OBUSINGE

“That which encapsulates the whole of life.”

 

In Pat's life there was a key moment of discovery that transformed her attitude to her work and ministry. She had been in Boga DRC for some time. She wrote:

 

 

It was late one evening when a little boy called Kisembo was brought into hospital with severe kwashiorkor (an acute protein-calorie deficiency). He was two and a half years old and I had frequently seen him in the Pre-school clinics where children are weighed, parents taught and immunisations are given. But, as I reflected on recent clinics, I had not seen Kisembo for a while. His mother explained that a few months ago she had started to attend ante-natal clinic, and it was too much to come with Kisembo. Then she had had her second child, and was bringing him, rather than Kisembo, to the pre-school clinic.

 

The following morning, when I walked into the hospital, the mother, Machosi, was sitting with Kisembo in her arms, weeping quietly. He had just died. As she carried his little body out of the hospital, I walked with her with a mixture of hurt pride and compassion. Hurt pride because I had failed, yet again, to save a child with preventable malnutrition, and compassion, because I could feel the pain of a caring mother.

 

“Why didn’t you come to the hospital when Kisembo was first ill?” I asked.

“He was not ill!” was the reply. “He had lost his peace”.

 

I felt Machosi’s wisdom and felt she was offering me a key to unlock the local understanding of health and healing.

 

Later that day I went to Kisembo’s funeral because I wanted to begin to use the key that this mother had offered me. I made friends with the family, and asked Chief Kisembo what the mother had meant, in saying that he had died of a 'lack of peace'. He did not know, but he, with Kabarole and myself began an eighteen month research on what ‘health, healing, wholeness, death and disability’ meant to this culture.

 

From this experience I learned a Hema word which has come to mean so much to me: "Obusinge – that which encapsulates the whole of life". Machosi was saying that Kisembo had lost his Obusinge, his peace and wholeness. He did not die because of malnutrition or illness.

 

From Kisembo’s death, I learned to turn to the wise people of communities before depending on my books, or medical knowledge and experience. If Kisembo had died from a lack of peace, then health care would need to include social, spiritual, pastoral and medical support. Kisembo’s death pushed me into researching the local meaning of health and health care and eventually changed my professional life.

 

Pat was trained as a nurse in the traditional Western way, where there is, even now, little emphasis on how mind, body and spirit are all united and one part can’t be understood or treated in isolation from another. When a person is ill, they are more than just that illness- they are a person embedded within a culture and a society, part of a network of family, social and work relationships. Their body maybe suffering but it should not be considered in isolation from the personal context and wider culture in which they live.

 

Through her experience with Kisembo, Pat came to recognise that while it is possible to heal a body with sophisticated medicines there can’t be true well-being if the other parts of a person are not considered. She realised that in order to care for people’s total health she needed to do more than administer the right medicine- she needed to understand their full context and their wider needs as far as possible.

 

From this time on, Pat started to listen hard to the context of other people’s lives and cultures, seeking to fully understand what they were thinking and feeling. She no longer wanted to see any condition in isolation but consider the person and their needs as a whole... and only in this way would obusinge, well being at a deep level which encapsulates the whole of life, be possible.

 

Her example was Jesus who, 'came and dwelt amongst us'. Jesus stepped out of his comfort zone and entered our world. This became a big theme for Pat, not just in Congo. When she started her ministry in Upton, she was just the same. Seeking to understand how a community and culture worked, she spoke to those in local government, shopkeepers, people on the street, health care workers, the police.. . everyone. She constantly explored how people thought and lived so that she could build bridges to share the love of God. To enable as many people as possible to experience ‘obusinge’ became her mission in life, wherever she was living and working.

 

Pat has inspired many people to think about life in all its fullness through the way she lived her life and practised her faith. Perhaps she can inspire you now, as you read this page and think about your own life and those of people you live or work with.

 

In 2008 Pat preached a sermon on Elisha and Naaman. Naaman was the man with a leprous skin condition in 2 Kings Chapter 5. Pat recalls an example of treating a boy with a skin condition in Congo. In the sermon two strong themes emerge that are characteristic of Pat. Firstly her humility- the power to heal belongs to God not herself. Secondly, how she listens and learns from people in order to deliver her medicine... obusinge.

 

 

"I studied with the African Traditional healers in Congo, not to learn their medicine, but to learn their approach to the community because they seemed more popular than I was, so I thought I'd better correct my attitude to the community. So I sat with them for days, they were great, I did enjoy them, but I didn't learn their medicine! I changed my techniques. I changed the way I approached people. I changed the way I welcomed people into the surgery and all sorts of things like that.

 

A little while later, I had been away for a few months and gone back, a woman came and almost bowed down to me, and she said "You are the great one, you are the only one who can heal my son's problem."

 

It was a skin condition, but it was only scabies. Scabies is dead easy to heal, the thing that had changed was my approach to the woman, nothing to do with the healing. She was still getting the same medicine anyway.

 

I think it is a big temptation in any job- you might be a financier, you might be a brilliant house person looking after a family- there are many things that we can be tempted to be proud about, and people can say "Wow, you are the one who is always winning on the cake stall", or "You're the one who is getting the most clients". It's so easy to be comforted and to feel that we can take all the praise and claim the power which is God's.