Lunchtime Chit-Chat
Conference attendees crowd our little courtyard, lined up around the serving tables to receive their stewed beef, ugali, chicken, goat or rice. Sometimes green bananas are cooked with the goat or stewed beef and the bananas taste just like potatoes. Delicious. Staff members hang back, however, to make sure attendees get food first, in case we run short. Every day we run short of chicken and several of us whine because we feel we just haven't eaten if there's no chicken. That's a Luo thing and it's an American thing. So Liz, the director's admin, and I catch on they've been serving the big wigs in the common break room and often there are leftovers, like goat ribs! One visiting dignitary assures me it's okay to hold the long rib with my fingers and eat the meat from the bone with my teeth.
Today, I'm standing in line behind Jack Bryant, a lovable, white-haired professor from Charlottesville, Virginia. Jack is invited by universities the world over to talk about his experiences in working with developing countries. He and I jokingly lament the lack of chicken. Then he says, “Jaap Koot had an interesting remark in his session today.” Jaap Koot is a public health consultant from Holland and he's at the conference to present on community-based action research. Jack tells me that while Jaap is addressing the group, he asks those who live in rural areas to raise their hands. Nearly 70 hands go up because health workers from TICH's partnership communities are attending the conference. Community Health Workers (CHWs) are women who volunteer their time to learn about primary health care so they can minister to their neighbors' illnesses. Jaap then asks them to keep their hands up if their family has ever experienced the death of a child.
Jack says, “When he asked them to keep their hands up if they had lost a child, nearly all the hands stayed up,” and Jack's voice catches on the word “all” and his eyes tear up. I reach out without thinking and grip his upper arm while he collects his emotions. “Jaap then said, 'I'm 52-years-old and my family has never lost a child, not my immediate family nor my extended family.'”
But here is a room full of 70-odd women, a room full of mamas from the community who bear the brunt of providing for their families, and nearly everyone of them represents a family that has lost a child.
Later, as we wait for a party to start in the grassy yard of TICH's medical clinic, Jack and I sit side by side talking about his years of travel. After his stint as a World War II fighter pilot, he visits his “wingman's” family in Lebanon, where he falls ill. Jack is impressed with the Lebanese doctors who treat him and he decides to become a doctor himself. Columbia University for med school, then Vermont, where he's teaching in a medical college, until he receives a phone call from his old professor who says, “Jack, we need you to visit developing countries and report on their health issues.” So two years and 27 countries later, he's asked to go to Bangkok, to help start a new public health department at their university—and to write a book about health care in developing countries, which he does. After Thailand, Jack lives in Pakistan and Geneva and the US, among other countries, while he works to advance development in oppressed nations.
Jack tells me about Dr. Arole in Jamkhed, India, who, along with his wife Mabelle in the early 60's, vowed to use their medical degrees to work with the poorest of the poor in rural India. “They've written a book about their community work,” Jack tells me. The next morning, Jack calls me into his temporary office at TICH and says, “I have something to show you,” and he holds up the book entitled, “Jamkhed.” “Listen to this,” Jack says and he begins to read to me. I lean forward, my elbow on the chair arm and chin resting on my palm, soaking up each syllable spoken by Jack's wise and caring voice:
...May 1988, in a huge conference hall in Washington, D.C., over a thousand participants listen with rapt attention to Muktabai Pol, a village health worker from Jamkhed, India. The listeners include officials from WHO and UNICEF, ministers of health, health professionals and representatives of universities from many parts of the world. Muktabai shares her experience of providing primary health care in a rmeote Indian village. She concludes her speech by pointing to the glittering lights in the hall. “This is a beautiful hall and the shining chandeliers are a treat to watch,” she says. “One has to travel thousands of miles to come see their beauty. The doctors are like these chandeliers, beautiful and exquisite, but expensive and inaccessible.” She then pulls out two wick lamps from her purse. She lights one. “This lamp is inexpensive and simple, but unlike the chandelier, it can transfer its light to another lamp.” She lights the other wick lamp with the first. Holding up both lamps in her outstretched hands she says, “I am like this lamp, lighting the lamp of better health. Workers like me can light another and another and thus encircle the whole earth. This is Health for All.” The audience rises to its feet in a standing ovation...
Chandeliers. Inaccessibility. Lamps. Jack and I both laugh nervously to hide our tears. I think of the 70-odd mamas who live in rural communities within a two-hour drive of Kisumu. I see the light of their lamp as they pass it amongst their neighbors and fellow workers. I marvel at what TICH has accomplished, providing training in rigorous, scientific research to students while reaching out to educate the mama, who plants crops and feeds chickens and hauls water and cooks and cleans and builds her house out of mud and straw to shelter her children. This conference is attended by professors in public health and anthropological fields, who sit next to bowed, weathered mamas with kerchiefs tied around their heads and shawls encircling her shoulders. We all learn from each other.
Later, I run into Jack in the e-center and he says, “I have something to show you.” This sentence is quickly becoming my favorite sentence in the whole world.
“I have something to show you.”
So we walk to the front porch of TICH and nestle into the wicker chairs. Jack flips through his notebook and says, “I've written a poem entitled 'Africa's Orphans.'” If only I could put his poem on this blog! As Jack reads his poem to me, again I relax, letting the words flow over me. I'm floating in the hope his words create around us, around TICH, around this community stretching two blocks away to the slums of Nyalenda. Jack and I are moved by the thought of the orphans' bright eyes shining out of their dark life, by the mama's raised hand signifying a child's death, by the passing of light from self-less health worker to self-less health worker. We are moved. And we are moved again each day.
Even after 50 years of working in developing countries, Jack is still moved.
Today, I'm standing in line behind Jack Bryant, a lovable, white-haired professor from Charlottesville, Virginia. Jack is invited by universities the world over to talk about his experiences in working with developing countries. He and I jokingly lament the lack of chicken. Then he says, “Jaap Koot had an interesting remark in his session today.” Jaap Koot is a public health consultant from Holland and he's at the conference to present on community-based action research. Jack tells me that while Jaap is addressing the group, he asks those who live in rural areas to raise their hands. Nearly 70 hands go up because health workers from TICH's partnership communities are attending the conference. Community Health Workers (CHWs) are women who volunteer their time to learn about primary health care so they can minister to their neighbors' illnesses. Jaap then asks them to keep their hands up if their family has ever experienced the death of a child.
Jack says, “When he asked them to keep their hands up if they had lost a child, nearly all the hands stayed up,” and Jack's voice catches on the word “all” and his eyes tear up. I reach out without thinking and grip his upper arm while he collects his emotions. “Jaap then said, 'I'm 52-years-old and my family has never lost a child, not my immediate family nor my extended family.'”
But here is a room full of 70-odd women, a room full of mamas from the community who bear the brunt of providing for their families, and nearly everyone of them represents a family that has lost a child.
Later, as we wait for a party to start in the grassy yard of TICH's medical clinic, Jack and I sit side by side talking about his years of travel. After his stint as a World War II fighter pilot, he visits his “wingman's” family in Lebanon, where he falls ill. Jack is impressed with the Lebanese doctors who treat him and he decides to become a doctor himself. Columbia University for med school, then Vermont, where he's teaching in a medical college, until he receives a phone call from his old professor who says, “Jack, we need you to visit developing countries and report on their health issues.” So two years and 27 countries later, he's asked to go to Bangkok, to help start a new public health department at their university—and to write a book about health care in developing countries, which he does. After Thailand, Jack lives in Pakistan and Geneva and the US, among other countries, while he works to advance development in oppressed nations.
Jack tells me about Dr. Arole in Jamkhed, India, who, along with his wife Mabelle in the early 60's, vowed to use their medical degrees to work with the poorest of the poor in rural India. “They've written a book about their community work,” Jack tells me. The next morning, Jack calls me into his temporary office at TICH and says, “I have something to show you,” and he holds up the book entitled, “Jamkhed.” “Listen to this,” Jack says and he begins to read to me. I lean forward, my elbow on the chair arm and chin resting on my palm, soaking up each syllable spoken by Jack's wise and caring voice:
...May 1988, in a huge conference hall in Washington, D.C., over a thousand participants listen with rapt attention to Muktabai Pol, a village health worker from Jamkhed, India. The listeners include officials from WHO and UNICEF, ministers of health, health professionals and representatives of universities from many parts of the world. Muktabai shares her experience of providing primary health care in a rmeote Indian village. She concludes her speech by pointing to the glittering lights in the hall. “This is a beautiful hall and the shining chandeliers are a treat to watch,” she says. “One has to travel thousands of miles to come see their beauty. The doctors are like these chandeliers, beautiful and exquisite, but expensive and inaccessible.” She then pulls out two wick lamps from her purse. She lights one. “This lamp is inexpensive and simple, but unlike the chandelier, it can transfer its light to another lamp.” She lights the other wick lamp with the first. Holding up both lamps in her outstretched hands she says, “I am like this lamp, lighting the lamp of better health. Workers like me can light another and another and thus encircle the whole earth. This is Health for All.” The audience rises to its feet in a standing ovation...
Chandeliers. Inaccessibility. Lamps. Jack and I both laugh nervously to hide our tears. I think of the 70-odd mamas who live in rural communities within a two-hour drive of Kisumu. I see the light of their lamp as they pass it amongst their neighbors and fellow workers. I marvel at what TICH has accomplished, providing training in rigorous, scientific research to students while reaching out to educate the mama, who plants crops and feeds chickens and hauls water and cooks and cleans and builds her house out of mud and straw to shelter her children. This conference is attended by professors in public health and anthropological fields, who sit next to bowed, weathered mamas with kerchiefs tied around their heads and shawls encircling her shoulders. We all learn from each other.
Later, I run into Jack in the e-center and he says, “I have something to show you.” This sentence is quickly becoming my favorite sentence in the whole world.
“I have something to show you.”
So we walk to the front porch of TICH and nestle into the wicker chairs. Jack flips through his notebook and says, “I've written a poem entitled 'Africa's Orphans.'” If only I could put his poem on this blog! As Jack reads his poem to me, again I relax, letting the words flow over me. I'm floating in the hope his words create around us, around TICH, around this community stretching two blocks away to the slums of Nyalenda. Jack and I are moved by the thought of the orphans' bright eyes shining out of their dark life, by the mama's raised hand signifying a child's death, by the passing of light from self-less health worker to self-less health worker. We are moved. And we are moved again each day.
Even after 50 years of working in developing countries, Jack is still moved.
posted by Cindi at 4:01 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home