Thoughts on despair and loss of hope

 

Greetings friends,

Perhaps many of you will not read past the title this week…who needs more despair in their life…I certainly don’t, and I bet you don’t either.  Nonetheless, it’s a theme that I have become aware of this first week here at Tenwek.  Just a little background for perspective… when we arrived here about a week ago, a national doctors strike and nurses strike was just ending…it had apparently been going on for about a month prior to our arrival.  The back story is that one of the national Kenyan physicians, about 25 yrs or age, had not been paid for 4-5 months prior to coming down with COVID 19.  He became very ill, and ultimately died at one of the large national hospitals.  The hospital (with Kenyan government backing) decided to charge the doctor’s family his entire hospital bill, despite not having paid him his salary for many months prior.  This apparently was the final straw… a national doctor’s strike followed over pay concerns, inadequate facilities, and inadequate PPE (personal protective equipment). Since Tenwek Hospital is a private, faith-based facility, and the medical staff and nurses are not paid by the Kenyan government, it was one of the few facilities in the country still open for business.  Consequently, Tenwek had been severely stressed with an influx of patients above and beyond their norm.  For example, the OB service would sometimes have more than one laboring patient in a single bed (2-3 patients per bed at times depending on the need).  The medical service has had all ICU and HDU (critical care) beds full, and an additional 6-10 critical patients backed up in casualty (the emergency department) waiting for a bed to become available (which either means someone dies and the bed becomes empty, or someone improves and can be moved out to the floor…sadly, the former occurs almost as often as the latter).  In addition to the unusually heavy patient load, there has been a relative paucity of short term volunteers since the onset of the pandemic.  We have been some of the earliest “returnees” this past year, and as expected many of the long term staff appear to be experiencing various levels of “burnout”.  I expected to see this among the long term staff, but was not expecting to see an overall increase in apparent despair among the patient population?  After all, their individual situations are already quite dire for the most part, so I did not think that there would be much distress about the pandemic.  I expected that they would perceive this as just another potential infection to avoid…and not even a particularly scary one compared with HIV, TB, Bacterial meningitis, etc (which are much more common and more deadly).  But something IS different among the patients this year…it was even brought to my attention by the long term attending medical staff.  They reported seeing many more suicide attempts than in past years (usually by way of ingesting a poison of various types).  The patients around Tenwek are mostly farmers and have livestock, and as a result have access to many pesticides and herbicides.  A common poisoning might consist of an organophosphate (an herbicide) or triatix (an anti- tick medication for their farm animals), or some home- brew alcohol… most times, some combination of the above.  If they survive the poisoning attempt, we would then typically question them about what brought them to the point of wanting to end their lives.  Invariably, their answer has been some sort of conflict within their interpersonal relations with family or loved ones or inability to work.  So why the increase this year?  Similar to what we are seeing in the U.S. this past year, the Kenyans have also been masking, attempting to socially distance themselves from others, avoiding large gatherings like worship services.  We walked by the Thursday night worship service up at the hospital chapel last evening and noted less than half the usual attendance compared with previous visits. As in the US, the holiday times are also particularly bad for depression, despair, and suicide attempts.  In addition to the above, I see signs that some of most steadfast long term missionaries are suffering as well.  For example, the chief of my medical service who has been in Kenya for many years recently posted a long essay on Facebook about his disillusionment with the “goodness” of America – particularly from the Vietnam era forward.  This is very out of character from what I know of him.  He has always been a very upbeat, spiritual person…. very trusting in the goodness and sovereignty of God, and yet he seems to be feeling some sense of hopeless despair at the state of our nation, and the diminishing “goodness” among our leaders and our people.  Marilyn and I have also been discussing the despair and sense of hopelessness that we feel about our nation and our citizenry.  We have been progressively concerned that many of our fellow citizens feel the same …a sense that all civility and decency are disappearing; a concern that justice and fairness are no longer goals of too many Americans; a sense that our leaders and our political parties will do anything to accomplish their goals regardless of the harm that it does to the nation.  I personally no longer trust our political parties, or our news media.  I find that I am likewise losing faith in our courts and justice system.  I no longer trust my fellow man to pursue, or even to desire to know objective truth or justice if it does not serve their own purpose.  I even find myself questioning some medical science and research, since everything seems to have become politicized…we are beginning to see reports of some medical research being falsified and corrupted by apparently preconceived desires for certain outcomes.  I know from talking with Kenyans that many of them are also distrustful of their corrupt leaders and institutions.  Perhaps what we are witnessing both here in Kenya, and also at home in the U.S. are the very real and harmful effects of isolation, fractured relationships with friends and loved ones, a sense of distrust and betrayal by our institutions, our media, and our fellow man… and a progressive distancing of ourselves from God.  After all who is truly “good” (Mark 10:18  “And Jesus said to him, “why do you call me good?  No one is good except God alone.”)?  How did we get here?  How do we get out of this?  How do we regain trust that has been broken or lost?  How do we avoid despair in the face of all this?  Unfortunately, I think the answer is that we don’t “get out of this” in this lifetime…we live in a fallen, broken world with fallen broken people and institutions.  If our trust is in these things, we are bound to be disappointed and hurt.  Our only hope is to place our faith in the One who IS good… “…God alone”.  And yet in the midst of all that there is to be sad about, every now and then we catch a glimpse of a spark of light in the darkness.  On Wednesday of this week I was asked to give a talk to the medical students for their noon luncheon.  In preparation for this, I attempted to charge up my laptop the night before…as I plugged in my charging cable, there was a sudden spark and a burning smell which spelled doom for my efforts.  Facing the possibility that I might not have enough battery power to complete my talk, I went into what I thought was the IT office at the hospital, hoping that they might have a spare cable for an Apple computer.  What I actually did, was walk into the finance department and begin to tell my sad tale to the office worker there.  He listened politely, and then informed me I was in the wrong office.  Instead of sending me on my way, he offered to take my charger and “ask around” to see what could be done.  He promised to call me back that evening.  Needless to say I was skeptical that I would hear from him again, and even less skeptical that there would be any “asking around”.  To my amazement, he called me back at about 7:30 PM to tell me that he had located a receptionist in the Eye clinic, who had such a cable, and would be willing to loan it to me!...who would have believed that a random individual in the “wrong department” would go out of his way to help me with my inconsequential problem.  Additionally, who would be willing to trust a random stranger with a critical piece of such equipment – Winnie, the Eye clinic receptionist, informed me that she would need her charging cable back for her own use the next day…she had an upcoming test that she needed to access by computer!  What a world we live in… what “goodness” we still encounter in the strangest places!  Perhaps that’s the answer to our human condition: take personal action and responsibility where we can; be kind in the smallest of encounters; be honest with others; help where you can; keep your promises; trust in God and His goodness.  I find that small encounters like this keep me encouraged in spite of all that is wrong with our fallen world...what about you?

 

Psalm 42:5  “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?  Hope in God: for I shall again praise him, my salvation.”

Romans 15: 13  “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power or the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”