Hospital visit

Here I am again back at Mulago Hospital. The building itself is very large. No one seems able to tell me how many rooms or patients. People are everywhere, laying on the floors,walking in the halls and of course many in beds and stretchers. We met with the COME team (Christian Outreach Mission Evangelism ) They work tirelessly 6 days a week trying to meet the needs of those who have no family, no food, actually no support of any kind. There was a woman seated in the office who was there desperate for help. She was holding a newborn. Her employer would not take her back with her child and she had run from her village when she was pregnant as she thought they may try to kill her. She was now wanting to go to her auntie who was her only living relative. She had no money and no way to get any. The overwhelming needs press on you. Where do you go when there is no where to go?
Suffering surrounds you here. We went today to visit 5 patients in ICU. It was much better than I thought it was going to be. The patients seemed cared for by the staff. As we went from bed to bed we got their names from the charts on the over bed tables. No one was able to talk with us, each person lay semi unconscious or had a tube in their throat. We prayed for each by name. There is no more that I can do. I always leave feeling sad and overwhelmed at all of the needs and then somewhere along the way home I got a little feisty. A policeman stopped me. My friends here have been waiting for this to happen. It's inevitable when you are white! I can't even begin to re tell the conversation its all so bizarre. I asked him to give me a ticket (aka receipt) That's the way you get them to leave you alone. They dont like giving tickets because that's more work. Finally he said he wouldn't give me a receipt and asked me if that was okay. I told him I appreciated it very much. I had done nothing wrong. Sometimes they just want you to pay them a bribe. I had a Ugandan lady in the front seat next to me. After we drove away she commented on how terrible that was. Just another day on the roads in Kampala :-)