A tale of  a charitable NGO and two Ethiopian doctors

When it comes to topics, we weekly columnists are not spoilt for choice. Rather, we are ravaged and agonised by priorities. Trying to emulate the scribes I admire, I strive to interpret the “mass-com” tenet of “inform-educate-entertain” as apt reference to current affairs, insight into people and events and a sharing of my own related experiences.

In view of my long and “adventurous” life, I suppose that the sharing of those memorable moments that many of my readers were not privileged to witness should be the core of my ruminations. This, maybe, is what passes for entertainment, apart from the little dances with language. But I am also a mwalimu (pedagogue) and a literary practitioner. So, I am also expected to part with and impart a few pieces of solid knowledge and practical professional tips.

My valuable correspondents’ responses underline the importance of this requirement. The pleasure with which my articles are received when I meet these expectations are matched by the harshness with which I am censured when I appear to fail on this “scholarly” delivery. I am humbly appreciative of all genuine criticism and exposure of my shortcomings.

After all, as we observed recently, the best thing that can happen to writers is that their work is read and responded to. Agualusa, whose writings we chatted about last week, says: “For me it’s very important to know what my readers think... I really think a book is not complete if there is no reader to help me understand what I have written.”

Apart from all the “info-edutainment”, however, I also have to share insights and beliefs or worldviews with my readers. You know, for example, that I seek and greatly value human goodness and the things that unite us as human beings. I also treasure practical gender equity and the power of efficient communication, especially through the spoken word.

These are the things that determine my choices of topic from the whole forest of striking events and happenings in our societies. Since I have now taken you into the inner secrets of my kitchen, maybe you, too, could help me by suggesting topics for our discussion, as some of you have already been doing.

Anyway, what got me on to this lengthy tour of self-revelation (or is it exposure) was partly your constant heart-warming feedback and partly my urge for saying something about two Ethiopian doctors. The first, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is the new Director of the World Health Organization (WHO), appointed sometime in May.

I know very little about Dr Ghebreyesus. All I had heard was that he had been a high-ranking official in the Ethiopian government. His supporters argued that an African was best-placed to understand and tackle Africa’s staggering health problems, like the Ebola conflagration of recent years in West Africa.

But Dr Ghabreyesus’ elevation to the lofty international office brought back to my mind another Ethiopian doctor, about whom I had actually wanted to write for quite a long time. Dr Asrat Mengiste is a personal friend whom I first met in our Upper Hill community nearly seven years ago. He is a topflight reconstructive surgeon and he was working on a number of crucial missions with AMREF when I first made his acquaintance.

Mention of AMREF, our own “Flying Doctor” tradition, immediately aroused my curiosity. Of all the products of Kenya’s controversial colonial history, AMREF, the African Medical and Research Foundation, is probably the most humane.  The vision of its founders, like Dr Michael Wood, the author of Go an Extra Mile, is a strong mitigating factor in the largely justifiable indictment of the colonial settlers as a uniform bunch of heartless, “happy valley” hedonists.

Michael Wood’s mission of extending healthcare to needy cases beyond the reach of the conventional, mainly urban-based services still guides AMREF (rebranded as AMREF  Health Africa) today. Although most prominent, in the popular mind, for its daring airlifts of patients and its plane-delivered treatment, the organisation is involved in a host of other, more fundamental, activities, especially fundraising, research and training.

Dr Mengiste, who kindly took me round their premises in Langata, and explained to me their various operations, including a stunningly well-equipped resource centre, is part of both the airborne and the more down-to-earth activities. As we said earlier, Asrat Mengiste is a reconstructive surgeon, like Sir Michael Wood himself. They used to call them “plastic” surgeons in Wood’s days. But the terminology changed when people realised that there was much more to their work than changing the shapes of people’s noses and giving rich elders facelifts to cheat the wrinkles.

Through AMREF, Dr Mengiste has been flying to all sorts of remote areas in Eastern Africa and beyond to reconstruct the bodies of desperately needy patients. His work is definitely a far cry from the cosmetic luxury of facelifts and suchlike. In Northern Uganda, for example, the good doctor has been involved in reconstructing the severed lips and other facial features of hundreds of victims of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army.

More importantly, Mengiste and his colleagues have made it their mission to train willing fellow doctors on the ground in the techniques and skills of reconstructive surgery. Obviously, one expert, like Mengiste, can only deal with a few patients on a visit to a distant location. But if he can impart his skills and confidence to a number of competent local surgeons, the effects of his work become more lasting and widespread.

Equally importantly, this doctor is an indefatigable emissary of AMREF Health Africa, and is a much sought-after speaker at their fund-raising and other outreach functions around the world. Fortunately, he is an eloquent speaker and a good story-teller, and with his rich bag of anecdotes from the most far-flung corners of this continent, his message, and that of AMREF Health Africa, is invariably well-received.

I have not seen this flying doctor for some time now. But, I still share the smile which I am sure he has restored to many of the Kony terror survivors.

Prof Bukenya is one of the leading scholars of English and Literature in East Africa. [email protected]