“She overstepped,” Abner Tagoola, head of pediatrics at Jinja Hospital, says in the documentary. “But the role of Renee as to the link to the mortality of these kids, as directly? I don’t think so. Because of the vulnerability of these children, there were a lot of mortalities that were inevitable.”
At the same time, documents, blog entries and archival footage obtained from inside Serving His Children are often damning; Bach appears to make diagnoses, administer tests and medications and question the opinions and decisions of the Black nurses and doctors on her staff.
What emerges is an untidy portrait of a woman who worked to save the lives of many Ugandan children but who was also so confident in her faith that she became blinded to earthly realities.
Bach has not been charged with any crimes in Uganda or the United States, but in 2019, she was sued in Ugandan civil court by Gimbo Zubeda, whose son Twalali died at the clinic, and by Kakai Annet, whose son Elijah also died after receiving treatment. Bach and her charity settled the suit in 2020, agreeing to pay about $9,500 to each of the mothers while avoiding an admission of liability.
In a video conversation last week, Jesko spoke about what drew her to Bach’s story and the dangers of blindly following “the call to help.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What was particularly interesting to you about Bach’s story?
As a director, I love stories where there’s ambiguity. Those are the most interesting stories to tell. People on the internet love stories that are black and white, it’s this or that. But everything has shades of gray. It’s through the messiness of this story that we’re able to look at the really big picture of colonialism and the legacy that’s left, the way that missionaries are able to operate in Uganda and the limits of activism, medical ethics, that kind of thing. I’ve spent a lot of my career reporting in other countries, and as a white American, I’ve experienced firsthand the deference that is often given to us in some of these places.
