Returning from a trip to Uganda in 2012 with his parish priest, Bob Maher says he came back to Fluvanna County with a mission.
“We would go into people’s huts [in Uganda], he would introduce me to people, and they would say ‘welcome to my home,’” Maher said. “And I was just totally taken by them. The people are so nice you can’t help but love them.”
He also saw how desperate they were for basic healthcare. He told his fellow Knights of Columbus at Sts. Peter and Paul in Palmyra, “We have to build a clinic.”
With the support of the pastor at the time, Father Gerald Musuubire, the Knights founded St. Francis Health Center in the village of Kityakusa, near the equator in the central part of the country. The parish has now combined efforts with the Catholic Health Initiatives for Uganda (CHIU), a non-profit foundation managed by the current pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul, Father David Ssentamu.
‘You forge ahead’
Through mission trips, shipments of supplies and construction of basic utilities, CHIU is doing what it can to help rural Ugandans. Local dioceses provide some support, but Father David says the need is great.
“Sometimes it feels like what you are doing is not making a difference,” he said. “But when you go there and some of these patients say: ‘Oh, Father, thank you so much, you don’t know what this means to us,’ it encourages you to keep going. You forge ahead.”
Father David’s mission work to his native region began after getting a master’s degree from Boston College. He was assigned to a parish in Waltham, a Boston suburb, became a spiritual adviser to Ugandan Catholics in the area and a chaplain at the Lahey Clinic. Doctors and nurses there were making medical mission trips to Guatemala and Colombia. Wanting to do something similar for his home parish, he and others arranged a visit to St. Anthony Health Center in Mitala Maria.
Over five days in January 2012, the group saw over 800 patients. Malaria is the most common malady. Back in Boston, they started raising money to send medicines and medical equipment as well as provide reliable water and electricity. Power would go out so often, babies would have to be delivered by flashlight.
“Besides going to a camp for five days, we should have something which is going to be lasting, which is going to have an impact on the community we are serving,” said Father David. “So, that’s how we embarked on CHIU.”
The organization added a second clinic, St. Jean-Marie Muzeeyi/Buyoga Health Center in southern Uganda, rotating annual medical mission trips, educating local doctors and nurses in new techniques. At times, the medical teams would see about 1,000 patients in four days.
“It causes pain in me,” said Father David. “It causes pain in the doctors that have gone. I remember one doctor when he reached there, he got frozen. Seeing what we were seeing, he said: ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this.’ But even after saying that, he came back and continued doing it.”
After eight years in Boston, Father David joined the Diocese of Richmond, serving three years at St. Joseph, Woodlawn, before coming to Sts. Peter and Paul. “Here I saw in a parish where people are serving Ugandans a way of combining our efforts,” he said. “We brought these three health centers together and now we are supporting them closely.”
Financial, spiritual needs
Among the people who organize fundraising for CHIU is longtime parishioner Cynthia Aycock, who visited the St. Francis Health Center four years ago. A mission trip can cost $8,000-$10,000. A talent show last year brought in a good amount of money; however, a recent online auction was disappointing. The main effort next year is a charity golf tournament, scheduled for Sept. 9.
“We just take for granted our ability to go to the doctor, to go the pharmacy and get whatever medicine we need,” Aycock said. “In Uganda, mothers walk for miles to bring their babies to the clinic.”
Some of them, she recalled, kept pointing to her phone. She realized they wanted her to take their pictures. “They had never seen themselves holding their babies and they wanted to see that,” she said. “There was no way I could give them the pictures, but them just being able to see, even though their babies were sick, to be able to see them with their babies it almost brought tears to my eyes.”
Parish council member Doug Mullinex has been involved in the Uganda ministry for about eight years. “It’s nice to be helping three clinics instead of one,” he said. “The difficulty is that it takes a lot more money to support three than it does one.”
The University of Virginia medical system often donates medications it can’t use and medical equipment. The supplies are stored in Maher’s basement until there’s enough to fill a four cubic foot crate shipped by sea to Africa.
Mullinex says Uganda is a poor, but religious, country, with a devotion to faith and family that surpasses that of people in the U.S., in his view. An estimated 60% of the people are Christians and don’t mind showing it, he says. “All the Catholics have rosaries around their necks.”
“People look to the Church in ways that we don’t look to the Church here, for social services and things like that. That’s why the clinics are so important there, because a lot of places wouldn’t have any medical care without them,” he added.
Tending to the spiritual needs of the people who come to the clinics is also part of Father David’s work on his visits, including anointing the sick. “Whenever we are there, we pray with our patients,” he said. “We ask the parishioners to pray for us and they would have the devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.”
From time to time, Mullinex says he hears from people who question why so much money is being spent overseas. “Once you meet people, you realize they may be overseas but they’re still part of the same family,” he said. “It just highlights that, in a way that maybe we forget about when we’re sitting in the pews listening to the Gospel. It helps you to be a better Christian, helps you remember what Christ said to do.”
Editor’s note: To learn more about CHIU, visit https://www.chiu-us.org/. It is a 501(c)(3) corporation; all donations are tax deductible.