My independence day….

Friday, July 4th, 2008. One of the first in a long line of holidays that will pass by without fanfair in Botswana. Simon actually asked me if I was missing “all the turkey and bits…” I laughed my ass off and could barely tell him that was Thanksgiving.
I’ve missed plenty f 4th of July’s before, I usually had to work, and so it’s a holiday I can remember usually watching the fireworks and festivities out of my rear view mirror. That being said I have also had many, many good years filled with fireworks and sparklers and magic. I’ve had my share. So it wasn’t odd to not have a big to do, and to have it be like any other day. I was at the clinic, and the day prior the supplies truck had come and delivered many, many boxes. Two of the nurses and I began the process of inventory, which in and of itself is a logistical nightmare in its current methodology (project one: identified). We inventoried everything from an outdated sheet, and I was able to truly see for the first time how little this clinic has in the way of drugs and supplies to offer its patients (a fact only made more clear on my trips to the mobile stops and health posts later the next week, but that’s another blog…). I was looking around the empty, dusty, spidery, dark (the generator that supplies power is off during the day) room in dismay.
Then Christmas happened. In July.

We began to unpack the boxes that were filling the hallway which I had failed to completely notice before. Female condoms and birth control pills and depo, oh my!!! It was an absolute smorgasbord of drugs!!! They received penicillin, and vaccinations and gloves, creams and ointments and bandages. They received 12 cases of condoms. I was so happy I was shouting with what can only cornily be described as glee as we unpacked medical miracle after medical miracle. All these drugs were going to finally be available to the people (and especially the women and children of Seronga-) to have the freedom of reproductive choices, and the freedom from easily avoidable illness.
After we emptied the boxes out, inventoried, cleaned and reorganized the entire supplies closet (during which, I noticed, the three people with me worked through their lunch breaks to finish) I walked out into the sunlight. I peeled a perfectly juicy orange (which miracle of miracles didn’t have big annoying seeds) and walked down near the fence that separates the clinic from the marsh and trees that becomes the delta. I closed my eyes, let the breeze cool my hot sweaty face, and listened to the sound of children splashing in the water.
The truck only comes every three months, and inevitably the supplies will run as low as they were before this day. There won’t be enough birth control pills and depo to last as the central medical supply has to ration these items throughout the country, and we will run out. The women will again have unplanned or unwanted pregnancies and the children will have wounds that the nurses gallantly improvise to cover. The condoms will run out and HIV will spread. The problem is not quite solved. Not by a long shot.

But for today, for one perfect day, we have all we need. It’s all we can ask for.