From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Sat Mar 22 2003 - 16:39:34 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Spike:
>
>>The locals often turned out to be unsuitable
>>construction workers: they had a far too casual
>>outlook on life, wouldn't show up on time, wouldn't
>>show up consistently, would wander off the job...
>> ...Often the result is much mutual frustration.
>
> So we are compelled to imagine how we would feel in
> the shoes of the villagers with their "limitations"...
Ja, and part of the problem was that the culture
clash was exaggerated greatly by the medical students
being preselected from the type-A super achiever
types. One can imagine the get-it-done-NOW types
trying to work with those who had lived the same
way since prehistoric times.
The villages where they were trying to set up shop
were in the waaay outback. It seems logical to
imagine those villages suffer multi-generational
brain drain in Africa the same as we discussed
happening in rural America: those with talent,
ability and get-up-and-go, do exactly that. They
learn English or French, then leave for the city,
never to return. One can scarcely blame them.
One of the lessons learned by my missionary friends
was that going into the remote villages was simply
too ambitious. The medical students would do better
by setting up shop in the middle of the most modern
African city, train the locals in medical technology
and send them out instead.
> Sometimes they'd have to sit you
> down in a chair and practically brow beat it into
> you.
>
> The most frightful part is that they would be
> absolutely right...
Well, partially right. The missionaries had imported a
bunch of building materials for the clinic since
that cannot be practically built from the available
indigenous materials: western doctors cannot perform
surgery unless they have cleanroom conditions,
otherwise the risk of infection is too great.
On the other hand, the Africans generally had no
immunity to antibiotics, so they were highly
effective. Perhaps they could do some limited
surgery in less-than-optimal sanitary conditions,
I suggested, along with liberal use of antibiotics,
thus obviating the need for all the expensive block
and other materials.
In response, the father of my girlfriend made an
interesting comment. He said that the sturdy
building materials were mostly to protect the medical
supplies from theft.
My notion: instead of building a clinic in place,
to build a railroad and set up a box car as a
rolling clinic, this kind of structure being
inherently secure.
spike
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