|
As a nurse working a circuit of Uganda’s Ssese Islands, Kathleen Burns has seen more than her fair share of death.
Three hours south of Entebbe lies an archipelago of both impenetrable jungle and densely populated slums. The beauty of the wilderness—replete with extravagantly-coloured birds, crocodiles and twisting tropical forest—contrasts sharply against village waterfronts saturated by rotting fish and plastic water bottles.According to UNICEF, between 80 and 90 per cent of Ssese islanders are HIV+.
I meet Burns and take an hour-long taxi to a small community where islanders come to the mainland for treatment. The overwhelming sickness? "AIDS," she says.
According to UNICEF, between 80 and 90 per cent of Ssese islanders are HIV+. Fishermen are notoriously promiscuous, and three out of four women make their living as prostitutes.
“Medical work must be one of the hardest ministries,” says Burns with her gentle Scottish lilt.
“Death is ever-present.”
***
We’ve arrived at what looks like a crumbling ghost town, except for all the people. Shops lining the road look abandoned, but for the bright yellows, blues and reds of cell time and Coca-Cola advertising.
Burns reminds Angela when
to take her medicine. Forgetting
can be deadly.
We walk along a dirt path to a one-story brick building where Kathleen greets four patients. One is ten-year old Angela; several days ago she was the only one of her three siblings to test HIV+. Since her mother has only recently developed AIDS, Kathleen says Angela was likely raped by a family member.
Another patient named Eliphaz hobbles into the room. He’s thin and frail— much younger-looking than his 36-years, but walking like a man twice his age.
“Each of us will die will die whether we have AIDS or not,” says Kathleen to Eliphaz.
“I don’t want you to do what most fisherman are doing—,” she chides, “—deliberately infecting somebody. As a Christian you need to abstain until you’re married.”
Kathleen adds that if he’s unwilling to change his lifestyle, he’d better use a condom.
*** "They say we each have a guardian angel," says Burns, crossing a chaotic street to visit her day's patients. "I must have been given a battalion!"
Over the last two years, Burns has teamed up with John Mayombwe, a Ugandan health worker who recently celebrated his 15th anniversary with AIDS, and nearly succumbed before submitting to antiretroviral treatment.
John Mayombwe
Together they have helped save the lives of thousands of patients, and together they have watched many pass into eternity.
Burns says it isn’t death that bothers her so much. It is unnecessary dying that drains and depresses her; a child dying of malaria or diarrhoea; a young women dying of AIDS without ever being tested or treated.
Throughout the day I've been curious as to whether constant death and suffering have left her numb or calloused to others' grief. But I’m a little surprised by the frustration and tears that oftentimes penetrate a raw expression. I ask how she feels about the job."I am absolutely loving it,” she says with an equally raw smile.
"I am absolutely loving it,” she says, with an equally raw smile. I’m reminded of something she said a couple hours earlier.
“God doesn’t do what’s good for us,” she had said. “He does what’s best.”
|
