To suffer from Aids in Sweden and to suffer from Aids in a country like Uganda are two entirely different things. The gulf between the two peoples is as between the rich and the poor. In all areas. Even when it comes to nursing. Even when it comes to pain.
If you happen to be born in a poor country, the risk of being forced to suffer unimaginable pain is infinitely greater than in a country like Sweden. In a poor country there is a devastating relative lack of resources, as also the medical capacity to alleviate pain. This is incredibly cruel. If you are doomed to die, the agony you are condemned to endure should not depend on where you happen to be born.
23
The day that Christine showed me the memory book she had written for Aida, Aida herself took me secretly to show me her mango plant. The two things were connected, of course, what Christine did and what Aida did. But it was not a prearranged plan. Plans often emerge of their own accord when it comes to death and the sorrow that is in store. Every time the memory book was mentioned, Aida sought consolation in her mango plant. In order to endure the prospect of death she had to make an invocation to life.
24
The little memory books follow a basic template.* An outline is provided on pre-printed pages. There is a simple logic in the headings printed on the various pages. But all the memory books I read in Uganda were original. No two were alike.