Lucille Teasdale. Deborah Cowley

“I need someone with experience in surgery.”

      There was a long, silent pause as Piero braced himself to pose the question: “Lucille, why don’t you come to Uganda and help out in the hospital for two or three months?”

      Lucille was stunned. She hardly knew Piero and she knew almost nothing about Uganda. As the meal progressed, Piero’s childlike enthusiasm became infectious. “I will even offer to pay your airfare plus money for cigarettes and toothpaste,” he said.

      Lucille laughed. “You are very, very persistent.”

      Piero left for Milan and Lucille pondered the idea of joining him in Africa. She was enjoying her life in Marseilles and was anxious to complete her course. But she found herself thinking more and more about Piero’s offer. Here was the chance to live out her childhood ambition to be a doctor in the Third World. She suddenly found herself thinking, Why not?

      As Christmas approached, Piero telephoned her from Milan and asked her to join his family for the festive season. Lucille saw this as a good chance to get to know him better before making a final decision. She was also curious to meet his family. He had spoken of them often and appeared to enjoy an especially close relationship with his parents, something she had lacked in her own childhood. Just before Christmas, she boarded the train for Milan.

      Piero met her at the railway station and they travelled together to Besana in Brianza, the town where his parents lived, an hour’s drive from Milan. As they approached the family home, she couldn’t believe her eyes: their house was a huge mansion standing on vast grounds ringed with palm trees. The interior was even more lavish, with large family portraits lining the walls and maids in frilly white aprons floating from room to room.

      Piero’s family welcomed her warmly, curious about this new arrival. In her presence, they all spoke to her in French or English, then among themselves switched effortlessly into Italian. Though they could not have been more welcoming, Lucille couldn’t stop thinking about her own modest upbringing in the east end of Montreal, and she felt uncomfortable and out of place.

      The next night, Piero took her to a performance of the ballet Cinderella at La Scala, the world-famous opera house in Milan. She was overwhelmed by the opulence of the auditorium, its five semicircular tiers of boxes reaching upwards to the ornate ceiling. They sat, as if in a dream, watching the fairy-tale story unfold. At intermission, as Piero poured a glass of champagne, Lucille cast aside any misgivings and told him: “Yes, I will join you in Uganda. But I must make it clear that it is only for a month or two.” They raised their glasses in a toast to the future.

      Lucille returned to Marseilles and prepared to leave for Africa.

3

       Baptism by fire

      I always thought that all of Africa was a jungle, so imagine my surprise to find a forty-bed hospital virtually in the middle of nowhere. For a population of 40,000, I am the only surgeon able to do certain operations. Fortunately, I brought along my surgery textbooks. – Lucille Teasdale, 3 May 1961

      On 2 May 1961, Lucille joined Piero in Milan and together they boarded a UN military plane that would take them to Uganda. As it lifted off, Lucille was bursting with excitement. This was her first trip to Africa and the beginning of a thrilling new adventure.

      Acholi dremmers give Lucille a noisy African Welcome On her arrivel in may 1961.

      Dr. Lucille checking over a new admission

      They flew slowly southward, and she watched with fascination as they crossed the blue expanse of the Mediterranean. Then she spotted its southern shoreline and knew this must be Egypt. The arid desert stretched as far as she could see, while the Nile River threaded its way south into the heart of Africa until it reached Uganda, where it emptied into one of the largest lakes in Africa, Lake Victoria.

      Uganda is a relatively small country, about the size of Newfoundland, and completely landlocked. It is, however, blessed with an abundance of lakes and rivers, a rich and fertile soil, and a string of national parks.

      The couple landed at Entebbe, Uganda’s principal airport, which is perched on the edge of Lake Victoria just thirty-five kilometres west of the capital, Kampala. Looking across the lake, Lucille could see the distant peaks of the Ruwenzori Mountains, more often known as the Mountains of the Moon. Uganda was just as Piero had described it – a land of the most breathtaking beauty.

      On the airport tarmac, the Union Jack flapped in the breeze and reminded visitors that the country had for many years been a colony of Britain. But the next year, in October 1962, the colony would gain its independence and the people of Uganda would finally run their own country. The excitement was palpable.

      Brother Toni Biasin, one of the Italian Comboni missionaries, known as the Verona Fathers, met Lucille and Piero at the airport and drove them into Kampala. They found it to be a dynamic modern city, built, like Rome, on seven hills. There were handsome shops and large banks, an abundance of restaurants and cafés and huge stately mansions. Flowering trees and brilliant red poinsettia shrubs lined the wide avenues, and street vendors manned stalls laden with pyramids of fresh fruit – mangoes and pineapples, grapefruits and papayas.

      The couple spent their first night in Kampala, and early the next morning, Brother Toni packed them into his old Peugeot and they set out for the long drive north. On the outskirts of town, Lucille spotted the signs of poverty that would become all-too-familiar: long stretches of flimsy shacks housing large extended families all jammed together under one shaky roof. Never before had she seen people living in such basic conditions.

      The three-hundred-kilometre journey north would take them most of the day. Along the way, they passed hectares of deep green banana trees and huge coffee plantations that stretched as far as the eye could see. On the roadside, women in long multicoloured robes walked with babies slung on their backs in a hammock-like shawl. Some balanced giant water jugs on their heads while schoolchildren skipped along beside them, their bulging schoolbags strapped to their backs.

      The farther north they travelled, the more barren the land became, eventually turning into rolling savannah – parched grasslands dotted with skeletal trees. Soon, they began to see tiny round huts with thatched beehive domes planted among fields of bamboo and eucalyptus. This was the land of the Acholi, the people they had come to serve

      It was dusk when Lucille and Piero finally reached Gulu, a town of 40,000 people. Here, they turned off the main road and drove another ten kilometres until they saw the small sign to St. Mary’s Hospital. “I have never felt so far from civilization,” Lucille said. “It seems strange to have a hospital in such a remote corner of the land.”

      They passed through the gate and into the compound where three Acholi drummers beat out a noisy welcome. Sister Anna Pia, one of the team of Italian Comboni missionary nuns who ran the dispensary, stepped forward to greet them. She took Lucille by the arm and showed her to their residence, a small building with a wraparound veranda. “This is where you will be staying,” she told Lucille. Piero would sleep in another building.

      Before nightfall, Sister Anna Pia gave them a tour of the facility. The “hospital”