Tuesday 3rd
April
For those of you that don’t know, we’re
working in a mission hospital. This means that the founders were Christian
missionaries, and the institution has a religious character.
As a not-particularly-religious Jew,
this had worried me before I arrived. I was told that prayers were held every
morning before the start of clinic/ward rounds and that prayer and faith were a
large part of the institution. This hasn’t really been the case. All of my
concerns were unfounded. Prayer is usually private, and so we pray [aherm] in
our house before we come to work and religion is barely mentioned, and
certainly doesn’t seem to feature in medical practice. They seemed completely
unfazed that I’m a Jew and Danni isn’t “particularly religious” [although for
the first 2 days she reflexively told anyone who asked her any question about
anything, that she was baptized].
The health centre treats unmarried
pregnant women exactly the same as married women and abstinence is not the only
preventative measure suggested to the local population against HIV and other
sexually transmitted infections [hello, condoms]. After all the horror stories
I read in the UK about certain churches withholding funding to mission
hospitals in the developing world if they go against Christian teaching [read:
condoms are immoral and help increase the spread of HIV, don’t advocate their
use], it’s nice to see a more relaxed and realistic attitude to public health
here.
The best of all is that there seems to
be genuine harmony between different religions here [I can’t say I’ve seen many
Jews]. From what I can tell, the population that the health centre serves is
roughly 50:50 Muslim: Christian and also
our neighbours are about 50:50, too. It seems that the attitude is “as long as
you believe in God, it’s all good”. It’s a very refreshing attitude, but I
think I’ll keep my atheism to myself.
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