One of the things I have remembered to do before my trip is to get inoculated. Our remarkable NHS, which I so often take for granted, looked through my records and determined which live bugs I needed injected into my system in order to build immunity to the full range of diseases that I should be facing in Uganda.
Mind you, all of this will be of no use if I don't do the simple things like watching any open wounds, washing my hands (further note to self - shop for alcohol gel), using bottled water and so on. It is so easy to work at the big things in life and overlook the simple.
Inoculation does remind me how amazing the human body is. A little exposure to a nasty thing like a bug and we develop the ability to survive without it affecting or debilitating us. It works with diseases but it also works with other things in life. Live in a city with people 'begging', or showing some kind of explicit need, on the streets and to start with it will be hard to ignore. As time goes by, though, we notice less and less as we decide how we will respond and then save ourselves the agony of engaging. Similarly when you live in a beautiful setting it takes a real effort to keep noticing the beauty.
All of this works if the 'thing' remains constant. When a bug mutates it can become resistant to our treatments. However strong our compassion fatigue becomes, a new situation has the power to wake us and evoke our humanity. A friend of mine who worked in a Christian school once confided in me that he worried about whether the school exposed the pupils to something wonderful about God or inoculated them against faith. It's a good challenge, but for me the heart of it is making space for God to be God in my life. He never changes and yet is always new, never fails and yet always surprises, is never absent and yet rarely predictable.
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