Northern Uganda, Invisible Children, and Humanitarian Arrogance

Returnee Village near Gulu in 2006

I posted something on Facebook the other day about phenomenon of the "Invisible Children" viral video that is trying to raise the profile of the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) Josephy Kony and advocate for US military action in Northern Uganda to bring him to justice to the ICC. I have a few opinions about the conflict in Northern Uganda as I visited the region three times, twice in 2006 to do advocacy on the return of the IDPs and the reintegration of child combatants and once in 2007 to assess MSF's work on sexual violence there. While I am by no means an expert, having sat in the despicable super crowded sad IDP camps and trekked out to the areas of return (as well as having memorably spent Thanksgiving in Juba with the Acholi delegation to the LRA peace talks) I have some idea of the issue. I happened to be ziplining through the jungles of Northern Laos when the video came out and was alerted to it by my friend C and her kids who had asked her about it and wanted to know if they should donate. So I started watching all the back and forth on Facebook and the news once i got back to civilization. In general, I agreed with most of the criticism and since I was a bit late to the game, I didn't get too involved. I met the Invisible Children group back in 2006 and I just remember hearing a lot of complaints about their naivety as well as seeing this iconic photo of them which rubbed a bunch of us the wrong way (for the uninitiated, humanitarians do NOT pose with guns. We are adamantly anti-gun because we're neutral and we;re trying to remain that way. There are WAY too many rumors that we are CIA, US spies, gun runners already so we actively try to dissuade that).

Anyway, the article I posted was about the UN's SRSG for Children and Armed Conflict (Special Representative of the Secretary General) commenting that instead of pushing for a military solution to the LRA (which has failed for years), they would be better off investing that money in services for the former child combatants. This was an excellent and very timely point. The SRSG is tasked with advocating and independently investigating crimes against children in conflict zones for the UN. I'm highly critical of the UN (even more so after having worked for them for a year) but one thing I always felt was that the SRSGs who work on thematic issues take their jobs very seriously and are strong advocates for their causes. These are not just political appointments - these are people who are well known for working in these fields. They are independent and report back to the Security Council with their findings. What they don't have, usually, is much power. While appointed by the Secretary-General, all they can do is report and use their "good offices" to encourage the member states of the UN to take action. Of course, this rarely happens. There are too many vested interests at play for the UN to be able actually address most of the atrocities out there.

 I spent four years in Washington DC advocating with the US government and the UN to do more to address displacement in places like Darfur, Northern Uganda, Sri Lanka, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Haiti, and South Sudan. I left the advocacy position that I had because I was tired of banging my head against the wall with a predominantly Republican administration and congress who were monomaniacally interested in the Global War on Terror only. But along the way, I met some amazing advocates. And amazing people who put their neck out to do the right thing for people. In the strangest of places, I would find people who were very interested in ending trafficking of children, stopping women from being raped outside the IDP camps of Darfur, stopping UN Peacekeepers from raping women, and in doing the best that they could with the resources they had. Many of them worked for NGOs, some worked for the UN, some worked for US Congress, some worked for memberstates in the UN. In general, the lessons I learned is that we're all in it together and you have to keep your mind open when you are agitating for change. You don't know what argument will sway what powerful person and get them to make the small change you want.

Then I went to work for MSF, Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of the pre-eminent humanitarian organizations in the world. It was my dream job. I wanted to be one of the people who craft the "voice of outrage". I felt that my strengths were in helping add my American citizenship and language skills to the voices of the least powerful and most oppressed in the world to try to bring change to their world. It was a decision that I was thrilled with when I took it but one that I learned to regret in the years after. While I worked for the branch of MSF most known for taking a "human rights" position, it turned out that the organization really didn't care much any more about speaking out on behalf of the oppressed. The much vaunted "temoignage" that most people associate with MSF is dying. The in-fighting between the sections and the way decisions are made (usually only about operational access - never what the people in the country might want) really got under my skin.

So back to Facebook. I posted my little link on facebook where I have many friends form my time in Washington DC, my time at MSF, my time in the UN, and from my home in South Carolina. I like to post links because it might enlighten someone who doesn't read the same articles, websites, magazines, and newspapers as I do. I also love to read other people's links. I know Facebook is not really a venue for well-thought out argument and decent discourse but I have had good arguments on it in the past that I have enjoyed and even learned something from. But the interchange I had with a former colleague made me realize what bothered me about working at MSF was the anti-intellectualism in charge there often. Some of the people that I met there were proud to be ignorant of how the UN works, how international politics works, and how MSF might fit into it. They always played down the role that MSF might have in providing information and taking a stance on behalf of the people who we are supposed to serve. I don't mean to say that my colleague I had the debate with is not an intellectual. He would probably say that he does not strive to be. He's a smart man though - moved from business to humanitarianism, has a quick wit, a smart brain, and really likes an argument. he's open to suggestions and seems to always be seeking more information. However, the debate with him triggered something in me.

His argument boiled down to "its better to DO SOMETHING rather than to advocate or talk about the problem". This irritated me because its the same sad refrain that I learned about in graduate school in the 90s. It smacks of Edward Said's Orientalism, of "the White Man's Burden", and the belief that because you want to do charity, the recipients should be eternally grateful innocent recipients without any thoughts of their own. It also reminded me of the tyranny of the "operational" - do something mentality that predominates in the leadership of MSF. They are critical of those who speak out. The common refrain was that Oxfam had sacrificed quality of operations in the field to focusing on advocacy (a point that people at Oxfam would not agree with). So my colleague has moved into management at MSF and now says "how can a publically funded talk shop criticize someone doing operations?" I heard this refrain all the time when I proposed doing advocacy at MSF. There was so much disdain for the people who spend a lot of time trying to move governments and human rights abusers to the peace talk tables or trying to get agreements to end violence. Its so easy to criticize anyone who is not "operational" but by being operational, you don't necessarily inhabit the high ground. I've seen plenty of useless MSF (and other) projects that don't either add to sustainability, address the real needs of the most vulnerable and helpless in the population, or actually cause more harm by putting local orgs out of work. I've seen the casual colonial like atmosphere of (predominantly white) expats from Northern Europe and the Americas making decisions that impact the populations of desperately poverty stricken communities without once consulting them or setting up a proper way to make sure that the programs were handed over to someone who could actually run them. There is an argument to be made that malicious governments allow "do-gooder" aid agencies to do their work for them so they can invest in other more interesting things that insuring their citizens have healthcare and education and other human rights. (Oddly enough, a comedy novel I just read called "Worst Date Ever" made this argument about Northern Uganda beautifully!) Pure operations that don't consult the population or respond with any form of accountability to them can be harmful. The AID blogosphere is filled with examples of "noble do-gooders" out to save the African continent by "just doing something." I think there is even a twitter hashtag called #SWEDOW (Stuff We Don't Want) that is exactly about this phenomenon. People smarter and more on top of things than me have written about this often.

Despite my criticism of MSF in this post, I still support a lot of the work that they do. But increasingly I am disappointed in the (lack of) stances that they take- no longer taking opportunities to speak to the Security Council to bring the voices of the most powerless to the most powerful, refusing to speak out (even if the population begs them to) in order to maintain programs that may not even be reaching the most vulnerable, and my favorite example - making everything in their communications about them - "MSF DENIED ACCESS TO POPULATION" rather than focusing on the community losing life saving healthcare assistance. It's become a rather navel-gazing organization and not the place I thought it was until I went to work there.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a rant. My friends working at MSF may or may not read this. This is not to denigrate the hard work that they do but to participate in the time -honored criticism of the organization that we all worked and sweated and slaved over. In MSF, I earned the right to criticize them.

My point is that I still believe strongly in advocacy. There is a complimentary role for advocacy and operations. You do not have to sacrifice one for the other. And being a "doer" and not a "thinker" does not make one superior to others. The UN is an easy target for MSF snobbery. It is a talk shop. People there know that. But they also know that the only thing that has ever stopped wars and brought about peace is talk talk talk. So they have their role to play. MSF and other operational agencies have their role to play. And the independent SRSG's have their role to play in pointing out that governments could make a difference but don't. And Refugees International and Human Rights Watch have their role to play in pointing out that the UN is inherently conservative and doesn't like to rock the boat and needs to be kicked in the ass often. But sometimes, the organizations who like to criticize should sometimes look inside their own houses too and see whether or not they are doing everything they can too before they get on their high horses.

Alarm! Red Flag! Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

Well - I have had a rough week... actually probably a rough six weeks. I went to Nepal for two weeks to set up a donor monitoring mission which was not so bad - the Nepalis are such lovely people and Kathmandu is an interesting and charming and chaotic city - filled with (as some Indian man i met in the airport limo told me) "Hindu Characters". I enjoy being in Nepal - greeting people by saying Namaste, casually passing shrines and stupas, and ancient beautiful buildings - flying on planes called Buddha Air or Yeti Airlines.

But then I went to Afghanistan. At first it was fun - I have a potential blog post in here to compare and contrast my law breaking NGO ways with the UN discipline I"m supposed to maintain. I was sleeping in a shipping container, seeing old friends, commuting in armored cars, training (which I love). But it wore me down eventually - the relentlessness of work, the dreariness of the place (despite some beautiful touches like the rose garden and honeysuckle in front of my little apartment), and the never ending watchfulness you develop. I flew from Kabul to Delhi to Bangkok - had a 12 hour layover where I literally changed out the contents of my suitcase from Salwar Kameezes to sundresses and headed back to the airport to Frankfurt and Oslo. I had a brief romantic interlude in Copenhagen with this man that I adore but who is extremely elusive and then back to Bangkok. In the meantime, suicide bombers blew up the hotel I had been working in while I was in Kabul.

When I got back, I was tired. so very very very tired. Like sleeping all day on a Saturday and Sunday in a hot rather fevered state with a deep lack of energy I've never experienced. I didn't feel depressed, I literally felt like I was a completely de-charged battery. My brain was still working but my body wasn't. It was worrisome. Now of course, me being me, I immediately thought - maybe I'm depressed! Burned out! I had just been in Scandinavia and watched two Finnish and Swedish films (One of which railed on and on about the youth today who can't hold down a job without becoming burned out within six weeks). My American Capitalist work ethic kicked in and said - HEY! Because you were out sick last summer, you can't hack it anymore! You are weak! So I joined a gym, got a personal trainer and started working out. It worked! I had lifts in my energy but I still felt not right. So I went and found a therapist. Done. Probably stress! And working on sexual violence is tiring. And I had some friends going through some things that was mildly stressful. My nerves felt stretched though - I was on a phone call one day and it was all I could do not to scream and throw the phone out of the window into the pool. And nothing that bad was going on. Time for a vacation??? Then the horrible Norwegian terrorist blew up the Government building next to where I had been interviewing in Oslo. Hmm - extreme terrorist attacks following my every move.

Finally, someone pointed out to me that it might be physical... which made sense... I had struggled with an upper respiratory infection when I got here, then got some nasty intestinal thing that came to plague me in Laos and Pakistan, and I had been sick for almost a year when I moved to Europe. New continent - new antibodies needed. Plus traveling in Pakistan and Afghanistan is tiring. I heard a miraculous story of a man I know who was run down and very snappish and angry. He went to a doc, found out he had a parasite, they gave him a pill and he literally could fell it making him better. I wanted that pill. I was tired, snappish, easy to offend, and slumping into not caring about anything.

So the fantastic admin assistant at the office made me an appointment for the next day at the Bumrungrad hospital. I went in and got all the exams - stool, urine, and blood (hey - I'm a humanitarian aid worker - I like to talk about stool, urine and blood!). I couldn't give more samples though because I was leaving the next day for a training in Pakistan. I only had a 2 day window of opportunity for any treatments because then I was off to Nepal and then off to Europe for holiday. In Pakistan I felt a bit better. At least my energy and time was taken up by the demanding training participants. But my patience was thin and I was in love with my comfy Marriott bed and never wanted to leave it.

I flew home on the "red-eye" and went immediately into the hospital to get my test results. I felt haggard. I just wanted to know what parasite I had so I could get that magical pill. The lovely doctor gave me the good news first - blood tests were fine - no anemia, no cancer, no bad thyroid, no bad liver. Stool tests fine - no parasites (disappointment!) but the urine test showed I had an infection. Now my co-worker in Afghanistan had a UTI which was making her feverish so I know that they can have weird results on the body. Aha! I thought - that's it. But then the doc sent me to the Ultrasound room. I got an ultrasound - in an aside, I mentioned that I used to have kidney stones. Back when I was 24 - in both kidneys - but I gave up coca cola and now I was fine! Well guess what. I'm not fine.

The doctor sent me immediately to the urologist. They discovered an almost 2 inch kidney stone in my ureter of my right kidney that was blocking my kidney, sending urine back up into it and infecting it. How had I not felt it? Dunno. So, I thought... lithotripsy! I've had this before. No problem! Nope. The doctor said it was too big not to operate on and he wanted to do it right then and there. Cut a big incision over my hip and go in and fish out the stone. I was terrified. My closest friends in Bangkok were mostly out of town. The doctor was confident but I have never had surgery before. I texted my friends. They were shocked. I went into surgery. Right before the nurses came to get me, I was really sad and felt very alone. Then I thought of my mom. In the 60s, she was living in Taiwan with my father and had me. This was before men were in the delivery room. I channeled her energy- she was a fighter - and I thought - well if she could do it 40 years ago, I can do it now. So I just sucked it up.

So now... where am I? After surgery in a foreign land and five days in the hospital recuperating and two days in my apartment coming to terms with the fact I have a 10 inch scar on my hip, a tube in my bladder and kidney, and a postponed return to Europe... I am feeling a bit better. Unable to sleep really... and feeling vulnerable but the exhaustion is gone and hopefully my energy will return.

I don't have any lessons to share. I just feel sick and vulnerable and a bit more mortal. It's not going to be the suicide bombers of Kabul that will get me! It will be something ridiculous and human like a kidney stone.

Humanitarians aka Mercenaries, Missionaries, and Mad Men: Part Two

(I left this post lingering unpublished from my return from my sick leave. It was written in October 2010. I'm in a different place now but I think I'll post it anyway.)

Well I've finally decided... I'm in it to win it (to paraphrase Hillary Clinton). I'm not giving up on humanitarian aid yet. A couple of things have convinced me...

1. Helping a friend apply for a training course, I was reading her writing sample. I got pretty excited about it and had lots of ideas on how to beef it up. I want to turn this writing sample into a joint paper on how quality of care can be as important a humanitarian principle as neutrality or independence.  I feel like I have something to say again... I want to write some papers for publication and I want to make an impact on this crazy profession again. I think I'm getting ready to find my voice, which has been lost for a while. 

2. I don't feel so alone anymore. With so many of my friends in the same exact organization are burned out right now and struggling.... I realize that its not just me. Sitting in the misery and depths of burn-out, I felt like a crazy person. I was the only one who was so angry and outraged. I was so exhausted and tired of fighting all the time. I was sensitive and impacted by everything. I felt like my skin had been scraped off and there was nothing protecting me anymore. But the more I get out of that state and talk to others, I realize that it is normal to struggle in abnormal situations. I need to take much much better care of myself nowadays. I have to learn to prioritize keeping myself healthy and de-stressed. I'm never going to change my passions and personality but I can change some bad habits.

3. Opportunities are presenting themselves to me. I've been stuck wondering what to do... but just by stopping for a little bit and ceasing to try to find the answer for everything and MAKE things happen, I've suddenly been shown a few different ways I can move forward. And a few little glimpses of a changed life that could make me happy and content. And they are all still related to being a humanitarian worker -I am not going to have to drastically change my identity. I have a better idea of who I can be in my career but I realize my career is not the most important thing to me anymore.

4. Discovering how wonderful and supportive my friends and family are. While I'm dealing with burnout, I'm not depressed. I've struggled with depression in the past. I'm just plain ole damn exhausted. And my friends who check in on me, call me up, meet me for picnics, take me to Poland, and listen to my frequent crazed thoughts about this and that are my lifeline. No man is an island. But I've felt like an island for a while - but thanks to my sister, my friends, and even random new strangers that I meet at after football celebrations and talk to - I realize that there is a lot of love and good things out there. I'm building back up my batteries.  You gotta have a good network to survive this life. 

So what have I learned in my downtime? 

Humanitarian agencies can be dangerous places to work. While my friends who don't work in the business don't really get why its different than other bad organizations,  the ones who do understand that its a toxic soup of poor management, nepotism, severe power politics, and a never ending supply of idealistic volunteers who will always step forward to accept the abuse. I think its the idealism thats the worst part of it.... over and over again, I've had to end conversations with people i've just met about where I work. I'm out on stress leave and when people hear where i work, they can't believe it. I don't want to tell them about it. I believe my organization is one of the best providers of humanitarian assistance in the world. I don't want to kill off charitable contributions! A lot of the stress is brought on by my own inability to make boundaries, draw lines, say no, and protect myself. The good people outweigh the bad but sadly the good ones have to leave after a while to protect their sanity. They often return but always trying to warn the rest of us about how bad it can be.  But the abusers of power, the corrupt people, the incompetent, and the (frankly) insane are tolerated here because "they really care about women and children" or because "you don't know what they were capable of doing back in (historic crisis)". Idealists all, we tolerate abuse and poor working conditions on the belief that those who are there must be good people just like we hope we are.

A friend once told me, when I was on a quixiotic quest to improve DDR programs in West Africa by becoming a donor,  that going to work for the World Bank would kill me. "That beast is too big to poison from within" - he said poetically (he's a pretty poetic and philosophical guy and the one to take with you if you get harrassed by the cops in Kinshasa... he can sweet talk his way anywhere!). I'm an idealist and I always think that I can improve things and contribute to the bigger good. I want to give away all my good ideas and work in teams and I believe deeply that consensus and participatory decision-making are the ways to go. But the place I work right now doesn't work that way. That beast might be too big to poison from within. 

So I have to find my own way - I don't want to leave. I still have things to accomplish here. I am going to have to fight to keep working there - I have also learned to find the other thinkers like me and stick by them. It's too tempting to get pulled into the clique but as my beloved graduate school professor once told me, "As an anthropologist, you are always going to be the gadfly". I want change and I want to improve the world to assist the most vulnerable women and children out there - that's not going to happen by being coopted by power or by shutting up when the going gets tough. I believe in what I do and I know there are others out there that do as well - I find them every time I go to the field or meet a new colleague (usually the depressed looking ones lurking by the copy machine).  To use a cliche - its a marathon not a sprint so I have to change tactics and build up new stamina. I need to start ignoring the crazies and focusing on the good folk.

Two sides of South Carolina

Last night, I met up with an old friend with whom I worked at a restaurant (Motor Supply Company) and a health food store (Rosewood Market) in South Carolina in the early 90s, right after college. It was great catching up with her but it was also really interesting to walk down memory lane a bit. I was a bit early to meet with her and didn't have anything to read with me so decided to walk around Five Points to look at my old haunts. Frighteningly enough, in one of the restaurants I worked, I saw two waiters who worked there when I worked there (from 1989- 1993) and in a bar that I also worked, I saw two of the regulars that always hung out there.

My friend and I went to see a band called Grey Egg, composed of some of the people who work at Rosewood Market. The lead singer is a Women's Studies professor at USC too, I think. There were lots of familiar faces in the band and in the audience. It shed a different perspective on the familiar faces I had seen in my old haunts. It reminded me of how out of step I often felt while living in South Carolina. Whereas in DC, what you do for a living identifies who you are as a person, in South Carolina - what you do for a living can be your passion but it can also be the economic way that you feed yourself while you pursue your real passion. So many of the people I knew in SC when I lived here were musicians, artists, writers, and just creative people. The restaurant business was how we all made our living and some of us branched off to working in the macrobiotic deli or organic produce department of the local healthfood store. But in general, we were all in our early 20s, staying up all night drinking and talking and dancing and bouncing around. In the morning, we shook off our hangovers and went to work to serve rich beautiful people their chicken salad croissant or their macrobiotic special of the day.

But there were also people who had hopped off the consumerist capitalist machine that drives the day to day American life. Many of my old friends who are in their 40s now and still performing in bands and being creative and living their life without fretting about how the next step in their life will impact their career climb like I am. It was a welcome reminder that the South and the US is not so bad after the past three weeks where I pass the same chain restaurants every day on my way up and down the highway to the hospital and the rehab facility to visit my father. I haven't walked further than down the hallway to the vending machine to get a coke since I got here!

Then this morning, while I was emailing at work about responding to the Sudanese press about confidentiality for rape survivors, I got an essay from a friend written by a homeschooled child about her day taking care of her Evangelical family. Its pretty easy in the secular world that I travel in to forget just how important religion is to many people in the US. The South has always been considered the Bible Belt. I have a lot of respect for people of faith - I have several friends who are religious, attend church regularly, and I also worked for a faith-based organization, Witness for Peace when I first left graduate school. Since I've been back in South Carolina for the past three weeks, I've witnessed our presidential candidates go to the largest Evangelical church in the US to pass a test of fire about their beliefs so they can woo the religious vote. Every day when I walk through the lobby of the Palmetto Heart Hospital to visit my father, I pass piles of New Testaments on the tables in the lounge. While there is the politically correct "Meditation Centre" in the hospital - presumably to cater to the ever growing population of Hindus and Muslims living in Columbia - all the literature and sign up lists were from Southern Baptist ministers. My father had at least four visitors of devout African-American women ministers coming by to visit him. Many of the cashiers, security guards, and nursing technicians wish me a "blessed day" when I talk to them. There are hundreds of churches in various old buildings all over town. I pass the "Church of the Spiritual Guidance" in what appears to be an old insurance company building on the corner of Main and Sunset every day.

I myself went to many religious "teen activities" growing up in South Carolina. I have very vivid memories of one particular "teen activity". They told us that we were going to watch a movie and there would be free popcorn (I'm a sucker for popcorn). Instead, it was a movie about the apocalypse and the rapture and how all of us secular non believers would be left on hell on earth. A particularly striking scene was a guillotine that the nonbelievers were executed at. The condemned was forced to wait for the blade face up and the point of view of the camera was of the condemned's view of the blade slicing down upon them. Then after freaking us all out (I was 12), they invited us to come up to the altar and embrace Jesus as our saviour. I hid in the bathroom until it was over.

In many ways, the Netherlands is not so very different from South Carolina. There are free spirited thinkers who resist the capitalist imperative and there are strongly religious conservatives co-existing side by side in both places. The conservatives in Holland aren't a part of the accepted script about Dutch tolerance and the free thinking artists and leftists of South Carolina aren't part of the accepted script about life in the Bible Belt.

Scenes from Sicko

Last night, I watched a prisoner who is on the intensive care unit that my father is on, being led on his physical therapy prescribed walk down the hall with his IV pole and his ankles shackled together. The respiratory therapist sitting with me mentioned "The Corrections officers are hard core. They'll keep a prisoner shackled who are on ventilators".

SICKO: the South Carolina version

On Tuesday night, the air conditioning at the hospital in Columbia where my father is currently went out for 12 hours. The temperature was over 96 degrees (36 degrees for you non Farenheit speakers)and it rose to almost 90 inside the hospital (34). I brought a fan from home and we stripped him down and kept cold wet face cloths on him and put him under the fan. The nurses told me that there used to be fans in the hospital but they were nowhere to be found nowadays.

While I was surprised that there was no back up system for the a/c dying in the middle of the brutally hot July-August months, I wasn't that perturbed until I read the news media spin where the spokesperson from the hospital said it was uncomfortable but nothing to worry about and praised the staff for bringing fans to the patients. I was in that hospital with frantic families from all over the city bringing fans in. The CVS next to the hospital was selling out. In the hospitals that I routinely visit in Africa and Asia, there are usually no air conditioning for anyone. There aren't even fans usually. But there are open windows to catch breezes. In the hermetically sealed highrises that are the modern US hospital, there's no opportunity to open the windows and cool yourself down. It was a good 20 degrees warmer in the hospital than it was when I went outside. Some patients had families take them out into the cool evening air. Since my dad was on an IV and oxygen, we weren't able to do that. To my sister's undying embarrassment (you are such a radical! she says), I decided to write a letter to the editor in the local newspaper in response to this article.

Regarding Dr. Caughman Taylor's statement about the air conditioning breakdown at Palmetto Health Richland that "It was not a safety issue; it was an inconvenience", I beg to differ. My 80 year old father was hospitalized when the air conditioning went out on Tuesday night. For the elderly, extreme heat is a serious life threatening condition. They are often the first to die when there is no air conditioning as we saw in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and in heat waves in the mid West. It was family members that brought in fans and window units for their loved ones, not the staff. Staff complained that they were unable to access or find fans that used to be plentiful and spoke about equipment malfunctioning in the emergency room due to the excessive heat. While they were also suffering from the extreme heat in the hospital, they did the best that they could to provide care. CEO Singerling said that "practice makes perfect" so I hope the Palmetto Health Richland has found those fans and are prepared to have emergency plans for seniors and others with respiratory problems in case of another unexpected air conditioning malfunction during the hottest months of the year.