Don't be silly mzungu

Like astronomical distances and geological timespans, poverty statistics cannot be reasonably comprehended. I can't grasp 328 million Africans living on less than US $1.25 a day with any more clarity than the 40 million miles to alpha centauri or

the 4.5 billion years it took the earth to form from molten magma. The decimal places confuse me. I lose my way among the zeros. The figure's are meaningless, numbers on a page. I just can't conceptualise them. They aren't real.

I struggle even to fathom the local life expectancy of 46 years. That Africa contains 24% of the worlds HIV/Tb and cancer burden and yet 3% of the global health workforce. Or that Uganda spends two thirds (47 million US of 75 million US) of it's developmental assistance to repay debt to the developed world.

But what I can understand is the patient in the bed in front of me. The family that walked 3 days to attend clinic. And the mother that must decide whether to allow her child to stay in hospital or to return to the field and beat millet lest the rest of the family starve.

The United Nation's measure feast or famine according to the Human Development Index. It's a system that combines life expectancy, maternal and child mortality, literacy, number of doctors per capita and average income to sort nations into developed, developing, and least-developed countries.

Norway tops the list followed by Australia. Niger holds the wooden spoon in 182^nd place. New Zealand weighs in at a healthy 20, just pipping the UK at 21. Uganda is relegated to 157^th, up 1 place from last year, but still losing to even Bangladesh, PNG, and Sudan.

The much bandied slogans that charity must begin at home, of New Zealand being a third world country and having much 'need' now seem like a bad-taste joke. New Zealand just doesn't have this kind of poverty.

Yet at times I seem the only one more than mildly alarmed.

The conversation at the guest house turns to it occasionally. Murmured contrasts with life in Britain or NZ. There's fleeting indignation of course. Awkward silences when the elephant in the room is recognised. But many of my fellow boarders have been to SE Asia or the Phillipines, and p

overty has a sensitising effect. Once you've seen it once, you've seen it all.

The doctors, too, are consumate professionals; here to diagnose and prognosis.

The student nurses are learning their trade. Studying textbooks religiously and quiz

zing the doctors on the finer points of physiology.

Am I the sole child declaring the emperor naked?

And the Ugandans? Well the Ugandans have their own lives to live. They have floors to sweep and crops to plant and bodas to race and parents to please and children to rear and dance moves to learn and football games to win and spouses to find. Life is for living and celebrating. They haven't the time or energy to bother with the nasty business of poverty. Do they even notice?

You'd think they'd have the decency to at least act appalled?

I am reviewing a child's notes while one of the student nurses interprets.

Any pain? Fever? Feeding well? Bowel and bladder working? Post-natal depression? The nurse looks confused at this last query

.

She doesn't understand. So I repeat myself. She still doesn't get it. Again, only slightly louder. I feign sadness and tears. She shakes her head quizzically. Don't be silly mzungu.

Eventually I find an old medical textbook and turn to the relevant pages. Her eyes are wide as she learns about this exotic, foreign disease.

Is there depression in Uganda? I suppose there must be. There must be Ugandan suicides too. But like the absent street names, unstated taxi fares and deleterious effects of destitution itself, it must be subliminal. Hidden. Lost somewhere between their 'very welcomes' and their cheshire cat smiles.

But the conditions and statistics themselves don't lie. They parade unashamedly from each village shack and each hospital death.

I have a constant knot in the pit of my stomach. At times I'm physically nauseous.

By rights I shouldn't be surprised. I've read books on aid and development, spoken with

missionaries, watched countless news reels, read many newspapers.

And I never once really doubted them. They always seemed true. But now I'm confronted with reality rather than truth. And, as Camus put it, the human mind cannot bear very much reality.

I find myself wondering what spiritual games and mental tricks

I'll have to invent for myself should I do this for any great length of time.