12 - Doing the humanitarian Uganda Stomp

Doctor Gino Bucchino transfers his family and talent to the African country

Why a successful physician (and here success is measured in dollars, not just in prestige) suddenly decides to leave everything and go to Uganda as a volunteer is a question many Torontonians posed to themselves when they learned that Dr. Gino Bucchino, a member of our community very well known both in and outside of it, is leaving for Angal, Uganda, with his wife Marisa, a physician like him, and their children Filippo and Carolina, in order to serve as volunteers in that village's rural hospital.
Why go Dr. Bucchino?
"Because I want to be a certain kind of physician."
What "certain" kind?
"One who follows his reasoning. I had the luck to study medicine and get a degree. In those days going to university was really a stroke of luck. I decided to become a physician, in spite of my parent's idea that I was to become an accountant. Call me romantic, but I believe in the Hippocratic oath and in the professional ethics it contains. The ancients spoke of a 'sacrality of the medical art'; I say, more simply, that one has to carry out the choices made to their logical conclusion. And I chose to be a physician. But there's more."
What more?
"This choice of mine, to go to Uganda as a volunteer physician, also has political reasons. I've always felt deeply the suffering of others, and this feeling was strengthened by my years of militancy for the Left. I am a communist, or a post-communist if you prefer, and everybody knows that. I am, and have always been, on the side of the workers, of the proletarians, of those who received very little from life. I thought it fit, then, to give back something of what I received. I morally give back my degree, making myself available as a volunteer physician."
A very respectable position. But someone could call you a demagogue...
"Let them say what they want, the fact is I'm going to Uganda with my family, not sending somebody else."
It will be hard down there.
"Look, a volunteer is not going on holiday. I know all too well that it will be hard. In the small rural hospital of the Combonian Fathers' mission in Angal two Ugandan physicians are already working, and I and other Italian physicians from CUAMM, the Collegio Universitario Aspiranti Medici Missionari [University College for Aspiring Missionary Physicians], will join them. A good number, but down there physicians are always scarce."
I can imagine.
"No, you cannot. I couldn't either. Because the problem is bringing them some sanitary assistance, but what they need most is development. And one, 10, 100 or one thousand physicians alone cannot bring development."
Why not?
"Because it is useless to talk about hygiene and powdered milk when there's no water. And physicians cannot bring water. Conformists say that what is done in favour of African populations, I mean the food and medicines we send there, represent a virtuous circle. On the contrary, it's a vicious circle, nothing more. Emergencies are dealt with, but problems aren't solved. The fact is that in Africa there's a brake to the growth of the population, and the dilemma faced by physicians and other volunteers is dramatic: is it preferable to give something to eat to a kid or to an adult? Do you know the answer?"
Tell me.
"The adult should be preferred, because if the adult eats other children will be born. The child, and this is a truly tremendous thing to say, does not produce, and without adults it is destined to die. That's why the adult must be privileged."
Still talking by dramatic paradoxes, this way we'll have a controlled demographic growth.
"Maybe. Have you got another solution?"
How can we think of solutions that presuppose somebody's death?
"Arms traders do worse. Those among us who go there can be called upon to make hard choices. Which are even more dramatic when we think that it's typical of the poor, or of the lumpenproletariat if we use Marxist terminology, to have many children. Giving birth to two, four or six arms, because this is what we are talking about, means being able to use them to dig a well, or build a hut. It means having someone to help. Anthropologists talk of existential anxiety. I think they are right."
But that also means giving birth to mouths that must be fed, but which, in the pitiless logic you explained, it is inconvenient to feed.
"Do you understand, then, why I talk of a vicious and not virtuous circle, as conformists do? And do you understand why being a volunteer is unlike going on holiday?"
How long will you and your family remain there?
"This time one month and a half, then we'll come back, wait for another call that would be longer, even one or two years."
And then?
"And then we'll see."
Ancient Greeks said that the "future is in the gods' tender lap"...
"Exactly. But I'm used to packing and unpacking my suitcases. I began in 1983, some years after marrying, by leaving for Caracas, Venezuela, where my parents-in-law were living after emigrating. I'm specialized in sports medicine, and am therefore familiar with nutrition and the athletes' diets: I tried and put in practice that knowledge. But I left, because Venezuela had become unsafe: I couldn't accept to live locked up in my home. So I left for Canada and started from scratch. It was 1988."
Why Canada?
"Because of Capitan Miki and Grande Blek."
Who?
"It's true, in part. I wanted to leave Venezuela for the reason I told you, and any place was the same to me. But when I was young I was an avid reader of an Italian weekly comics magazine called L'Intrepido, which published the stories of Capitan Miki and Grande Blek, both set in Canada, in its huge forests, along the banks of the Great Lakes. And I chose Canada, and Toronto. When I arrived, I looked around for something to do, and happened upon Dan Iannuzzi."
What's Iannuzzi got to do with medicine? He's always been a publisher!
"In fact, for a period I was the Woodbridge correspondent of the Corriere Canadese. That was the only job opportunity I found, and I accepted. Then I met Dr. Renzo Carbone, who opened many doors for me. And I went back to my medical profession."
Then came the Salus Nutrition Centre, radio and TV programs on diets, participation in the Comites and now in the CGIE. This is history. Let's talk about food: How do Italian Canadians eat?
"Bad, and too much. Bad because they tried to merge, not always with good results, Italian and North American cooking. Too much, because many think that a lot of food on the table, and in their bellies, means being well-off."
And they put garlic everywhere.
"Yes, they do, ignoring the fact that garlic is useful in small doses. Excess is not, and makes us unpleasant to others. What do you want? Our emigrants to Canada came mostly from the countryside, where the use of garlic is standard practice. But as I said, the real problem was the fusion between Italian country cooking and North American less-than-gourmet cooking. Do you want an example? Look around, and you'll see an alarming quantity of obese people."
Your participation in the Comites and the CGIE allows you to give a political and cultural opinion of our community in Canada. How is it?
"Unfortunately, our community did not grow much on the political and cultural level. This, under certain aspects, is a missionary land, and it is not by chance that a man like Father Gianni Carparelli does a real apostate. It's needed, because our people often arrived here with nothing, had to work hard to survive, and when they succeeded they were catapulted in the hyperconsumeristic system of the United States. They had neither time nor will to think that beyond money there are other values. Gianni Carparelli told you in his interview that they had no possibility to read, reflect, discuss. I concur. If you throw in the dangerous proximity with the U.S., the picture is complete."
You are really mad at the U.S. You're still a Marxist to the core.
"This is not the problem. Fact is, false democracies frighten me. Do you call democracy what goes on beyond Niagara Falls, where, just as a matter of example, a man can't rely on a good sanitary assistance unless he has a healthy bank account? Luckily, Canada is not like that, but the proximity is dangerous. Add the abandonment of Italy."
What are the most evident effects of this abandonment?
"I'll make you some paradoxical examples that convey the meaning. One of the most evident effects of the abandonment is the way Woodbridge roads are designed, seemingly in order to avoid buses entering them. Because a bus means misery, in the opinion of many in our community. Richness, on the contrary, means three or four cars per family."
I don't understand the connection among buses, four cars per family and abandonment.
"I'll make myself clear: even in Italy there are people who parade their riches, but they aren't taken as models. If ostentation has become a model to follow, this means that the natural Italian sobriety has been forgotten. It also means nobody reminded Italian Canadians of it. Another effect of the abandonment, still speaking by paradoxes, is the lack of squares in Woodbridge. Italian Torontonians built their golden ghetto, Woodbridge, without any square. Strange, isn't it? Because squares in Italy are not just an architectural and town planning element, they're also an important centre of social life. In this case also, an important Italian peculiarity was forgotten and nobody reminded us of it. Do you understand what I mean? Abandonment by Italy means that our people here have forgotten about Italian culture, and our culture is not just made of Dante and Pirandello, whom many talk about, maybe without reading a line."
We talked about effects. Where's the cause? Political choices, I believe.
"Well, not only that. Since World War II Italy thought of everything except those who had left. They were told: get a passport and go away, and when you'll have made a fortune, send back some money. Absolutely nothing was given in exchange. Abandonment, as I said. These were the political reasons, but there are also technical reasons, even more dangerous."
What are you alluding to?
"To Italian bureaucracy, which does as it pleases, especially at the Foreign Ministry. Ministers and governments can come and go, but bureaucracy is there, and never moved from its positions of 30 or 40 years ago. At the time, the problem was how to get rid of a number of citizens, in order for those who remained to gain some space. But in spite of all this, it's moving to see how, Italy notwithstanding, Italian Canadians maintain an intense affection towards Italy."
And politically, how are we seen by Canadians?
"As a strong ethnic group. As an ethnic group, mind you, not as full-fledged Canadian citizens. Once in a while they appoint an Italian Canadian minister just to keep us happy. They are wrong: they should appoint ministers because they are capable people, not because they have an Italian heritage. And there is also the other side of the coin: even if an Italian is worthy, he does not always make a career. Because he's Italian."
What about multiculturalism?
"It's a two-edged sword: it allows you to keep your identity, but at the same time it closes you in a ghetto. Multiculturalism, unfortunately and against the intentions of its proposers, did not help integration. Do you read what Canadian newspapers write? They keep calling people Italian Canadian, Chinese Canadian, Spanish Canadian, even after they've been here for 30 or 40 years, a lifetime, when they're effectively Canadians, simply because they want these people to be forever linked to their origins, much like a stigmata. It is only logical, then, that places like Woodbridge or Chinatown get built: ghettoes with open doors, but still ghettoes. And it is logical that our fellow countrymen feel uneasy. Abandoned by Italy, considered as foreigners by Canadians, they grow attached to values which are negative values: a luxurious house, a big car, marriages with a thousand guests, brand-name dresses. And under the dress, nothing. Or very little."


(translated by Emanuele Oriano)

Publication Date: 2002-12-22
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2187