Ugandapanda

Dr. Edric Baker is the New Zealand hero you’ve probably never heard of. He was never knighted, despite possibly saving more lives than almost any New Zealander in the last 50 years. But thanks to Kate Day’s wonderful biography, you can be inspired and challenged by this humble titan. My recommendation couldn’t be stronger – especially if you’re interested in medical work or public health.

Edric inspires me in the same way as Kiwi legends such as Kate Sheppard and Mason Durie, except that he kept quiet and humble about his incredible achievements – that’s why you have probably never heard of him.

Gareth Morgan, high profile New Zealand multi-millionaire understood the importance of both Edric’s work and the man himself. Despite not being religious himself, he once exclaimed “Edrick Baker is New Zealand’s mother Theresa”. The Morgan Foundation’s philanthropy funded Kailakuri hospital when money was running out, and when Edric’s life was coming to an close in desperation Gareth penned an article to try and replace him. The intimidating title?

“Only Heroes Need Apply”  

In a nutshell, Edric set up two hospitals in Bangladesh which served hundreds of thousands of remote rural people sand saved thousands of their lives – on a shoestring budget. He achieved this through a range of unorthodox, outside the box innovations. The most incredible might be that he operated the hospital not primarily by hiring qualified staff, but by training local people to treat patients through strict guidelines and protocol. He was ahead of his time with this “task-shifting” innovation- the global revolution of community health workers only emerged years later. 

Another on-the-spot innovation was his remarkable decision to refill IV fluid bags during a cholera epidemic, when otherwise patents have died for lack of any other IV supplies. This account from Judy Walter (all quotes from the book).

“24 hours later I could see that not only were the homemade IV solutions helping save lives, but also patients who were being hydrated via muscle were coming out of shock and we could use their veins for IV hydration. I had never experienced anything like it before. It was against everything I ever learned in nurses training. The death rate was high, but the patients who walked away were nothing short of miraculous.”

And then during that same cholera epidemic, his unwavering commitment and almost absurd humility shone through:

“If I get cholera, treat me as just one of the pattients, nothing special like flying doctors… let me die here like the rest.”

Edric’s humble room, now a memorial

We live in an age bereft of heroes. Our hypercritical, fast moving culture rips people off their pedestals almost as fast as they are hoisted up. Even Greta Thunberg the climate change icon has recently receded from public view partly due to this hypercritical culture.

But we need heroes. Not to make us feel guilty at our own far-less-impressive lives, or even as some kind of ideal to fail to live up to, but to show us a glimpse of heaven breaking through to earth – to open our minds to what is possible, as a salve for the soul. To give us a fresh dose of hope, and perhaps even to inspire a fresh look at our own future, however humble it seems compared to heroes like Edric. 

Edric’s is artfully crafted by Kate, with her passion and depth of research jumping out of the pages. Kate also dedicates almost a whole chapter to Edric’s kinks and flaws – an important yet rare addition to hero narratives.

So read “Call me brother”. Be shocked, inspired and humbled. Your soul will thank you – only $9 on amazon or order a paperback here

All proceeds go to Kailakuri hospital Edric founded.

Aroha nui

We all complained to our driver “Why does it cost 20,000 shillings to reach the South Sudanese border – only 100km!”.

Our driver just laughed.

“Let me show you”. He grabbed a bunch of old bank notes out of his pocket and shoved them into the glovebox. As we made our way down the perfectly paved road to the South Sudanese border, a policeman soon stopped. The driver slowed, turned around and asked us passengers “How much should we give this one?”

He then grabbed a banknote, worth $1.30, and with nonchalence smiled at the police woman and handed her the money through the window. She was none too happy about this transparent corruption, especially after spying yours truly, the “mzungu” in the car. The normal Ugandan routine is for the driver to leave the vehicle and pay the corruption “road toll” with discretion.

After a couple of police stops we became excited, eager to see how the next officer would respond to our drivers brazen and transparent payment method. He made his point well, and after seeing how much money he had to waste on corruption, we all stopped complaining about the high ticket price.

All told he (or should I say we) paid 5 police stops $6.50 in bribes, about 20% of the total passenger fare. A hefty premium for the pleasure of using a World Bank built public road.

Corruption has been front and center of the news recently here in Uganda, as Mary Goretti the minister of Karamoja spent easter in jail after stealing 5000 corrugated iron roofing sheets intended for people in Karamoja – the poorest region of this poor country.

But corruption doesn’t just happen “Somewhere else” in poorer countries

It’s easy to forget in the sanitised west, just how much of a role corruption plays in running our world, not just dictator-led low income countries like Uganda. Yes its 2023, but corruption continues to work its power-wielding magic like we are in 1800s New York City. And these cases I’m about to share are only those that got caught, the tip of the iceburg.

In just the last month, there have been a shocking raft of corruption scandals which hit front page news spanning the globe – with no continent (bar perhaps Antarctica) clean. I hope you enjoy the less-than-fully-serious corruption romp around the world.

Europe
Perhaps it shouldn’t have shocked me that a whole group of MPs at the highest level of European parliament were straight up taking cash for favours from Qatar, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and who knows who else. Eva Kaili, formerly a darling of the EU parliament was found with bags and a briefcase of cash totalling close to 1 MILLION DOLLARS. You couldn’t make it up.

The sacks of cash clearly worked their magic, as Kaili proceeded to describe Qatar as a “frontrunner in labour rights” in an EU parliament speech.

Accurate in a way – I suppose they paid her pretty well.

Australasia (New Zealand, specifically)
New Zealand consistently ranks in the top 3 least corrupt countries in the world on Transperancy International’s index, but we are far from squeaky clean, corruption still finds a way.

One of our cabinet ministers was busted leaking sensitive information from confidential cabinet meetings to his business buddies who donated money to his campaign. Perhaps he was helping them them pay even less tax than the pathetic 9% the pay right now. I shouldn’t have been surprised he didn’t get locked up for this. Steal a loaf of bread and you might go to prison. Illegally leak information to your donors from a position of great power and you don’t even lose your job (he’s still in parliament). Who says white collar crime doesn’t pay?

England
Ok so its not technically its own continent, but it did vote to leave the EU so here goes.

MP Scott Benton was busted by a reporter led sting offering privileged information to help a gambling firm make more money. He offered “the direct ear of a minister who is actually going to make these decisions” and a copy of a gambling white paper 2 days before publications.

He agreed to take 2000 to 4000 pounds in cash for a couple of days work illegally fighting for the cause of gambling companies. What a great public servant!

And yet again, the guy kept his job, outrageous stuff.

Americas
Judge Clarent Thomas, of the U.S.A high court has previously waxed lyrical about his love of simple things. He once said “I prefer Walmart parking lots to the beaches”. Oh how I wish that was true.

In reality, for over 20 years he has enjoyed multiple all expenses paid vacations at a Republican donor billionaire’s mansion and private island resorts, worth perhaps millions of dollars.

AND this same billionaire donated money to a political group founded by his wife, which paid her a salary of $120,000 a year

AND this same billionaire paid his grandnephew’s school fees to a private military academy.

I’m sure this never played on his mind in any mega-rich friendly court decisions.

But I shouldn’t only focus on just Thomas when it comes to Supreme court corruption. The rot goes deep. One judge’s wife took 10 million dollars in commission from elite law firms, even while one of those firms argued a case before her husband. Democratic judge Stephen Breyer also took a staggering 225 trips subsidised by rich families and business moguls over 14 years.

That’s 17 trips a year on average – when did the guy find time to work?

Charity and NGOs
OK so Charity and NGOs aren’t a “continent”, but I can’t resist….

The biggest charity corruption feeder is Government to Government Aid. The covid response was a great example. The West poured money into the pockets of rich government officials under the banner of covid charity. Considering only what was reported from the recipient countries themselves, an eye watering 1.78 billion dollars of Covid aid was reported stolen from African countries. Who can say how high the actual figure was?

Kenya – 541 million dollars stolen. Cameroon- 333 million stolen. Enough money to vaccinate their whole populations for covid 5x over.

But corruption in charity reaches beyond government to government aid. World Vision has been rocked by multiple scandals, including the head of their Gaza operation being convicted in an Israeli court of passing 50 million dollars to terrorists and allegations of nepotism in a 2.5 million dollar printing contract in Australia.

Even with our best efforts, all NGOs will suffer from corruption. No-one is immune, even in rare cases at OneDay Health our nurses have stolen money from their own facilities. The most transparent NGOs will acknowledge corruption as ever-present reality in their organisation and do their best to minimise the rot. My favourite example is GiveDirectly, who publicly acknowledge the inevitable corruption within their organisation.

“$241,633 was lost to fraud this year — that’s about what we expect… Every major nonprofit experiences losses from external fraud, but few rigorously investigate and safeguard against it; fewer still openly report on it. We believe in being transparent with these details and sharing the process that prevents and investigates these losses. “

Brilliant!

I’ll share one more mind blowing story. Late last year, a Ugandan Army general got into a serious land conflict with residents, about land he had bought for 30 million US dollars

Yes you heard me correctly, 30 million US dollars.

Forget the paltry 1 million dollars handed over in the EU scandal, somehow an army general in one of the poorest countries on earth got hold of a fortune which he didn’t even care about hiding. He was even happy to brazenly buy land with the money!

Even earning even the highest possible army salary in Uganda he’d have to work for about 500 years to amass that much cash. But of course he didn’t need that long, only a few years as head of the ironically funded “Operation wealth creation” – a Ugandan government project apparently supposed to support the poor with agricuture.

Well the operation certainly created wealth for someone…

Is Corruption getting worse?
Although there are many doomsayers, over the last 50 years progress has been made on many important development indicators. Road networks, Girls’ education, childhood mortality, childhood vaccination, cellphone coverage and nutrition have all greatly improved worldwide especially in the poorest regions of the world.

After previous improvements however, progress on corruption seems to have stalled. Both Transparency International’s “Corruption Perceptions Index” and The World Bank’s “Control of Corruption World Governance Indicator” have been relatively static over the last 10-20 years.

Its not really getting worse, but it ain’t getting better either.

If we had the taste of power and the opportunity to dip our hands in the golden bowl would we be any different? Would we pluck the forbidden fruit? Are we more righteous or do we just not have access to illicit cash?

I’m sure I would do better. But I would say that, wouldn’t I.

Tessa, my wife scoffed. “I bet I can tell the difference between AI generated art and human art. Get me a mix of both and let’s see. So I made her a mix of 7 human and 7 AI created images and put her to the test. I would have had zero clue which was which!

Did a human or AI create this art? Take the Quiz to find out!

There’s a good chance you’ve experimented by with the Chat GPT3 chatbot or DALL-E image creation. After much AI hype the last few years, it’s finally got real in the last few months. After 30 minutes chatting with chat GPT I got some chills down my spine, and the chatbot has passed exams from law, business and medical school, as well as helping hackers write malware.

AI art might seem less important, but millions of artists are under threat and an entire industry stands to be disrupted.

AI challenges the traditional concept of what constitutes art and who can be considered an artist. While AI algorithms generate visually stunning images, there is debate over whether they are truly creative or if credit should go to the human programmer. Also, AI art raises questions about authenticity, originality, and the value of AI-generated works. Some argue that AI art is a valuable addition to the art world, pushing the boundaries of what is possible and highlighting the role of technology in contemporary culture. Others believe it is a threat to traditional artistic practices and devalues the efforts of human artists.

And yes this is a cheap shot, but the last paragraph was written by chat GPT, not yours truly.

Anyway Here’s the link to the quiz. If you give it a go I’ll message you to tell you whether you defeated my wife or not ;). If you are brave enough Post your score in the comments!

The soccer world cup in Qatar is already sullied, perhaps even blighted. Unlike every previous edition I can remember, most of the pre-tournament hype has been negative. Qatar is rightly under fire on three fronts. First, their poor and even deadly treatment of migrant workers who built the stadiums. Second their poor record on LGBTQ+ rights, and of course the obvious –  their reliance on oil. Almost everything you see in the desert in Qatar – the skyscrapers, the highways, the stadiums was built through sellin’ that black gold.

So many have called for a complete boycott on the tournament. Many bars in Germany are not screening the games. Celebrities like Rob Stewart and Shakira refused to perform in Qatar. Cities like Paris have refused up fan zones for the first time, even while their soccer team is owned by Qatari royalty. Most of us will join the Parisian style hypocrisy by moaning to our friends and complaining on social media, while watching the games anyway.

So why shouldn’t we boycott the world cup?

Because we are complicit in the same atrocities on display in Qatar. We are part of that same blight on humanity. The nation of Qatar is not an aberration, but a reflection of the dark side of our murky lives and the shady dealings of our world’s governments. Instead of a fairly meaningless boycott, we should use this world cup to examine our own hypocrisy and change our ways.

We Treat workers Poorly too

For years our lives in the Global North have rested on worker exploitation and mistreatment, similar or worse than that going on in Qatar. Much of the west’s current wealth was built on a history of slavery and indentured labour. Although conditions and wages have improved in sweatshops and factories, much of what we consume remains far from exploitation-free. Right now some of the cotton in our shirts might well come from Uyghur forced labour, part of China’s ethnic cleansing program. Our clothes factories in countries like Bangladesh still have terrible working conditions. Food in many Western countries is made cheaper through migrant laborers who work long hours for lower than minimum wage outside of labour laws. High profile examples include the Sicilian Olive oil industry and a huge chunk of America’s food industry.

Our everyday lives still rely on our fellow humans working for a pittance in poor conditions. How then do we have any right to be incensed about the Saudi Worker situation?

We don’t take minority rights seriously

Us “morally upright” westerners love criticizing other countries about their human rights records, while both forgetting our own recent history and our implicit support of many minority-oppressing countries. I’m going to single out two minority rights abuses which I am personally complicit in. The Chinese genocide of Uyghur Muslims, and the funding of the LGBTQ oppressing Ugandan government.

When people ask me how New Zealand makes money, I often flippantly reply “We sell milk to China”, which carries more than a grain of truth. Our “kind” leader Jacinda just met with the Dictatorial leader of our biggest trading partner, President Xi. Did she meaningfully address the abuses of a million Uyghur Muslims who have been locked up in “re-education” camps, subject to mass sterilization and forced to work in cotton fields? Did she make ending the Uyghur genocide, what could be the biggest human rights violation of our generation a bottom line for trade with China? Of course not. I’m a New Zealand citizen and very aware of my own complicity. My roads, schools and healthcare were funded by cozying up and selling milk to a regime that knows how to oppress minorities of all kinds, just like Qatar.

Two “kind” leaders getting on great?

Western countries also give millions of dollars in military and police aid to oppressive governments like Uganda where I live, where like Qatar being LGBTQ+ is not only illegal but can lead to imprisonment and police harassment. America has funded Uganda’s military and police to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, some of which used to oppress minorities – not only LGBTQ+ communities but immigrants and political dissidents. Why are we all of a sudden incensed by a country’s LGBTQ+ policy while our taxes fund the militaries of so many other countries whose records are just as bad?

We sup that oil. We are Qatar.

Confession: Earlier this year I paid the Qatari Royal family thousands of dollars and spewed out about 6 tones of CO2 directly into the atmosphere flying from Uganda to New Zealand and back flying Qatar Airways.

We (in the west) are the reason that Qatar in its current form even exists. Our thirst for oil fueled Qatar’s meteoric rise from their humble desert roots, to today’s rich metropolis which is able to host a football World Cup. Our cars and planes built those skyscrapers. Our lifestyles paid for those migrant workers to build those stadiums. We sup Qatari oil without a second thought, and now we are the indignant ones? In one sense we are Qatar. We built that country, we constructed those stadiums. Qatar’s oil runs through our veins.

As a side note, we are not only hypocritical but inconsistent. COP 27 was just held in Egypt, another non-democratic country which spent the last 8 years violently suppressing anyone that dared challenge their autocratic military rule. Amnesty international wants governments to impose sanctions on Egypt and stop supplying them with arms. But no-one boycotted COP 27

Better to change than Boycott

So I will watch the world cup, with moments of sombre and heavy reflection on all the ways I am complicit in this whole mess, and I’ll consider how I can make change for the better.

The Qatar World Cup is a poignant opportunity to reflect on how we are complicit in all the things we are complaining about in Qatar. Let’s reflect on our own hypocrisy, pressure our governments to do better (Go Phoebe, my sister in law!), and change our own lives – Buy less, fly less, eat less meat. That might contribute more than a boycott towards a better world which refuses to tolerate human rights atrocities, and doesn’t sup the Qatari oil.

Although we are yet to clock 3 months since the start of this epidemic, this 10^th biggest Ebola outbreak ever has been full of twists, turns and strange tales. I penned this summary to help any regular Joe or Jill better understand to tell the outbreak. I tell a story, not trying to cover every detail. I’ve used three sections to tell the tale and have split each into three points, which I’m told is the way us humans like our information.

We start with Three epidemic Phases – how the epidemic has progressed. Key moments describes 3 key turning points, critical in shaping the epidemic to date. We then explore Three Upcoming Questions about the near future, before a final reflection.

Three epidemic Phases

Mubende steady spread – 1 month

The first month was defined by slow, steady spread in the epicenter of Mubende. Cases trickled in at only 2 new cases on average a day with almost all cases connected to known contacts. Luck was on our side with only a handful of cases spreading outside of the Mubende/Kassanda region. This was despite many stories of contacts escaping the district against government advice – some who even had Ebola. But Ebola never found a foothold in the 3 other districts where it briefly spread. For a time it seemed the outbreak might just begin and end in Mubende/Kassanda, but we were not to be so lucky.

Kassanda and Kampala clusters – 1 week

Just as it seemed we might have escaped the danger of a nationwide outbreak, two large clusters of cases emerged that threatened a national scale disaster. One large cluster emerged in Kassanda, the exact cause of which remains unclear. One possible cause was a body exhumed from the grave after a medical burial, which Dr. Geoffry Bire the assistant minister of health stated led to 23 Ebola cases in Kassanda.

The Kampala cluster however was the bigger worry as the city is highly populated, tightly packed and the gateway to the rest of the country for people, goods and diseases.

These two clusters led to as many new cases in just a week then we had seen in the previous month, and triggered the harsh Mubende / Kassanda lockdown, a huge U-turn from the government after they had “ruled out” lockdowns just a week earlier.

After these clusters emerged, the country held its collective breath as we wondered whether the outbreak really was under control as the government claimed? The Doctor’s association asked for a brutal Kampala lockdown, while many called for schools to be closed. The WHO rated the epidemic at having “very high” chance of national spread.

But in a remarkable turn of events, these two clusters haven’t produce the cascade of cases and exponential spread into a fully fledged epidemic that many expected – quite the opposite. We have seen an unexpected lull in new cases.

• Unexpected Lull: – 1 week

For the last week, we have only seen 5 cases. Hundreds of contacts from the Kassanda and Kampala clusters produced only a handful of cases, and only a few other cases appeared outside these clusters. If the Mubende epicenter has cooled, and Kassanda and Kampala clusters have been contained then there’s a chance we could be in the beginning of the end of the epidemic, and there even remains a small chance for the epidemic to be officially over by the end of the year.

Key moments

1. Late Identification of First Case: The previous 5 ebola outbreaks in Kampala were over almost before they started – for one key reason. Patient zero, the first case was quickly identified, contacts were traced and the disease wasn’t able to spread beyond a handful of cases. This outbreak however was detected far too late.

Patient zero was never identified and around 30 people caught ebola, half of who died before Ebola was even suspected. The first case tested positive perhaps a month after our mystery patient zero first caught the disease. This allowed Ebola at least a couple of cycles of unchecked spread in the community and outbreak wasn’t immediately snuffed out.

• Mubende and Kassanda Lockdown

The government re-iterated their clear position continually during the first month of the epidemic. President Museveni said “No need for a lockdown, Ebola is easy to fight”. The health minister repeated many times “there will be no lockdown”.

But probably for the better, they changed their mind and on the 15^th of October president Museveni announced a harsh 3 week lockdown in the 2 affected districts which allowed no public transport, evening to morning curfew and heavy army presence. We will never know for sure, but this lockdown could well have helped slow Ebola spread and contributed to the current unexpected lull.

• Kampala Death and Spread.

Everyone feared Ebola spreading within Kampala – and for good reason. As the only jam-packed, bustling city in Uganda, Kampala may be the only place in Uganda where Ebola has a realistic chance of exponentially spreading and becoming an uncontrolled public health problem.

And the worst case scenario happened. A man travelled while sick with ebola from Mubende to Kampala, stopping at 4 health centers and a traditional healer on the way. While on his deathbed in a huge Kampala hospital he lied about his identity to medical staff while his wife and brother who had been caring for him disappeared into the Kampala ether and couldn’t be traced. Until a few days after he died when his wife turned up to deliver her baby in a health center, sick with Ebola… Through a potentially country-saving stroke of luck or genius, some brilliant human (they deserve to be knighted) figured out the man might have had ebola, his blood was tested and his body intercepted on the way home. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Through this saga he spread Ebola to 7 people, with one of those spreading Ebola to 7 people and another spreading it to yet 4 more (see diagram below). Other contacts already under observation then caught Ebola. Fortunately, we haven’t seen spread outside of known contacts and based on the best information we have, we’re breathing a sigh of relief that the Kampala cluster might not lead to catastrophe.

Big upcoming questions

1. Is it really under control? The unexpected lull in the last with hardly any new cases has been an amazing development, and brings a huge sigh of relief, but we don’t yet know if this is the beginning of the end. Concerning cases continue to emerge, like this one in Masaka which appears not to be connected to a contact. Further clusters could still emerge out of sight of contact tracers.

• When will Vaccine trials start? At least 3 vaccines are ready for final stage testing, at least one of which will probably work. We have been told for weeks vaccine trials may start “in a week or two” but they haven’t yet started. If the outbreak is on the way out, could the arrival of vaccines even be “Too late” and they won’t even get tested properly?

• Will restrictions end? We are getting mixed messages on restrictions. The ministry of health called for early closure of schools, even as the epidemic is in a lull. Mubende/Kassanda restrictions are due to be lifted soon, and we’ll see whether they will really be lifted. As we saw during covid, lockdowns cause enormous suffering and can we really justify ongoing restrictions with so few new cases at the moment?
  

Final reflection – This strain of Ebola doesn’t spread easily.  

There have been so many missed cases, escaped sick people and other opportunities for Ebola to spread widely that never led to new clusters of spread. Here are just a few examples. Early in the epidemic a group of contacts including two positive cases escaped from Mubende isolation, some moving as far as Tanzania on public transport and never spread the disease. A medical student with Ebola broke isolation rules and travelled many hours to his home village with no consequences. A woman in Mityana’s mother AND baby died before anyone thought to test for Ebola, and yet again there was no spread outside the family. A small but significant number of cases haven’t been traced to any known case, meaning that Ebola must have spread on a small scale and fizzled out without public health officials ever knowing.

With this in mind, and after seeing so many “lucky misses”,  it seems that this strain of Ebola isn’t highly infectious like covid, influenza or measles and may even be less infectious than other Ebola strains. This strain of Ebola doesn’t spread easily. Given what we have seen so far in this outbreak, it’s hard to imagine Ebola ever spreading beyond a few cases in country with a strong health system with high trust in government institutions. Despite late recognition of the outbreak, slow public communication about new cases, low public trust of government and numerous incidents where infectious patients had many community contacts, this outbreak hasn’t spread widely or got out of control.

This is good news for low income countries like Uganda that have functional health systems but can’t yet mount slick, tightly controlled public health responses to outbreaks. With help from exeperinced international partners, reasonable contact tracing and vaccines, perhaps Ebola as a public health issue is starting to seem somewhat less scary than after the horrendous 2014 West African outbreak.

But it’s far from over yet. Even though this strain doesn’t spread easily, a national public health disaster may still be possible if more mistakes are made and we are unlucky. Keep following our ebola updates every day or two on our St. Philips facebook page here.

https://www.facebook.com/stphilipshealthcenter

Stay safe Uganda

“While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper,  a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked.  “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me.

The poor will always be with you…”

These words are so profound I can’t do them justice, but here goes!

The disciples’ perspective “Why this waste?”

It should both empower and chill us to the bone that much of the money we spend on ourselves would be better spent by someone less well off. This makes intuitive sense. One extra dollar won’t even buy us a coffee and we barely notice if one extra dollar enters our bank account. But imagine if you only earn one dollar a day. That extra dollar buys the pen and book which allows your child to go back to school. So much value, relief and joy from just one dollar! This utilitarian thinking is behind that effective but oh-so-cringe fundraising technique…

“For the cost of just one coffee a day, you could feed/clothe/educate/save/empower….”

Experience, the disciples and science tell us that once we achieve a middle class income, every extra dollar we spend only increases our happiness by a tiny amount. As a 10 year old I was overwhelmed with joy when I bought an ice cream with my pocket money. I remember the euphoria of buying a watch with my first paycheck from a summer job. This dwarfs the negligible serotonin hit I get these days every time I buy a new Ferrari…

So if we have this remarkable power to love others with our money more effectively than we can love ourselves, perhaps the best thing to do is to give away every dollar we earn over a certain amount. The extra money will hardly help our happiness, but imagine what it could do for someone else? If we earn 70,000 dollars a year, how can we justify keeping more than say $50,000 when that extra 20,000 dollars could transform the life of someone less fortunate? Whenever we spend excess money on relatively frivolous things, the disciples’ cry of “why this waste?” rings in our ears.

Mary shocks the disciples when she pours out a half litre of high-end nard perfume on his feet. Imagine the cost of a half litre of Chanel no. 5. How would you react when it was poured out in front of you It’s hard to argue with the disciples’ logic “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

But Jesus immediately replies “

“Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me.”

Jesus sees her loving heart heart. What was a flagrant (fragrant?) waste of money was also an instinctive, selfless act to honour someone who had turned her life around. If someone had pulled you out of poverty and an abusive life controlled by men would you not have done the same?

Jesus knows that we are compassionate human beings, and there are moments where will lavish our resources on things that don’t make utilitarian sense. Maybe this isn’t the most logical or strictly ‘best’ thing to do, but it’s deeply human and hey, we aren’t perfect. But straight after affirming Mary’s lavish love, Jesus challenge goes deeper than we could ever expect.

“The poor will always be with you”

This is where the rubber hits the road. At first reading Jesus might seem flippant, dismissing the plight of the poor, but only because (unlike the disciples) we don’t know what he’s quoting. This is a direct quote from an 3000 year old Deuteronomy passage, which calls for the kind of radical economic justice that would shock even a modern day left wing politician.

“The poor will always be with you. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”

In Deuteronomy 13, God commands that his people should cancel ALL debts every seven years (what???), and they should lend people “whatever they need” even in the year before the debts are forgiven. After 6 years of service, richer Israelites should not only release any servants working for them, but send them off with animals, crops and wine to kick-start their new life. This economic agenda is so radical and so far ahead of its time it’s no wonder the israelites did a pretty bad job of actually implementing it.

Through invoking this passage Jesus goes deeper and takes us beyond simple argument about whether a lavish act of perfume  pouring makes logical sense. What matters is not whether this particular pot of perfume was wasted on a lavish act of love. What matters is that we devote our entire lives to economic justice. His point is that the poor will always be with us so poorer people will always be needing our love and help.

Serving others is a long game.  Become a person of generosity and love is not primarily about criticising others who might be wasteful, or virtue signalling on social media or voting for what we see as ‘progressive’ political parties, but about living whole lives of integrity and love. Lives bent towards those who are struggling and marginalised. Not just today, but tomorrow, and tomorrow next.

Jesus challenge “the poor will always be with you” is an invitation to follow him into a deeper journey, beyond from the hustle and bustle of trying to “make it”, the distraction of social media, and the polarisation of modern politics. A journey which will cost us much, but give us so much more. Are we willing?

And its’ no surprise that this whole thing happened while Jesus was visiting Simon, a man with leprosy, a crippling disease full of social and religious stigma.