Humanitarian Mission Log: Vincenzo Campanile

Testimonianza del dottor Enzo Campanile

“Il pessimismo della ragione”

Commenting on my second missionary experience in Nigeria, the most edifying thing that has happened to me in my professional life, with two photos and a skimpy caption, at least in the lexicon: the optimism of the heart. Lola asked all of us participants in the mission to write a few lines to describe the sensations and tell some "nice" anecdote! I do not want to disappoint you, but I must warn you that the twenty lines – which include this introduction – cannot but fail to support the movements of my soul, which has always, even more so in this circumstance, been at the mercy of the force of contradiction.

So the title I have given to this short essay is: the pessimism of reason, arising from what has been reviewed and seen, and this time "heard", during my two week stay.

Pessimism materialises in the most disparate way:

from the nightmarish vicissitudes in which we were entangled in airport paperwork upon arrival, including the seizing of our luggage and ourselves in a room in the presence of energetic people that only the intervention of Sister Maria saved us;

after all the dialectical impetuosity of which Rosi is capable, had had no effect, to the atavistic lack of electricity, and that is nothing, we already knew about that, but the surprise of the lack of fuel to activate the electricity generator of the room dedicated to education, raised in me some doubts, reinforced moreover by Rosi, on the effectiveness of the management by the sisters of the economic resources for the activity of the hospital and beyond.

In short: they give you something, mostly "with the help of the Lord", as Salvatore Buonino kept repeating at every turn, and they take something away from you!

I'm not talking about the climatic conditions, which were also widely predicted, but I want to dedicate a special mention, also to introduce the anecdote announced, to the pangs of dehydration from which I feared to ...

It went well!

The "funny" anecdote, on the other hand, belongs to the sense of hearing: a gunshot in the middle of the night, a very short distance from the rooms where we, three of us, slept (so to speak). The terror that assailed us for the rest of the night and the following ones made Chiara and Rosi's arachnophobia, the phobia for insects in general, a good-natured joke.

But they were not all negative aspects praising sadness, there was the episode of the Jeep being towed down due to a broken gearbox. We really had a lot of laughs, didn't we Chiara?

I shall keep silent about the pollution of a country that they are burying under tons of plastic.

No, there are not only negative aspects: the group worked wonderfully, when there was serious work to be done (educational activities and the clinic) and in moments of leisure, especially at the table.

The hundreds of children on the streets of the village and those who have given warmth, colour and joyful voice to our afternoons, who lived nearby the Happy Home are what injected in me a faint vein of optimism and hope: despite the socio-political and hygienic-sanitary conditions, increasing year after year.

Good morning Doctor

I hope you have arrived

It is me Doctor Richard

Good morning Richard, We arrived safe last Sunday. How is the lady with anemia postpartum? Did she have a blood transfusion?

Good you are

No, she refused a blood transfusion

She demanded for discharge and l discharged her I think she will survive

I believe in miracles

What can sum up better than this brief exchange of messages with the young doctor of the hospital in Ngugo my wavering from the optimism of the heart to the pessimism of reason!

Enzo Campanile