The Price of a Name

COVID-19 came to Australia like the visit of an unexpected and unknown relative. You hear things, you speculate, you don’t quite believe what you are hearing. And then suddenly here they are in all their glory, and you are wondering what hit you, how long they are staying and if you can get out of the house and avoid them for a while.

At first it was something happening in China, then other places, but it wouldn’t affect us, the great southland was too far away, and we had a big moat to protect us. But come it did, and we went from ‘happening over there to them’, to unbelievable images of people hoarding cartons of toilet roll, fighting for meat and vegetables and shops with empty shelves.

It seems a long way and a different world away from where I was last week in the community of Ibakwe, in the West Nile region, about as far north in Uganda as you can go before crossing into South Sudan. I was there to participate in the official hand over of a new maternity ward funded from a private sector donor. This was a huge deal for us and more importantly for the women of the communities nearby. Each month, in this health centre, Medical Teams provides a comprehensive maternal health service package to 500 women and, on any given day at least three to five babies are delivered.

Before this new ward was built many women had to travel on motorbike taxis (boda-bodas), by ambulance or on foot to the closest health centre to receive support, and if there was a complication the closest referral hospital was over 25 kilometers, on terribly rough, dirt roads away.

But now, expectant mums have access to basic maternal, obstetric, and newborn care close to home.

This facility is not just life changing,

it is life-saving.

On this day, as if it was planned, as the dignitaries met outside the building to honour the day with their words of wisdom and their calls to do more, a young woman listened in the ward. Her beautiful, healthy eighteen hour old daughter wrapped tightly in brightly coloured cloths lay next to her fast asleep and blissfully ignorant of the fanfare outside.

I met with mum and baby after the event, and I asked if her baby girl had a name. She told me that she had not chosen a name, “but”, she said, “if you give me a bar of soap, I’d like you to give her a name”.

Funding has reduced so much here in the Ugandan refugee response, that as of the 1st of July, UNHCR announced that they will not be purchasing or providing soap and (feminine) hygiene kits to refugees. The shelves are bare. This is not the only reduction in support to refugees, another significant reduction is in the food rations from the World Food Programme; most refugees, get only 40% of the normal package. That equates to a person receiving about USD 3.50 a month for food. (Makes a ration of only 1kg of meat per person sound like luxury.)

As I knelt next to the bed in the ward, looking dumbly at mum and baby I realised what she had said. Soap seems like such a cheap commodity. But for this mum, the valuable thing she wanted, the price of her baby’s name was a piece of soap to keep her baby clean and healthy.

She got her soap, no strings attached. And despite my protests that the deal was not required, she demanded that I give her baby a name. Alexis went home the next day with her mum, accompanied by members of the community singing and dancing to welcome her into their family.

(I pray that this little girl will grow up to make her mum as proud of her as I am of my daughter – Alexis.)