How do you define "friend" ?

(Saturday 15 November)

The last 36 hours or so, I’ve been kicked by a stomach bug…a pretty nasty one at that…I won’t get into many details but I kind of have to in order to get to the point of the story…Let’s just say it’s been comin’ out both ends…and in a place where your bathroom is a pit latrine, this is far from a pleasant experience. When woken up at 3am this morning with relatively violent symptoms, I was kneeling over my trash basket lined with a plastic bag, praying for some relief. Pat happened to be awake after taking the girls to the bathroom, she heard me and came to see if I needed anything. “How do you do this, when it’s coming out both ends and you don’t have a toilet?” I asked pitifully. She explained the options, of which there were only 2 – both of which I had thought of already but was hoping the veteran Bundi resident would have had another I hadn’t yet thought of…not so much. But, here’s where she threw out the zinger, totally nonchalantly, “Here, I’ll go out to the cho with you” as she went to find her shoes and torch. “Okay” I answered quietly but readily. So, I picked up my plastic bag out of the trash basket and slowly made my way out the back door. The moon was particularly bright so I didn’t particularly need the headlamp I had in hand to find my way, but it was good to have some sort of light once inside the cho. Pat kindly sat in the doorway as I squatted and waited, and squatted and waited and squatted and waited…we chatted about the dog, about the moon, about palm and coconut trees, about the ridiculousness of the situation, and who knows what else, it was 4:30 in the morning. It was at 4:30 in the morning that I also found the reason for the miniature bwamba chair that sits in the corner of the cho…I had gone almost 10 months without knowing the purpose of that chair and if it were up to me I could have gone the whole two years, but God thought otherwise. After a long time (could very well have been an hour), I told Pat to feel free to go back inside and get some sleep. Finally she did. I continued my squatting and waiting…somehow in the chill of the morning as I waited in the chair I found myself dozing off with my head against the wall…Finally the violence subsided and I felt safe and comfortable enough going back to bed. It was 6 am.

Now, I think maybe we each have measures by which we measure our friendships…the things that signify genuine friendship to me might be very different from those that make up your list. And I think the things that make each of our lists change depending on the circumstances of our lives, the particular challenges we might face. Never in a million years, before my arrival here in Uganda, would I have thought to put “middle of the night accompaniment to the pit latrine” on my list of measures of a genuine friendship…but let me tell you, here in Bundibugyo nothing speaks love louder than someone willing to sit with you in the pit latrine in the middle of the night while you ride out the symptoms of a violent stomach virus! Pat acted like it was nothing, but sitting in the cho by myself in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere in Africa sounds like just about the loneliest place on earth, so needless to say I was very thankful.

I'd also like to add that my FRIENDS at St. Louis Children's Hospital pulled through from afar with the 1L graduated plastic SLCH water mug with the stretchy straw and crystal light packets...I've been dutifully sipping away like a good patient should, changing out the crystal light flavor every time just for variety :) How many times have I leaned over a patient's bed trying to convince them that despite their nausea and vomitting they need to KEEP DRINKING?! Sheesh, it's harder than it looks y'all! So much easier said than done! (And by the way, "friend" on a general medicine floor at a children's hospital in the States is defined by things like willingness to help change the linens on a bed of a 9 yr old boy getting go-lytely through an NG tube, or getting up from their computer charting at 18:55 to get just one more piece of extension tubing while you stand gowned/masked/gloved in the doorway of a negative pressure room, or hanging a flush in a room where the family is driving you absolutely up the wall!...a bit different from the pit latrine in the middle of Africa, but demonstrations of care nonetheless! Thanks girls!)