Without this woman, I would be a far less patient optimist.
I arrived in Kampala, plopping myself onto Rehema’s couch after a nearly 20-hour journey from West Africa to Uganda.
I laughed at the feeling of familiarity that overwhelmed me — it was both a feeling of being at home around Rehema, despite being thousands of miles away from where I lived — and a feeling of comfort sinking into the brown, worn couch which had graced my own apartment in Kampala for many years before I moved to London and then Sierra Leone. Pieces of my furniture were scattered across Rehema’s house — my old yellow book stand, the big bed, even the dishware that I had given her when I moved.
I had flown from my new home in Sierra Leone to my old home in Uganda to spend Christmas with Rehema and her family. It had been nearly a year since I was last in Uganda, and six years since I first moved there as a Global Health Corps (GHC) fellow with Rehema as my co-fellow.
The feeling of trepidation and reserved curiosity that we both felt when we first met at Yale University many years before during GHC training was long-gone, replaced with a sense of familial comfort and unfaltering admiration.
I sat on her veranda over Christmas, watching as her grandmother roasted me peanuts for fear I was being underfed by Rehema after a lunch of rice, beans, and sweet potatoes (but no matoke or posho — the real food she said). Rehema smirked at jajja, Luganda for grandmother, humored by her tendency to worry but grateful for her caring nature.
It was the same smirk Rehema had given me dozens of times over the last six years as I worried I wasn’t good enough, I worried that I was doing more harm than good, and I worried that development was failing the very people it was designed to serve.
Throughout my many existential crises, Rehema has always listened with patience, realism, and a good dose of humor.
She laughed as I spoke, not callously, but simply because I was asking questions that she, and frankly all of us, could never answer. She was humored by my seemingly infinite capacity to worry and respectful of my desire to do better. But most of all, Rehema was a good listener. She listened not to solve my problems, but to truly hear them. She asked pointed questions when needed, and knew when not to question at all.
Throughout these late night chats where I plopped down next to her, exasperated by my newest dilemma, she helped me see that working in the field of human rights and in pursuit of health equity is wrought with challenges. It is no place for pessimists who throw in the towel in the face of frustrated attempts to disentangle entrenched problems. It’s far too easy to burn out when slowness and setbacks get the best of you.
She taught me not to be broken, but instead to be inspired, enraged, and energized by it all. She also taught me to be patient and willing to move slowly, and at times quietly, in my pursuit of change.
Rehema taught me the power of patient optimism. Without her, I would not have realized that it is the patient optimists who persist despite it all that are the real changemakers.
Over the year that we lived together in rural Western Uganda, Rehema became my anchor, my confidant, and my sister in navigating the many injustices, inequities, and heartbreaks we both encountered and invariably overcame.
And in the many years since as we have moved across the globe — from Switzerland to Kenya to England to Sierra Leone — she remains the person I turn to.
So as we celebrate this International Women’s Day, I cannot help but feel grateful for Rehema who is a quiet but powerful force of good in this world.
I am certain that without this woman, this fight for equity would be a far longer and lonelier one. Thanks to her, six years down the line I am still optimistic about what is to come and hopeful that we will be a part of creating a world that bends the arc a bit further towards justice.
Jourdan McGinn was a 2012–2013 Global Health Corps fellow in Uganda.
Global Health Corps (GHC) is a leadership development organization building the next generation of health equity leaders around the world. All GHC fellows, partners, and supporters are united in a common belief: health is a human right. There is a role for everyone in the movement for health equity. To learn more, visit our website and connect with us on Twitter/Instagram/Facebook.
