Africa & Medicine - The Constant Gardener

On Labor Day I went to The Constant Gardener (starring Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes) with some friends. Although the movie is set mostly in Kenya, of course I could see lots of relation to Uganda, hence a reason to post about it here. Although I'll try to avoid giving away too much, be warned that there are some movie spoilers to follow...

Basically, the plot of TCG is that big drug companies are testing a treatment for TB on Kenyans; unfortunately, the treatment has some major flaws that the drug companies don't want to admit to, so they're pretending the deaths from the treatment never happened. Rachel Weisz begins uncovering this deception, which the drug companies don't like much. It doesn't sound particularly exciting, but this is one of the best thrillers I've seen in a while (although in a not very shoot-'em-up way).

The premise of the movie - that some greedy pharmaceutical companies are purposely testing an unready drug on unsuspecting Africans - is pretty disturbing. It's not just testing new medicines on people, though. What if one of the common malaria treatments they use at the clinic in Karamoja, for instance, wasn't the real thing, but someone just made a copy of the box and substituted other pills? You could make a lot of money doing that. It's a really scary thought; but thankfully, this hasn't happened (as far as I know). They *do* have very effective drugs for treating malaria, and they are the real thing!

My favorite scene in the movie (there were a lot I liked) was very un-thrillerish: a pregnant Rachel Weisz walking through a market in Nairobi, talking to a group of kids. The conversation went like this: KIDS: "How are you?"
RW: "I am fine, how are you?"
KIDS: (laughing) "How are you?"
RW: (enjoying it completely, too) "Fine, how are you?", etc.

Kids everywhere in Uganda seem to do that - if you're driving through a village, there's usually some kids along the road who wave and shout, "Mzungu! How are you?" In Karamoja, though, they tend to ask you in Karamojong. Kids: "Amanda, Ejoka?" Me: "Ejoknooi!" Kids: "Ejoka?" ,etc. Too much fun, completely. :)

One other thing, which ties in to the movie sort of. Have you heard U2's song "Miracle Drug"? The bridge at one point says...

Beneath the noise
Below the din
I hear a voice
It’s whispering
In science and in medicine
“I was a stranger
You took me in”

It's a really good reason to pray for and support good medical research. Millions of people die yearly from diseases like malaria, which every 20 years or so develops resistant strains to treatment, and which scientists still haven't found a vaccine for - although they're working on it! How can you love Christ in loving his sick and dying children? Comforting and caring for them, of course, but there's also the person in the lab trying again and again, experiment after experiment, to create a medicine that will save many lives. Thank God that there are people with skills to do that!