To push those images out of my mind, but I couldn’t. Starvation were the scourge of the villagers. Had no trained Congolese physicians, and most of the foreignĭoctors had already fled the country. Her hospital mission station by a bunch of marauding men. Vivid story of an American woman, a doctor, who was gang-raped at Staged horrible ritual killings to terrify their enemies. Spears and magic potions to protect themselves from bullets. In the interior, and of primitive tribesmen arming themselves with Printed of marauding soldiers killing people and plundering villages To their skirts as they fled their destroyed villages. Malnourished babies on their backs and frightened children clinging Magazines showed pictures of refugees, mostly skinny women with To try to hold Congo together as a nation. Stop the foreign mercenary soldiers from supporting Tshombe, and The United Nations sent “peacekeepers” to Of the foreign exchange for Congo, had also rebelled against the Provinces that was rich in copper and diamonds, the source of most Large tribes that had supported him were now in rebellion against They reported that in the wake of Lumumba’s murder, several Television, and radio continued to cover the chaos and conflict Was finished-if the Congo had settled down by that time.
Someday, maybe to Congo in a few years when my specialty training Had known a lot of blacks, and I had considered going to Africa Known a girl from India and had thought in terms of going there. Surgery and hoped to work overseas someday, maybe as a missionaryĭoctor, but had never actually been out of the United States. Operations, conferences, and never-ending stacks of charts withĭischarge summaries to be dictated. Hours with the constant pressure of new patients, surgical A surgical resident in a university medical center works long
I had a lot of other things on my mind, and I was tired all the I had to be back at the hospital by 6:30 the Into the kitchen and ate leftovers from supper. I knew Congo was in desperate need of doctors and medical help,īut I also knew the country needed a stable government. “I don’t know,” I shrugged, tossing the postcard onto the table. Read, and when I looked up she asked, “Why would any Americanĭoctor want to go to Congo and get into the middle of that mess?” My wife, Winkie, had been watching me as I TheĬard asked me to write to them if I could go and help, even for as In Congo, the disappearance of Prime Minister Lumumba, and theĬollapse of the medical care system had brought on the crisis. The card said there was an urgent need for Americanĭoctors to staff the abandoned hospitals in Congo. My wife handed me the plain, cream-colored postcard late thatĮvening in early December 1960.
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