Our beloved leader has many times spoken of how on close examination, we are the donors. In the eloquence we’ve grown to expect, even demand, from him, he’s many times said that in exporting raw, unprocessed goods and eventually buying them back at a higher price, we are, and have been, funding several nations for a while now. I think in an effort to step up this benevolence of ours (because how can we be anything but benevolent yet we have a strong, visionary, generous leader), we exported a few medics to the Caribbean. We are sending 263 health professionals for work in Trinidad and Tobago.
If you aren’t informed, you’ll immediately think that, like Dr. Hilderman, these medics are going into the music industry (because who makes greater music than people from the Caribbean? A day there and you’ll have a hit album out. Jah man!). They’ll trade the stethoscope for a microphone, grow some dreadlocks and then find some vegetables to get them energized enough to perform before the thronging crowds that they’ll undoubtedly draw on their return. They’ll still cure people, but the healing they’ll bring will now be through music. Jah!
If you are in the dark, you’ll also think that Uganda has too many medical professionals. You’ll think that we had so many, some had taken to riding boda bodas from lack of work as medics. You’ll believe that chances are very high that that person serving you drinks at the bar is a doctor.
If you are uninformed, you’ll grumble about their destination. Trinidad and Tobago? Really? They could offer our medics better conditions? Really?
The truth is even in our time of dire need, when hospitals lack not just medicine but personnel, when mothers give birth, unattended, on hospital floors, when people die from being ‘operated’ on by askaris stepping in to fill a gap, when the few doctors we have must do 20-hour work days juggling their private and government work to keep gnawing poverty at bay, when sick people have to walk for miles to the nearest health center, that even in all this, we chose, as benevolent people, to give. Precious lives in the Caribbean need to be saved, how come the uninformed can’t see that?
It gets even more interesting – after completing their two-year service in the Caribbean, we’ll send another contingent of medics to replace them – a cycle the ministry of foreign affairs promises will continue for as long as there is demand in Trinidad and Tobago. Our generosity knows no bounds.