dark mystery of suffering can be seen within the context of his suffering, and be transformed by it.

Of course, for its fullness this necessarily generates, as I said, the life of the church in and through which evil is then addressed. Part of the ‘transformation’ is that Jesus’ followers go to work as healers, reconcilers, and so on. That’s why the last two chapters of my book are a small attempt to say that the work of believing people in addressing the urgent needs of the world is actually a part of the biblical answer – if you can call it an ‘answer’ – to the problem.

The beginining of God’s answer to the problems of pain and suffering in the world is Jesus’ own sufferings and subsequent resurrection (which, as Wright points out is the climax of the OT story of Abraham and Israel). But the continuation of God’s solution is through the church - we need to be God’s means of reaching out and addressing the pain and suffering of the world.

But then Ehrman goes on to raise another tricky, and most appropriate, question. What about all the instances in the Old Testament where people’s suffering is blamed on their sin - ie. suffering as punishment? And what about all those instances where God himself, or God’s chosen people, inflict mass casualities (eg Noah’s flood, Joshua’s invasion of Caanan)? Very good questions - ones I personally would struggle to answer (and unfortunately Wright doesn’t really address this stuff in much detail in his reply). A strong come back from Ehrman, and yet again he raises a point about Jesus that I would agree with ( for an agnostic he seems to have some good theological insights, just a shame he doesn’t believe them) - The Kingdom of God is not manifest in Jesus only in his sufferings..

EHRMAN : … the Kingdom is manifest in Jesus’ life and work: in the kingdom there will be no disease, no demons, and no death. Jesus manifests this kingdom in the meantime: he heals the sick, he casts out demons, and he raises the dead. This was not a message about some vague power of God breaking in at some period thousands of years hence. It was God breaking in now

The ministry of Jesus in the gospels gives us a good example how we, as part of his Kingdom, should be working in the world - feeding the hungry, healing the sick, remembering the forgotten. Ehrman touches on this point in the following quote :

EHRMAN : Even if we cannot, in the end, know the reasons for suffering, we can at the least have appropriate responses to it. We ourselves can feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked; we can work to solve problems of poverty; we can give money to agencies finding cures for cancer and AIDS; we can volunteer more often locally; we can give more to international relief efforts. We can, in fact, fulfill the urgent demands implicit in Matthew’s account of the judgment between the sheep and the goats, for “as you have done this to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you have done it unto me.”

But ultimately Ehrman’s view is that the Kingdom never did come, and presumably never will. Wright begs to differ, and brings it back to what is the central issue in much of his work - the resurrection.

WRIGHT : But the real dividing line, still – and you still haven’t addressed it – comes with the resurrection. I do think, and I think the early Christians thought, and I think the evangelists (yes, in their different ways) thought, that the kingdom did come through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Not ‘come’ fully, of course; but, in the usual language, it was radically inaugurated … For the early Christians, God’s new world – the world where God’s writ runs – had already begun, and they were living in it by the power of the Spirit. Things did change. The early Christians did make a difference. Yes, of course, earthquakes and tsunamis still happen. The NT writers knew that as well as we did, and they went on saying that Jesus was already Lord, not simply that he would become that one day. They weren’t mostly offering, either, an analysis of ‘why evil/suffering happens,’ but they were implementing Jesus’ kingdom-work of challenging evil/suffering in the power of God – not in a sudden all-powerful theocracy, banishing every evil at a stroke, but in their continuing work on the model of Jesus himself and his parables.

All up a great series of posts. Ehrman provides some challenging questions an Wright coming back with some excellent (although perhaps not decisive) answers. Although my heart sides with Wright, I think I’d have to call this debate a draw. If you’d like to read through the posts (and it’s well worth doing) you can start here and just click the right arrowed links at the top of the page to follow them through.

[thanks to Ben Witherington for the link to this debate]

It’s been a long day thus far but finally I find myself in the lounge at Johannesburg airport. I woke up at 3:30, expecting to be picked up to be taken to the airport at 4am, but my ride didn’t arrive until 4:50. I was just about to try and get a taxi when they finally showed.

When I arrived at the airport I discovered that, since my paper ticket originally was for a different date, I was unable to check my bags right through to Sydney for my flight this afternoon. This meant that I had to go through South African customs and collect my bag, only then to be told that I had to wait another 3 hours before I could check in for my Sydney flight and get through to the good departure lounge.

When I finally did get through, feeling sore in the neck and mid back I saw a shop offering seated massage for 120 Rand (around $20). After being pummelled by a middle aged African woman for 20 minutes I can now say that instead of being sore in those spots, I am now sore all over (wish I had my sports therapist friend from our medical team here!). So some Voltaren gel from the chemist and an excellent glass of red from the Diners lounge are my next strategy.

OK, now thats today out of the way - let me go back to discuss something much more fun - last night. Five of our group decided to go to a concert by one of the singers from KPC church, called Enoch. Actually it was not just his concert. His band was the headline act but was well supported by a bunch of other performers - soloists, dancers, rappers, an a-capella group, and a Ugandan comedian! We were expecting it to be some dingy hall or club but in fact it was a beautiful modern theatre. And the concert was fantastic. All of the artists were good, especially Enoch and his band, who were great musicians - particularly the lead guitarist and bass player. I got a lot of video of it on my digital camera so I’ll endeavour to post some on here in the next few days.

Only a small group of us went which meant for me I was able to avoid the goodbyes with most of the other members of the team. I’m not one for goodbyes so that suited me. But it was nice because the four that I was with last night were the ones that I connected with the most during the trip - friendships born out of a similar outlook on life, interests, sense-of-humour, musical tastes, and a little bit of adversity thrown in (especially in the case of my two partners in criminology, Emma and Mairin). I’m not always strong at making friendships, so aside from all the mission and medical aspects of the trip, connecting with these guys was one of the highlights for me. There were plenty of other great people on the team too, but with these guys we just clicked, which was great. The other cool thing about our team this year was that it was more multidisciplinary in nature. In addition to two doctors and a bunch of nurses, we had a physio/sports therapist, speech pathologist, and a couple of lab scientists. I was doubtful going in to the trip how much they would have to do, but they really added a huge amount to what we were able to achieve.

Anyway time to go grab some more food, and drink - and then maybe a shower before I board the plane…

And so it ends. Finally today after two full weeks of clinic, we saw our last patient. Actually my last patient was a home visit to a mother with HIV/AIDS who was in pretty bad shape. Hopefully they will get her to a hospital for some more intensive testing and treatment and she will be okay. Her case illustrated another obstacle to adequate HIV treatment - superstition. She, like many other people, was in denial about her HIV status, rather believing that she had been cursed by a witch or something along those lines. Just last night I was reading in my book “The Shadow of the Sun” by Ryszard Kapuscinski, about how prevalent such beliefs are in Africa. Even amongst Christians, they still hold on to a lot of these traditional beliefs as well.

Now that I’ve mentioned this book, let me just say that this is one of the best books on Africa I’ve read thus far. Kapuscinski is a Polish journalist who spent over 40 years in Africa as a correspondent. The book contains a series of vignettes - portraits of everyday Africans and everyday African life from all over the continent - combined with brief historical lessons and philosophical musings.  It’s amazing how much of what he writes rings true, especially reading it whilst over here. And he really gets into the unseen life of the African populace like no other author I’ve read. Not just touching on the shakers and movers, he visits the homes of the millions upon millions of people eking out a meagre existence and ponders why? For anyone who has ever been to Africa or has any interest in the place, this is a must read book.

As I said, today was our last clinic. I think we probably saw over a thousand people in the last two weeks, and I believe we made a difference in the lives of many of those. If nothing else we showed them that somebody cares. Tonight the girls on our team are at a Women’s Conference at KPC church, whilst the two of us men caught a boda boda to the shops, did a little shopping, had a nice pizza, and then discovered that the “best” internet cafe in town was again not working. But not to be deterred we walked down the hill into Kampala central and found an ever better one - the most productive half hour I think I’ve ever spent on the net in Uganda. Tomorrow we are heading off to Jinja to raft the rapids of the Nile, Sunday it’s church and then a concert in the evening, and early morning on Monday I leave on my journey home. Can’t wait to see my family again. This trip has been great, but I have missed them so much.

This is my second attempt at using the internet today. The first was at the “best internet cafe” in town and I sat there for an hour with no connection - but at least I got my photos backed up and the last blog entry typed. This time I am at a cafe near our hotel that has failed me several times before, but actually seems reasonably quick tonight. Just shows how totally unpredictable the net is here in Kampala.

Anyway here’s a few photos from the past few days…

The view from the front of our clinic on Suubi mountain - breathtaking!

Some of the crowd outside our clinic - we saw over 160 patients today.

Two brothers we saw - no parents in sight. Very common for children of a young age to care for their siblings here like this, and very common to see boys wearing dresses - they can’t afford any other clothes.

This is the boy I discussed in my previous post, not long after he was brought in with a seizure on Tuesday.

And this is the same boy with his new shirt, given to him by our physio Mairin - looking much happier!

The view from our hotel the other night when we had a massive storm - you can see the Old Kampala Mosque in the foreground and the Kampala ’skyline’  in the background.

Kampala is a very religious city. You see plenty of posters like this advertising various “crusades” (I hate that term- conjures up images of some of Christianity’s darkest moments) - anyway many of the look shonky and we found this one for “Pastor Augustine” particularly amusing - can’t decide if he’s a pastor or a hip-hop artist

Some of the many shops we pass on the road outside Kampala, with big piles of green ‘matoke’ bananas out front.

Well that’s all for now - time for me to head to bed. We went for an appreciation dinner with Watoto tonight to Kampala’s best Chinese restaurant- the food there is always tremendous and it’s a beautiful setting. Tomorrow is the last day of the medical clinics and I can’t say I’m sorry to be seeing the end of it. It has been quite exhausting work, although still very worthwhile. I’ll update again on the weekend if I get time.

Another hectic day in the clinic today - much of the same stuff  - otherwise treatable chronic diseases compounded by poverty. Many of these would be eminently more manageable back home - diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, epilepsy - but the people here just cannot afford ongoing treatment. And the backbreaking hand to mouth, one day at a time lifestyle contributes to it - men, women, and children all do their share of the physical work required for these rural households to survive. And this is in a beautiful, fertile land where there is plenty of rain and plants and crops and animals can thrive. Imagine what the more desolate, inhospitable areas of northern Uganda and much of the rest of Africa must be like.

But as is well known, the current number one scourge of Africa is HIV/AIDS - a more serious disease, but nevertheless one which is quite treatable with modern medications. My first patient of the day was a lady I had seen late the day before and ordered an HIV test on. I had to break the news to her of the positive result, encourage her to travel to the city to seek treatment in a public hospital clinic, and to arrange for her husband and 5 children to be tested. The husband will hopefully be coming to see us tomorrow. As for the children, they apparently live far distant from here, with another relative, and she could not envisage being able to get them either to us or to the city HIV clinic. In fact it is doubtful whether she can make it there herself. Probably only about 50km away, but a vast distance for someone with no form of transportation and no money.

Another patient was a lady who previously had had a positive test, but had not accessed any treatment. It transpired that the reason for this was that she was newly married and was afraid to tell her husband the result. She was looking for a way to access the treatment without him finding out, an even more tricky proposition. We encouraged her to tell him so he and the children could be tested but didn’t have much hope of her actually doing so. Another person, maybe even a whole family, who may die unnecesarily from this disease.

HIV is not the killer here - it is poverty and ignorance. The treatments themselves are not that expensive - the UNAIDS program supplies large quantities of anti-HIV drugs and Uganda now even has their own factory to manufacture them. It is the lack of infrastructure and the difficulty in getting the drugs out to the people outside of the cities who need them that kills. Like all problems in Africa, it is one to which there is no easy solution….

Kampala last night was a crazy, choatic, wonderful combination of torrential rains, thunder and lightning, traffic jams, crashes and floods. The weather pattern I’ve generally noticed here is an early morning storm before dawn, usually dry days, and then sometimes a thunderstorm at night. The previous night we sat on the balcony for a long while watching a spectacular lightning show. But nothing has compared to the storm we had yesterday afternoon just after we arrived back at the hotel. Within minutes of the rain starting to pour and the lightning started to flash, the streets around us were flooded, drains overflowing - one of the most amazing storms I’ve seen.

The chaos from the storm continued long after the rains had eased. A few of us squeezed into a taxi and drove across town to a beautiful Belgian restaurant in Kabalagala, Le Chateau. Was great to get out and escape the hotel food again, and the dinner was a treat. I had a beautiful steak with mushroom sauce for the main course, yummy Belgian ice-cream for dessert, and for the entre we shared some frog-legs and escargot which were delicious. A great night out after a busy day working in the community clinic (I’ll update on that stuff later, when I get a chance.) But on the way home traffic was at a standstill, accidents everywhere - one of the worst traffic jams I’ve seen even here in Kampala. In the end as soon as our taxi was in sight of the hotel we decided to get out and walk through the traffic in the rain since it was moving so slowly.

Ten minutes remaining on my net time (if it works - things have been really unreliable here this week) so I’ll update on the mission stuff. This week we’ve been out at Suubi village, a beautiful spot on a big hill quite a way out of Kampala. We set up a clinic in one of the Watoto buildings for the people in the surrounding community. Over the past few days we’ve had hundreds of people through. Once again many common conditions, infections, rashes, ulcers etc - and a few more serious ones - a baby with HIV, a child with a tumour, malaria, and a poor epileptic boy aged 13 whose family had basically given up on him. He had been having seizures since the age of 6 months, poorly controlled on meds, when his family had been able to get them for him. He was brought into me having had a seizure whilst waiting outside. I got some history from his mum - he didn’t go to school, didn’t play, didn’t even do any work around the home - basically he was a big embarassment and burden to the family. Back home, such a child would usually be able to attend school and have a pretty normal life, but here a treatable condition has left him severely disabled and neglected. We got him a good supply of better meds, and when we saw him again today one of the girls on the team gave him a new soccer shirt that she had, which lit up his previously dulled face with a huge smile. She demonstrated to the mother that this child did have the capacity to interact and even quickly learn new skills. Hopefully even these simple measures may go some way towards improving this poor boy’s quality of life.

Anyway, time’s nearly up. I’m quite worn out from the clinics, especially after today when I saw over sixty patients. Two more days of this to go, then we’re rafting the Nile on Saturday, church on Sunday, and then I leave for my 2 day journey home early on Monday morning (and I can’t wait to see Jenni and the boys again - missing them heaps). I’ll try and get on and update more, including some photos, if I find the time and the bandwidth between now and then.

A welcome change of pace today. The two doctors on the team, myself and Jess, went over to the Watoto Babies Home - Bulrushes, to do some checks on a few of the babies, whilst the rest of the team went back out to the villages to do various things.

The Bulrushes babies are in pretty good shape, considering these are orphans who a few months back were abandoned, some in terrible conditions. Like all Watoto children, they are well taken care of. Nevertheless, put 40 to 50 babies in the same building, especially ones who may have pre-existing illnesses, and various health problems are bound to develop. We saw about 15 or so this morning, most of whom fortunately had fairly minor problems. After that we spent a while just hanging out and playing with the babies which was fun. One of the babies I saw today I remembered from when we were here briefly in July. His name was Junior and when he was first taken in as a premature baby he was very sick with HIV and PCP pneumonia. Well, three months later with a bit of feeding, some antiretroviral medication, and a lot of love and good care, and he is doing well - gaining weight, smiling and in good health, as you may see in the first picture below. I continue to be incredibly impressed with the standard of care provided in the Bulrushes.

After we were finished there we took a walk along to the Garden City shopping mall for lunch and shopping. A call to the rest of the team revealed they are hours away from meeting us here so we decided to take a walk down the hill into the Kampala CBD before coming back here to the internet. Here’s a few photos I snapped on the way around. They’ve really been working hard preparing for CHOGM, the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, which is happening here in a couple of weeks - so much that asking a person if they are “ready for CHOGM” is a standing joke around here. From the state of most of the works though, I doubt if they will be ready on time. I’m not sure if our Prime Minister is still planning to attend CHOGM in the midst of the current election campaign, but I hope he does, if only for the chance to see a bit of Uganda on Australian TV back home.

The bottom picture is yet another local restaurant sign

Finally, I’m going to try and upload a few pictures from the clinics during the week, which I will add to that blog entry, so go back and take a look at that.

Quick update on the last few days. The internet here is horrendously slow at the moment so I shall have to be fast.

Tuesday I shall leave for another time as the story of Tuesday will be quite long and I’m not sure if it’s legally appropriate for me to discuss it yet but be warned you’re in for an interesting story…

So moving on to Wednesday, when I went out to a clinic at the Watoto village where we saw some of the village kids plus a lot of people from the surrounding communities. As a rule they didn’t seem quite as sick this year as last year - we have yet to encounter a bona fide case of malaria - but there was still plenty to do. Lots of ulcers and infections and STDs. A few people had known HIV and many others came for testing, as we have lab facilities available. Only one of the ones we tested came up positive though.

Thursday was a similar story, but this time we relocated our clinic to a building in the community up the road. Once again, very busy indeed and once again very few seriously ill people. Lots of chronic diseases and mild to moderate infections. The clinic worked very well. Our team is really doing a great job and from my perspective things went quite smoothly. Friday - the same story but an even smoother, faster clinic. Despite some organizational hiccups we managed to see more people in less time, including our first confirmed case of malaria, a little girl that I sent around for a blood test to the delight of our lab guy. Also the local ‘doctor’ working with us diagnosed a rare case of trypanosomiasis in an old lady who had the most massive spleen I have ever seen - the lab guy was pleased with that too. Sadly we have had two members sick who are out of action which is a real shame since they have travelled all this way and can’t participate much at present. But they seem to be turning the corner which is good.

Tonight a few of us have decided to break the shackles of our cooped up hotel and go out for the evening. First stop has been a bit of shopping at the main Garden city mall, where I’ve picked up a few Ugandan books (as always) and some T-shirts from the one shop I’ve found that sells decent quality Uganda souvenir shirts. I got a couple for the boys as well as a small pink one for our little baby who we are expecting in March. The highlight of my week has most definitely been hearing from Jen and seeing her pictures that she emailed me from the ultrasound

Right now it’s nice to be sitting drinking a decent cup of coffee at last whilst using a steadily improving speed net connection. After this we are going to head off and try and find somewhere good for dinner.

Overall the week has been good. We’ve achieved a lot, seen and helped a large number of people and had a few adventures along the way.

Finally, here’s  a picture of one of my favourite Ugandan advertising billboards, on the way out to the villages. I’ve been trying to catch a good pic of this ever since the first time I was here and now finally I have it…

Yet again I find myself back in Uganda. I arrived last night after a pleasant flight from South Africa. The place we are staying seems quite good. I have a big room to myself, which is air conditioned. And it’s a quite central location so just a short drive or boda-boda ride into the CBD.

Today we went over the the main Watoto office at Kampala Pentecostal Church (KPC) for a meet and greet and to go over the general plan for the medical mission. I must say, I look at the schedule with some degree of trepidation, remembering how exhausting some of the clinic days were last year. This year they seem to have even more planned, with very little down time. It’s okay for the nurses who make up the vast majority of the team and hence can do other things like hospital teaching, or just exempt themselves for a day if they get tired. As one of two doctors, I don’t really have that luxury, as the clinics can’t run without us. But it’s all not about me anyway so I’ll do my best for the next two weeks to cope. I do think there is the potential for us to do a lot of good work here.

As for the team, everyone seems nice. It’s a fair bit bigger than last year - mostly comprised of Australians and Canadians with a couple of people from the USA and UK. After lunch today at Sam’s restaurant (I had an enjoyable Ostrich steak) we took a drive to the southwest for an hour or so through the beautiful Ugandan countryside and stopped at the equator. A guy there treated us to an interesting demonstration of how water spins in opposite directions either side of the equator, and just drains directly down when you are on the line itself. I got some video of it on my camera so may upload it onto YouTube after I get home.

Just about to go and have dinner, and tomorrow we are off to church at KPC in the morning. The medical mission begins in earnest on Monday so pray for safety, energy, but most of all effectiveness. Hopefully we can go some way to helping the physical and spiritual needs of some of the people here. Will update again soon.

The last two days we have spent at the Bulrushes Baby Home in Kampala, which is part of Watoto childcare ministries. I hesitate to make any sort of comparison between Bulrushes and Sanyu Baby home, where we were earlier in the week, as Bulrushes really stands in it’s own league.

We were really blown away by the care and organisation at Bulrushes. The staff there are excellent. The building is beautiful. It is a very well run facility and the babies are lucky to be there - they are so well looked after. Not only that but the big difference here is that these babies will have a clear hope for the future as they eventually “graduate” to be raised in the main Watoto villages where they will be placed in a loving home with an adoptive mother and given an excellent education. This is not just a babysitting facility watching over these babies until they eventually (if they are lucky) find a home elsewhere - this is the beginning of a whole lifetime of care.

Whilst there Jennifer again assisted in care, and I was able to contribute medically, giving check-ups to a number of the babies on both days and advising on treatment. In general most of the babies were in pretty good health, a testament to the excellent care they have been receiving. Apparently when it first opened in January many of the babies were quite sick. Now most of their problems are relatively minor, although I did see one little fellow with tuberculosis and another premature baby with HIV and pneumocystis pneumonia which is quite rare in this setting.

Also today I was asked to do some education of the staff there and so I threw together a brief talk on hygeine and infections, viral and bacterial. Afterwards I took questions. They were intially a little retiscent but once the ball was rolling we had a good time and I was able to answer a load of questions related to baby and child care and health issues. I will be back here in October with the Watoto medical team and we can follow-up on this educational stuff then as well.

One more day in Uganda tomorrow, where we will get a bit of downtime and re-pack our bags ready for our next flight on Saturday morning to London. It will be a little sad to leave Uganda again, but also nice to have the comforts of a western country again. It’s good to know it’s only a few more months before I’ll be back here again…

We really haven’t taken many photos at all during our stay in Kampala this time, but here’s a few snaps from this week..

slacktivist: Mission Trips & AmeriCorps

As part of a discussion on some new national community service plan that’s been proposed in the US, Fred makes some salient comments on the “cost-effectiveness” and the purpose of short term mission trips :

The question he raises is often asked of church mission trips. A local church youth group raises money for a weeklong trip to, say, Haiti, where they will be helping to build a school. This works OK. The school gets built. But it may not be the most cost-effective approach. A significant chunk of the funds raised winds up going to the group’s travel expenses, all so a bunch of kids with little or no construction experience can travel thousands of miles to help out. If the goal is to get the school built, it would seem to make more sense to raise the money and let the folks down in Haiti use it to hire local skilled laborers — people who are already there, who know what they’re doing and who may desperately need the paycheck.

But the point of these mission trips is not only to get the school built. That’s part of it, but it’s not the only goal. The mission trip is also designed to give the American youth group a tangible, visceral stake in the fate of the Haitian community. This is vital for the people in Haiti too. The problem with the calculus above is that it presumes that the total level of contribution is a constant. That assumption is probably not true. It’s unlikely that the youth group, the church, or any other given community here would raise the same amount of money without the personal stake of the trip itself.

The purpose of the mission trip is not exclusively to change the Haitian community where the school is to be built. Part of the purpose of the trip is also to change the young Americans who are going there, and to change the community that sends them. Part of the reason for such trips is to nurture a sense of empathy, of solidarity, and an ethos of service — to create and maintain the capacity to care whether or not children in Haiti have a decent place to go to school, and to create and maintain the desire to help.

I’ve had this dialogue within myself previously relating to our Africa trips (only 10 more sleeps until we head back to Uganda - yay!) and have come to the same conclusions as Fred. It’s easy to look at the costs associated with making such a trip and say that the money would be better spent if it were simply sent over for the locals to use - and this argument is not without merit. I agree that the bulk of our assistance to third world communities should still be in money donated and sent over for their use. But this argument ignores the other benefits of such trips - for the individuals who go, the communities which send them, and the communities to which they go. For the individuals going it should be an eye and heart-opening experience that will leave them forever changed, hopefully awakening an ongoing desire to help the needy and the poor of this world. This is perhaps one of the biggest benefits of such trips.

But it also benefits the community from which the people are leaving, helping give them a wider focus and by having people within their midst who have been to these places and can give an account of what it is like there. It gives the project more longevity and makes it seem more real to those back home than simply sending money to some place you’ve only seen pictures of in a pamphlet. It’s much better when you know someone and can talk to someone who has been there. I’m sure that this has been a big factor in the ongoing success of our church’s ministries in Thailand. So many people have made a trip over there that you don’t have to look far around the church before you find someone who can give a personal story of what’s going on there. Many people have been once or twice, some have been many times, and all up it creates a real sense of personal involvement in the ministry over there, even for those of us who haven’t been. There is a real strong physical link between Warnbro and Thailand, much more tangible than just sending cheques over to some unseen unknown missionaries. And I think this directly impacts on the amount of money raised for missions. As Fred says above, “it’s unlikely that the youth group, the church, or any other given community here would raise the same amount of money without the personal stake of the trip itself.” I’m proud to say that our church family has recently pledged over $105,000 for the next financial year for missions abroad and at home (more than double our previous amounts) and I believe a big reason for this is the tangible, physical involvement of so many of our people in different projects. It’s great.

Also if you get the chance to meet other people who have gone on such trips, it plants the idea in your head and makes you think “well why can’t I?” I don’t think we would have ever considered doing something like this ourselves (although we’ve always liked the idea in principle) if it weren’t for the fact that we were in a church community full of people travelling constantly over to Thailand and other places to do their bit. And I hope that maybe some other people might be similarly touched by our trips to Africa to maybe embark on their own project. Not only church people but maybe other doctors and health professionals as well. In fact I’m being interviewed tomorrow for an advertorial to go in some of our major national medical magazines and I’m hoping I can swing it in that direction (even though the purpose of the interview is unrelated) - not to make myself look good, but maybe just plant a seed is some other doctors’ minds “now maybe I could go do something like that….” (kinda like this guy)

Thirdly, I believe there is possibly a further benefit to the overseas communities beside the physical help and aid. To put it simply it shows them that people care - that there are people from Australia or America or New Zealand or wherever, who care enough to travel all this way to help them and to show them love. More specifically in the case of Christian missions, it is the love of Jesus demonstrated physically and tangibly to them by the visit of a Western Christian. When we were in Uganda last year, there were so many people who said over and over “Thankyou so much for coming to us” - not one said “why didn’t you save the money you spent on airfares and send it over to us?” (cf John 12:4-5) More than just a missions or foreign aid donation, this is love up front, in the flesh. This is real.

Just got the latest album from Hillsong United this week and have been listening to it over the past few days. Every year Hillsong usually release two albums - one is their main big church live album which is recorded in front of a humungous Sydney crowd, and the other is a live album by their youth worship team, United. Now almost without fail I find that I prefer the United CD, and many of the best songs on the main Hillsong album are ones that were first done by United, and generally the United versions are better.

But this year, with All of the Above, United have done something a little different - they’ve done away with the crowd and recorded this in the studio. At first this seems a little odd, but the more I listen the more I feel that the album doesn’t suffer at all. In fact, being a studio album rather than a live one gives the songs a lot more space and musical texture. There are a few higher energy songs showing that United still know how to rock out, but overall the album is a lot slower and more reflective. Brooke Fraser features heavily in several of the best tracks, demonstrating again what a talented artist she is (her most recent solo album, Albertine, is excellent also.)

Lyrically too there is a bit more diversity in this album, although I haven’t sat down and had a good look at the lyrics. In addition to the the usual praise and worship songs and lyrics about a close personal connection with God, there seems to be a new emphasis on issues of justice and caring for others and the world. This seems to be a growing theme for Hillsong as a whole. Over the years they have copped a lot of flak (not entirely unwarranted) from the mainstream media and some Christians as being very materialistic and excessively focussed on money and prosperity preaching (for a humorous example which gives you the gist of how the media view Hillsong see the Chaser Team’s Hill$ong video on Youtube) Even if there has been some foundation to it, the vast majority of this criticism has been narrow and biased and ignores the great deal of good that Hillsong has done in terms of bringing people to faith, and impacting the church worldwide especially with their music. Some of the criticism can be down-right virulent and nasty, particularly that coming from cheesed off Christians who have built up a well of bitterness and hatred towards Hillsong - there are entire websites and discussion boards full of this kind of vitriol.

Anyway, whether intentionally or not, Hillsong seem to have moved away to a certain extent from this prosperity teaching and now have a huge emphasis on social justice and caring for others outside their church. As well as projects in their own city, they have extensive involvement with work in Africa and elsewhere and strongly encourage people in their church and others to get involved. Jennifer spent a few days last month at their Women’s conference in Sydney and social justice/caring for impoverished children/orphans was perhaps the biggest theme. But you won’t see all this positive stuff being reported in the media I’m sure! Overall it’s pleasing to see megachurches like Hillsong (and Perth’s Riverview) moving more in this direction. It’s something I certainly care about. I believe it has a very strong biblical mandate and should be a growing mission of the church worldwide. I can’t remember who, but someone once said that the only group big enough and motivated enough to actually make a difference in world poverty is the Church. And it’s good to see the big churches leading the way in this. Our church at Warnbro has been doing this stuff for years so it’s nice that others are catching up - lol.

But I digress - back to the album. All of the Above is an excellent, although different, album from Hillsong United. Although it doesn’t instantly hit you hard like their previous brilliant album United We Stand and my other all time favourite More than Life, I think this will prove to be the United album that I listen to most. It’s sonic textures, meaningful lyrics, and gentler tone really draw you in and immerse you in the heart of the music. Definitely a high water mark for United, and Hillsong music as a whole.

On a related topic, I noticed on my news feed this morning that the United team are touring North America at the moment, starting with a headline concert on Sunday night at the Gospel Music Association (GMA) Week in Nashville. Great to see them spreading their music to a wider audience than just Australia.

Last week we watched an incredible documentary about the refugee crisis in Northern Uganda. Invisible Children was a film made by 3 college age guys who planned to go and film the poverty in Southern Sudan, but wound up encountering the problems caused by the LRA in Gulu and surrounding districts in Uganda. Rebel fighting and abductions of the populace, especially children, have displaced millions from their homes, and have forced thousands of children to ‘commute’ into the towns every night and sleep there for their safety.

The film is slick, very youthful style filming and editing - almost like an episode of Survivor at times. It begins quite humorously as these 3 young guys ebmark on their big adventure, but it doesn’t take long before it gets very serious as we are confronted with some of the victims of this crisis. But then at the end (and in the abundance of DVD extras) it gets more positive as we are shown the work of the charity that these guys started on their return. Their Invisible Children charity is pitched squarely at high school and college aged American kids, giving them opportunities to help those less fortunate than them in Uganda. It’s a very upbeat, uplifting program. And they have an uber cool website too - Invisible Children

Ever since I first heard about the LRA and the problems in Gulu when I was in Uganda last year I’ve had a strong desire to visit there and help in some way. In fact we tried to get up there last year but there wasn’t enough time and it was deemed unsafe by our hosts. Watching this doco has inspired me more to want to help these people, victims of a tragedy that has been descibed by the UN as one of the worst, and most under-reported humanitarian crises in the world : “I cannot find any other part of the world that is having an emergency on the scale of Uganda, that is getting such little international attention.” (UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland) I don’t know if I will get the opportunity to get to northern Uganda when I visit there this year, but I really hope to do so at some point. In the meantime check out the Invisible Children website and watch their movie if you get the chance. Very moving.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned on the blog before our plans to return to Africa this year, but things have changed a bit anyway, so I’ll give you the latest.

Watoto are planning another Medical Team mission in October this year and our plan was for me to go on this, Jen and the boys to come over and meet me there half way through, and then to have a holiday afterwards. After being the sole doctor last time I had asked a few Christian doctors I know if they were interested in coming, plus we had a few other miscellaneous people express an interest in possibly joining us. Well for various reasons it has turned out that virtually everyone who has expressed an interest in coming has decided not to, which doesn’t bother me since I am more than happy to be travelling on my own (it’s probably a bit easier that way anyway). It also looks like there will be at least one other doctor on the trip (from Sydney) so that will make the medical mission that much more effective and share the load a bit. Two or three doctors plus a few nurses would be the ideal team make-up. So I’ll be travelling on my own to Uganda in October for 2 weeks to be involved with the medical team - once again the bulk of our work will be medical outreach clinics delivering primary care medicine to impoverished villagers.

Jennifer is planning to once again spend some time working in the Sanyu Babies home in Kampala, and hopefully to also help provide them with some supplies and resources. But what we’ve decided to do, for various reasons, is to switch this over to a separate trip, leaving in early July. Now the cost of taking our family to Uganda and back is not much cheaper than purchasing round-the-world tickets, so around the world we will go! Leaving at the start of the school holidays (to minimise Owen’s time away from school) we’ll be travelling first to Uganda via Johannesburg, where we will spend time in the babies home. From there we will go to London and then Manchester to visit Jennifer’s relatives including her grandfather (who is quite old and not in good health, another reason for going earlier..) From Manchester it’s off to New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Sydney and then home.

That’s the tentative plan. We’ll be seeing a travel agent in a week to look at booking all the flights, and I’m waiting to hear from the bank about a loan to pay for it all. Also I discovered when I saw my accountant last week that I have not one, but two massive tax bills due in the next 3 months, and I only have enough money to cover one of them. So we’ll probably have to borrow even more money to pay for that but I’m trusting that it will all work out. I’ll keep you posted on what’s happening with all the plans.

This week I have been reading a pair of books that complemented each other perfectly, both providing an enhanced picture of the current state of our planet, in contrast to our sheltered Western (or ‘Northern’) perspective. One is Ronald Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, a book which was first published in the 1970s and is now in it’s 5th edition. Sider gives a pointed challenge to Christians in rich nations - he details the incredible inequalities in our world in terms of wealth, food, education, health care and exposes the sin of Western Christians in not taking the biblical imperatives to redress this imbalance seriously. We could provide basic health care, education, and clean water to the developing world for less than the amount the rich of this world spend on golf each year! (p17) This powerful book is full of detailed statistics and scripture quotations, adding up to a shameful indictment of the rich churches and Christians in the developed world. We need to do much more - this needs to be the highest priority!

One thing that Sider’s book mentions is that a large proportion of those starving and dying are our fellow Christians. We are failing dismally at the Biblical command to care for our brothers and sisters in Christ. This principle is further illustrated by the other, and perhaps even more shocking, book I’ve just read - Philip Jenkin’s The Next Christendom : The Coming of Global Christanity. This book discusses the trends that are shaping the future of the church across the globe. To put it briefly, as our churches in the Western, EuroAmerican (or “northern”), world are in many ways dwindling and becoming stagnant, there is a massive upsurge in Christian belief in the “global south” of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. In fact on average today,

“the typical Christian is not a White fat cat in the United States or Western Europe, but rather a poor person, often unimaginably poor by Western standards…. The great majority of Southern Christians (and increasingly, of all Christians) really are the poor, the hungry, the persecuted, even the dehumanized.” (p216)

According to Jenkins (and once again he is backed up by an impressive array of statistics) Christians in the developing world already are beginning to outnumber those in the traditonally “Christian” countries of the West, and in the future African, Latin American, and Asian christians will far outnumber their European and American counterparts. In the future it may be the third world that is sending missionaries to Europe and America - indeed this is already beginning to happen. Jenkins details the unique characteristics of the Christian movements in these countries, which are often more biblically literal, morally conservative, and supernaturally oriented. This is what the true “emerging church” looks like worldwide, rather than the very different way the term is usually used. He explores potential conflicts with Islam, which is similarly expanding, often in the same places as Christianity. He also looks at the relationship between poverty and urbanization and church growth, remarking on the remarkable opportunities for Christians to not only spread the gospel, but also to lay the groundwork for vital social services in the megalopolises of the future, such as Lagos and Kampala :

 “The faith or denomination that builds there today is very likely to be profiting richly in a decade or two. Generally though, they are not doing this building, or not to anything like the degree we might expect. Why would anyone fail to respond to such obvious future trends” (p212)

This is one of the most fascinating and illuminating books I’ve read in a while. Jenkins presents a very convincing and detailed case, yet one which would be foreign to the majority of western Christians.

Reading the two books together is an eye opening experience. Exactly how we as rich Western Christians should respond to these things is not always clear, but we cannot afford to continue to ignore what is happening in the wider world. Christians should be at the forefront of global efforts to fight poverty, hunger, disease, injustice, and environmental degradation. And we in the Western church should be making an effort to connect with and help our brethren in the emerging “Southern churches,” lest we find ourselves to be a in minority, marginalized position in the future of world Christianity. On an individual level, we need to sit down and think and pray seriously about these issues, and the way in which God wants each one of us to respond….

and the next book I’m reading… Jesus Says Go! by missionary Robin Wells….

Subversive Influence » Doing Church the Warren Buffet Way

One of the overlooked pieces of news in the last week has been the teaming up of a couple of the world’s richest men in a massive philanthropic collaboration. Warren Buffet is donating over $30 billion of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help with health care in Africa and research. And Bill Gates is scaling back his commitments with Microsoft so he can devote more of his time to the charity. Between them, these two guys are spending more on charity than the foreign aid budgets of all bar six countries in the world! How awesome is that!

In the blog post link above, Brother Maynard discusses this story, and relates it to the work of the Kingdom which Jesus calls us to. I don’t know if these guys are Christians at all but it sure is a very Christian way to act. However, as usual, the religious right bring their negative condemnatory carping to the table, pouring cold water on a huge source of potential benefit to millions of people. I concur with Maynard’s critique of them. Read the article, and be inspired by Gates and Buffet, and consider how we might use our “fortunes” to similarly benefit others.