The value chain of life - birth, prayer, tea, coffins

Today I drove past a referral hospital and noticed something I had probably seen before, but had never really stopped to think about.

Right outside the hospital gate was a police station.

A few steps away, there was a small shop selling baby clothes, dolls, flowers, and those soft things people buy when a baby is born, or when they are visiting someone and want to carry something to cheer them up.

Next to it were several stands selling coffins of all sizes, and wreaths.

A little further on were food stalls, drinks, tea, snacks, chapati, water, all arranged for people who were waiting for news, medicine, visiting hours, discharge, doctors, waiting for life to begin or to hear whether a life will continue.

Across the road were ambulances parked beside breakdown trucks, hearse services, and funeral service offices.

Right there and then, it felt as though an entire philosophy of existence had been arranged along one stretch of road in Kampala.

It got me thinking... a hospital does not stand alone. All around it, a hospital gathers and creates an economy built around the fact that human life is fragile, unpredictable, and always moving between arrival and departure.

Where people are born, someone sells baby blankets. Where people are admitted, someone sells food to relatives who will sit through the night on plastic chairs or mats on the floor.  When accidents happen, ambulances wait. Where there is uncertainty, police stations are ready to serve because crisis brings with it paperwork, reports, conflict, stamps, etc. And where death is possible, coffins aren't far.

Nearby looking natural amongst all this stood a church. Why? Because when human beings run out of explanation, a church remains nearby, and also medicine does not remove the need for prayer. 

Nothing on that road felt accidental.

It was almost as if the road itself was built to understand and hold the thought that life is not one event, but is a chain of several events. One moment creates demand for the next. Birth opens one kind of commerce. Illness opens another. Recovery has its own economy. Grief too has suppliers, transport, flowers, fabric,  tents, chairs, and other logistics

As I drove along Mulago road, it was interesting to see life through infrastructure. We often speak of life in emotional language, and rightly so, because life is deeply emotional. But on that road, life looked operational.

A child is born, and somewhere nearby someone is already selling what is required. A patient deteriorates, and another part of the system prepares.

A family receives good news, another receives bad news, and outside the same gate, both may stop at neighbouring shops, one buys flowers and balloons, another asks for coffin prices, both transactions happening within meters of each other.

It felt unsettling at first, almost harsh, until I realised that this is how honest life gets. I realised that a hospital and surrounding areas are the few places where life is what it is, because in most places we separate these things. We keep beginnings away from endings and package joy and grief in different corners of the mind. But here they sit next to each other and it has always been an ecosystem - an entire value chain.

From where my feet are, I noticed that everything has always lived together and that one road explained more about the life than a hundred speeches ever could.