Surgery and Healing in the Developing World - Dartmouth-Hitchcock

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44 Surgery and Healing in the Developing World
Having progressed successfully about 10 miles, we reach a new, swiftly-moving
river across the road. Our driver negotiates our way to get onto a large open lorry.
Quickly, bags are transferred, good-byes are said, and we clamber aboard this 2-3
ton behemoth, whose driver was surely risking a cruise into the Bay with the
vehicle and its precious cargo. However, the passage through 100 yards of invisible
road was successful. We disembarked onto a waiting bus, on which we purchased
a seventh seat for our bags, since we wanted them neither waterlogged in nor
stolen from the baggage compartment. Interesting bus ... ancient, broken seats and
windows, without air conditioning (temperature above 90 degrees, windows closed
because of the heavy rain), without wiper blades, the floor dappled with spit (betel
nut) and other body fluids. Interesting ride ... most everybody smoking, a disgusting
blend of body odors, only one other female on board, a Muslim in traditional
borka covering all but her eyes. The bus slowed, then stopped in a tiny village,
where a snarl of trucks, buses, rickshaws, cattle, pedestrians precluded further
passage. But, now about half-way in our journey, we definitely were committed.
We threaded our way through the jam in knee-deep water, each carrying a
bag, for about a mile. Cycle-rickshaws, now on visible pavement, were eager to
transport us the next leg. We passed villages under water, vehicles tipped over the
edge of a road with NO shoulder. The locals were losing their crops (rice drowns),
their homes, their businesses, and in some cases, their lives. After approximately 8
miles the road vanishes under water. We notice a line of Bengalis trudging single-file,
bags atop their heads, through neck-deep water to the next land mass at least 2
miles distant. Several hundred Bengalis anxiously mill around this point of impasse,
when a lone dugout canoe, powered by thrusts of a bamboo pole, appears.
Upon landing, passengers quickly jump out. From out of the chaos and cacophony
of a panicked crowd, presumably many of whom wished to embark the canoe for
transit to the other side, appears a very tall, distinguished Bengali man, taller
than any local I had seen in my mission term. He speaks imperiously to the canoe’s
captain. A sea of heads turns in our direction. Before we had time to think of
what being marooned in a remote, flooding Bangladeshi village might entail, we
are hustled into the canoe. About 15 frantic Bengalis clamber aboard from the
other side. As we move out from shore, I turn to salute in gratitude the man (an
angel?), who had arranged this miracle, but despite his prominence he was not to
be seen. Since the canoe’s bow features a one-foot diameter hole, we all huddle in
its stern. Baling, stabbing the bamboo pole into dying rice paddies, but mostly
praying, we land safely nearly 2 hours later. A van takes us the final leg to the
doorstep of the mission’s guest house, over 7 hours and 65 miles from Memorial
Christian Hospital!
Having recounted the suspenseful exit from Bangladesh in some detail, I must
say that within I experienced a strong surge of ambivalence as I departed a land
in such desperate need for America, truly the land of plenty. Certainly, I contributed
medical expertise and training. Lives were saved, yet so many were lost tragically
to trauma, malaria, advanced malignancy, complications of pregnancy ...
all against the backdrop of profound protein-calorie malnutrition, high suspicion
of a Christian hospital’s work in a Muslim country and an impoverished
government’s inability and/or unwillingness to provide even the rudiments of political
stability and infrastructure. In my view, most heartbreaking of all, though,
is the harsh reality of an unknowing and uncaring world marching lockstep into
the marvels of 21st century technology.”