THE NEWYORKER, APRIL 13, 2020 61toy monkey. “Toko toko toko!” A l o n y o
chanted, bouncing the monkey on the
edge of a cot where a dazed baby named
Trevor sat under mosquito netting.
Trevor, who had a fluff of reddish hair,
a sign of edematous malnutrition, re-
mained impassive.
“He had severe, severe malaria,” Al-
onyo said. All five of the babies parked
on cots in that room had some kind of
complication: malnutrition devastates
the immune system, and makes chil-
dren more vulnerable to diarrhea, pneu-
monia, and malaria. According to
UNICEF, four out of ten children under
the age of five die of malnutrition in
Uganda, and one out of three children
that age is stunted. “There are many
factors,” Alonyo said. “It can be the death
of the mother, or the death of the fa-
ther, who is the breadwinner. And then
it can also be polygamy—very many
wives, very many children, no taking of
responsibility. It’s also lack of land: most
of it has been occupied by sugarcane, so
they have very little land for farming,
and the food that they get they put into
selling it off, as they need to get also
some other commodities. And then there
is ignorance.” Some people simply have
never heard of malnutrition: their chil-
dren get sick, and they have no idea why.
In the next room, a baby named Hope
sobbed inconsolably as a young nurse
tried to find a vein for an I.V. “Sorry,
baby!” the nurse said, as she pierced the
infant’s skinny arm. Alonyo frowned:
infants are notoriously difficult to cath-
eterize. “It is even harder now, because
we don’t have the small cannulas we
need,” she said, shaking her head at the
size of the port that the nurse was try-
ing to insert. Since the story of the law-
suit broke, S.H.C.’s funding has dwin-
dled, and the clinic has been running
out of supplies, including food for the
mothers of malnourished children.
“Now we can only give them beans and
posho”—a porridge made from maize
meal—“which affects the quality of the
breast milk,” Alonyo said. An expat in
the area had promised to graze his goats
on the facility’s land so the staff could
collect milk for the children, but he re-
scinded the offer. “Maybe he saw some
information,” Alonyo said, “and then
he got worried.”
Alonyo, who was wearing a blue Serv-
ing His Children apron over her nurs-
ing clothes, has tried to impress upon
her boss the virtue of steadfastness. “I
told her, ‘Renée, look here: what you are
carrying is the Cross,’ ” Alonyo said.
“Jesus carried the Cross and fell down—
the Cross is heavy!” She shook her head.
“They are talking that Renée killed.
How did we kill? Did we strangle? Did
we cut? Did we slaughter? You mean to
say up till now, outside here, people are
not dying when they are sick?” She mo-
tioned toward baby Hope. “If that child
collapsed, are you going to say that Con-
stance killed that child? I am trying to
help with medicine, but it is not always
possible, because I’m not God. That
child died because the child is too sick!”S
ince July, Renée Bach has been stay-
ing in a one-room house, a few min-
utes’ drive from her parents’ home along
a road that bisects fields of brown cows.
One afternoon, she was sitting on the
floor, next to a little white tepee full of
toys and children’s books. On the wall,
she’d tacked up a Theodore Roosevelt
quote: “It is not the critic who counts,
not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbles. The credit be-
longs to the man who is actually in the
arena, whose face is marred by dust and
sweat and blood.”
Bach told me, “I am not sitting here
claiming I never did anything wrong.”
She said that she obsesses over poten-
tial failings, “recounting every interac-
tion you’ve ever had with another human
and wondering, Was I hurting or was I
helping that person?” On reflection, some
of Nielsen’s arguments had moved her.
“I believe in what No White Saviors
stands for,” Bach said. “There are a lot
of people who go to developing envi-
ronments and they exploit people. That
should be a global conversation: are we
presenting ourselves and the work that
we’re doing in a way that’s honoring the
people we are ministering to, and car-
ing for, or sponsoring, or whatever?”
But it is funding, as much as philos-
ophy, that dictates the relationship be-
tween aid workers and the recipients of
their services. As one doctor from Ma-
yuge who has worked with S.H.C. put
it, “Let me be honest—most Ugandans,
they see mzungus and they see money.”
This is not because they are corrupt; it’s
because they’re trying to survive.
Kramlich said, “It’s a complicatedfeeling to know that the funding dried
up. I think they were doing a lot of things
well. There was good food there. It was
a clean center. They had money! I just
don’t know why Renée couldn’t get out
of her own fucking way.” Another for-
mer S.H.C. volunteer, a social worker
named Bliss Gustafson, who now works
for the New York City school system,
told me, “In my heart of hearts, do I be-
lieve that Renée was probably a better
nurse than Jackie in that setting? One
hundred per cent. Doesn’t mean it’s O.K.
The only reason she’s getting away with
it is that it’s black and brown babies in
Uganda. White people who go to Af-
rica, we all make these sort of ‘I can do
this better’ mistakes. We all have that
mentality to some degree—that’s why
we go over there.”
I asked Bach if she felt that she was
being tested, as Alonyo had suggested,
and she shook her head. “To be honest,
this whole situation has shaken my faith
in a serious way. When someone says,
‘This is what God wants me to do,’ I’m,
like, ‘Yeah, sure.’” She missed the sense
of devotion that she once had. “Every
day, I knew that I was supposed to be
there, and that’s a really powerful feel-
ing,” she said. “And then shit hits the
fan. I’m, like, Wait, what? Was I not
supposed to do those things? Did I mis-
interpret what my purpose in life was?
Even now, I don’t know what I’m sup-
posed to do. Aside from being a mom,
I have no idea.” Bedford was not a long-
term option. “Selah is the only black
kid in her entire school, and that’s not
what I want for her,” Bach said. “It’s ac-
tually still pretty racist around here.”
She recalled an incident at a fair, when
she heard one girl say to another, not
quite out of Selah’s earshot, “That girl
is so black I wonder if her parents left
her in a fire.”
Bach’s two sisters live in California—
one is a nanny, the other a doctor—and
she was considering moving there. “I
want to be in a place where I could live
a life of service again,” she said. “I gen-
uinely enjoy helping people. And I feel
like an idiot saying that, because every-
one is, like, ‘You just killed a bunch of
people.’ I would love to live in a really
low-income, diverse community—like
immersion. Just to move into a Section 8
housing community, and not be com-
pletely ostracized, is an art.”