Volunteer Reflection: Connor Kuipers – Uganda I, 2022

The Return to Africa:
Reflections on the Mission to Uganda by Connor Kuipers

“Gifts from the poor” is a phrase commonly used on any mission with Mission to Heal (M2H) because it holds a special meaning for those who know and support the organization. More often than not, the volunteers going into the trip who believed they would be a sort of “gift” for those they were planning on serving ended up receiving more gifts than they gave. These gifts come in many forms including live chickens and freshly caught fish in the OR, the preparing of a meal, cleaning the bloody drapes and instruments, and simply providing a friendly and reassuring face. While we are the ones with certain skills and knowledge suited to improve the health of those furthest from care, we are meeting “the poor” in their homes where they have a level of comfort. While the mobile surgical units bring a level of “Western comfort” that would not be found within one hundred square miles, we would be truly lost without our actual needs met if not for the gifts of these people.

I think this concept of the essential aspect of our new neighbors of the moving unit perfectly fits into the trainer-supporter model held as the central model of M2H. It is difficult to find individuals who are ready and willing to take on a surgical burden when they often have plenty of a burden before we introduce that service. I have seen this firsthand on both of my missions. I propose that one of the key aspects to allowing a new local trainee to prosper is to instill a support system. This would be the same local system so willing to support and love the “foreign” team when we are present. While the need for surgical care of course has always been present in these areas the mobile surgical units were made to reach, the care itself has never been available previously. Even in the hospitals at district centers in Uganda, “free” health care is provided in which the patient must raise money for all the surgical supplies needed for the surgery. If you are wondering if this is the case for emergency surgeries or only elective surgeries, the answer is: there really are only emergency surgeries available! The debilitating hernia impeding participation in the workforce and therefore access to any money will not be repaired until it becomes incarcerated and an emergency. And at that point you will still be running across the street to the pharmacy to buy gloves and gauze. It is the beauty of complete government control where once can tout the term “free healthcare” while having almost constant supply chain issues and well-paid local government officials hosting meetings to talk about the changes that need to be made.

This is the point when the people are forced to come together as a community to take care of themselves. In the case of my short-lived home in the village of Gogonyo, Uganda, the people did just that. They were already used to growing their own food and raising their own animals so that they rarely are without food. They provide all types of medical care out of a small health center that is mostly equipped to help birthing mothers. Family supports family, neighbors support neighbors. In providing surgical exposure and training to one of the primary health care providers in the area, we were working towards the possibility of the people of that area getting surgical care that they previously did not have.

This is no easy task of course. While attempting to treat as many of the crowd as possible you need to balance speed with education. Frustration from the people waiting days for the surgical care they felt had been promised and even frustration from the trainees whose difficult jobs just became more difficult. This is the beauty of the mobile surgical unit model. An appropriate amount of investment can be made in different locations that ask for the help and partnership of M2H. We are prepared to fail and not find anyone up to the task of providing surgical services going forward, but we move forward for the opportunities to find that person. Even with “failure,” there is success because of the multitude of patients that were served in the span of the mission.

Being a part of this mission, my first with the mobile surgical units, truly brought me to the “furthest people.” While discomfort, sickness, and many other roadblocks stood in the way of our mission, the people we were there to serve were the ones who made it possible. They were the true “gift givers” at the end of the day. Outside of working very hard to accomplish our mission, I had the opportunity to grow in the face of discomfort by the side of a few amazing people. The other members of the team were my lifeline, and I would dare say the friendships I made on this trying journey made it worth it all by themselves. On top of it all, getting to see the patriarch himself back in action after the pandemic hiatus doing the thing every ounce of his body yearns to do was inspiring to say the least. A man who has made a decades-long career out of continuing to move forward in the face of any and all obstacles, of which the Third World provides a countless number of. The lesson of being comfortable with momentary justifiable frustration, or even outrage, as long as you are willing to wake up the next day and go on your very real or metaphorical “equatorial sunrise run” to do it all over again is one that I will not soon forget. My itch for serving those furthest from care will never be completely relieved after what I have learned both now in Uganda and previously in Ghana. It has shaped the doctor I hope to become and has taught me more than I ever could have hoped about the importance of community and trust in the practice of medicine.