There are plenty of unpleasant things I see every day that to find my sanity, I now choose to look for anything good in what I see.
Recently I received a distress call. There was a patient who needed help. I drove and we picked him and delivered him to Kiruddu Hospital.
Going to any Ugandan hospital is enough to make you feel bad already. Not because we have bad medics but the sheer sight of the so many sick people, the lack, the understaffing, the financially struggling care-givers trying to do everything to find money to pay for treatment of their loved ones. It’s just too much to take in. It can get annoying.
This time though, I decided I wanted to see some good. As I was at Kiruddu, I noticed that on the 5th floor of the Hospital, there is a ward with a couple of people stuck on their beds- not for weeks, not months but for some years.
Yes! Someone stuck on bed for more than a year and they never leave the hospital. Most of these are people with a lung issues… who need constant oxygen to breathe. They can’t go home because they would die due to lack of oxgyen. So their lives are sustained on those oxgyen taps in the hospital.
I noticed that in the men’s ward, there is a lady who comes and cleans that place. She helps to clean the patients who can’t go off their beds. She cleans their clothes, literally bathed some of them, talks to them and follows up to ensure they have taken their modification.
Some of these people have been there for too long that their relatives stopped coming and so these patients rely on volunteers like this woman. The hospital has its cleaners and attendants but these patients largely rely on that extra hand from these outsiders.
I pleasantly learnt that this woman is not related to any of those patients. She is not paid to do it but she just had a conviction to help people in need. I was stunned.
Imagine someone washing the clothes, cleaning patients when they soil themselves and doing literally everything for these strangers. And she does so with a very high sense of duty and care.
In moments of sorrow, in times of difficulty, there is this ever present beauty about humans. In a world where we are becoming indifferent to each other… in a world where we debate whether to look or not, to hear or not to..: to do something or ignore, it’s always refreshing to see the ever present kindness of human beings.
Even when there is everything to make us sick, there is always that person, who decides that they will be a light… that they will show love… that they will fill the gap.
Today I want to celebrate every human who has decided that they will create hope where there is despair, love where there is indifference and compassion where there is no personal gain or adulation.
I think that it is these micro strands of love that feed the flame of hope in our hearts. I was very pleased to see this lady.
She joins another group of women I met at cancer institute. They were reading books for children battling with cancer. I was deeply moved. Made me know that we all have something to give. Even just a visit and saying hello means so much to someone.
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