First, Not Always Better Than Last

It doesn’t take particularly good vision to see the undertaker’s gravedigger busily excavating a place for the American newspaper business in the graveyard of history next to the plots occupied by the payphone, the VCR, and the 8-track player.  Modern technological advances assure that change is the only thing constant in this world.  At least in most of this world.

Unfortunately, Uganda has proven quite resistant to “modern technological advances” in many ways.  For example, shortages of financial resources and training have prevented almost all Ugandan courts from having any form of contemporaneous recording of court proceedings.  The trial “transcript” consists solely of the judge’s handwritten summaries of the witnesses’ testimony.  The only not-so-modern-technological-advance in recent years came when one courthouse in America donated a small handful of cassette-tape recorders that are being used by a few judges in one division.

Because relatively few Ugandans have access to the internet, much less a smartphone with web access, Ugandans depend almost entirely on daily newspapers for their news.  And most Ugandans (at least the portion of the population that is literate) read the paper every day.  Monkey see, monkey do.  Trying to blend in, I, the monkey, have undertaken to read the paper every day here.  But this actually means reading two papers because there are two competing daily newspapers here, and one really needs to read both in order to get the whole picture.

The New Vision is the official government newspaper.  It is not simply pro-government, it is government.  The second is the Daily Monitor.  This paper is privately owned and produced and doesn’t pull many punches.  About half of the stories each day overlap as both seek to keep the readers informed of current events, but the editorials and investigative journalism stories are quite different.

Earlier this week, both papers ran similar stories about Uganda’s #1 world ranking.  Usually, it is good to be ranked number #1 in the world.  In fact, I posted previously about Uganda’s recent ranking as the #1 tourist destination in the world.  But in the World Health Organization’s recent ranking, (as in the kingdom of heaven), being last (rather than first) would have been much preferred.  Uganda’s 478 annual cases of malaria per 1,000 people place it at the very top of this world list.  While this doesn’t necessarily mean that exactly 47.8% of Ugandans contract malaria each year (some may get it more than once), it does mean that something just short of half of Ugandans do get it each year.  A few more alarming statistics: malaria is responsible for 40% of all visits to the doctor, 25% of all hospitalizations, and 14% of all hospital deaths in Uganda.  Somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 Ugandan children die from malaria each year.

As most people who are reading this know, malaria is a parasite that is spread by mosquitos from person to another when they bite.  But only one certain type of mosquito (Anopheles) carries malaria, and that type of mosquito is active mostly at night.

This is why the Gates Foundation and many other charitable organizations have invested so much in mosquito nets under which people can sleep to avoid getting bitten.  This is also why the Gash family sleeps under mosquito nets.  The parasites enter the blood stream, travel to the liver, then reproduce and infect the red blood cells.

Malaria is a treatable disease when it is diagnosed and medications are administered within the first few days of the symptoms appearing.  Among the symptoms are anemia, bloody stools (yikes), chills, coma, convulsion, fever, vomiting, etc.  The disease manifests itself about 10-14 days after the bite.  If left untreated, the victims can look forward to brain infections, kidney failure, liver failure, respiratory failure, and ultimately a meeting with the Maker.  If properly treated with large doses of anti-malarials, the victim can feel better within two or three days.  While malaria has been basically eradicated in the United States, there are a still a number of people traveling to the United States each year who die from malaria because doctors assume that the patient simply has the flu.

Malaria can largely be avoided by taking regular small doses of anti-malarials in advance of contracting the parasite.  The Gashes are taking the daily kind (Doxycycline), which is an anti-biotic that is often used in the United States to help control acne in teenagers – a nice side benefit that makes me positively glow.  While taking Doxy for six months is pushing the recommended time limits because of the slight risk of liver damage from prolonged use, we are determined as a family not to add to the already world-leading cases of malaria in Uganda.

On brighter note, my computer has almost entirely completed its Lazarus-type resurrection and for that I am quite thankful to Pepperdine’s IT folks.  I also had a productive week of meetings and look forward to an even more full calendar this next week.  More on the specific juvenile justice work as things unfold.

The most exciting news of the week, however, is that our Twin Family arrived safely on Friday night and is now living in the apartment directly below us.