Church with the Aka and other things

Greetings once again from Congo!

        This past Sunday I had the delightful opportunity to go to church in one of the nearby Aka villages.  As I mentioned before, the Aka are one of the pygmy tribes.  They are traditionally a hunter-gatherer people that lives in the jungles of Congo.  Lately, however, Bantu have been deforesting much of the rain forest and the Aka are quickly finding themselves without livelihood and without a home.  My heart really goes out to these people; they have been the underdogs in Congo for far too long.  Even now, they are still looked down upon; today in the ER I had to kick out a patient's family members who had taken over an Aka patient's bed and made her sit outside.

         Despite the oppression they have and continue to suffer, the Aka are a very joyful people and extremely friendly, which was evident as soon as we set foot in the village.  We had driven in a Ford pickup truck, the bed of which quickly filled up with Aka women and children whom we picked up along the way.  In the village, Sarah gave us a tour.  There were many huts in this village, some mud but some brick or stone.   The church building look brand new; it was made out of stone and had a nice tin roof.  The pews were small wooden planks that reminded me of those in the Notre Dame football stadium (which is fitting, given that the service lasted about as long as a football game).  Men sat on one side of the aisle and women and children sat on the other side.  No one was in much of a rush to get things started; people gradually trickled in until a critical mass was reached, at which point the pastor got up and led us in song.  We sang a capella to the beat of a drum played by one of the boys.  They have this beautiful call-and-response style of singing (which, I'm told, the early church employed as well).  There were one or two leaders who would sing a couple of verses and the congregation would repeat them back. Since I really don't know any Lingala, this was a good way for me to learn!

        I'm not entirely sure when we had the sermon; there were several lengthy periods of monologue by the pastor, but I'm told a good bit of it was announcements.  The church is often a means of distributing news to the community.  Sarah translated a little bit, but a lot of what he spoke was in tribal language different from Lingala.  At one point, Sara got up to teach the story of Moses. This was very entertaining to watch, as the Aka people were very expressive and engaged in the story, ooing and aaahing with every twist of the plot.  Of course, the fact that Sara was telling the whole thing in an African tribal language added a good bit of comedy; I was reminded of that scene in Star Wars when C3P0 is telling stories to the Ewoks (that's right, I just made a Star Wars reference).

         After the worship service, everyone lined up to shake our hands.  There were no "Sunday morning greeters here"; everyone was a greeter!  After we made it through the line, Sara grabbed my arm and pointed to a mother with a little kid who did not look so good.  She asked me if I could check him out.  I went to the truck and brought back our little black bag that's full of medical supplies.  I examined the little kid and was pretty certain he had malaria (or "palidisme" as they call it here).  Sara had anti-malaria medication in the bag, so I divided it up and wrapped the pills in paper and wrote directions for taking them.  Before I was finished, another mother brought her child over to me and he also looked like he had malaria.  In no time at all, half the church was filled with sick patients who wanted healing.  I asked Sara what we should do and she simply replied, "what do you think we should do?".  I realized that I was kind of in charge here, medically speaking, which was a scary feeling.  Out in the middle of nowhere, with no book or computer to check the dosages, no attending to catch my mistakes (which are usually many), and no really good way to follow up on these patients and make sure they are taking their medication.  Well, I did my level best.  Thankfully, Sara is a nurse and has many years of experience working with these people, so she baled me out in a lot of ways.  There were also a couple pre-med students who pitched in.  At the end, I remember feeling incredibly nervous, not just because I wondered if I had done things right, but because I knew that if I hadn't, it would be hard for these people to get access to care.  So I prayed. I prayed out loud for all the patients in the church and committed their care to God.  A cop out? I think not.  I was simply reminded of the fact that they are in His care anyway, not mine.

          Before we headed back, however, there was one patient I was concerned about.  He was a man in his 40's who had a small cut on his foot that had swollen up pretty big.  I asked him if he had had a tetanus shot.  He said no.  Sara said we could take him back to the hospital, so we loaded up this man and his daughter into the pickup and drove back to the hospital.  When we got there, we brought him to the ER.  He looked so out of place at this hospital; such a small man in such raggedy clothes surrounded by the nursing staff  that towered over him in their cleanly pressed scrubs.  The on call nurse said we couldn't get him vaccinated or give him anti-tetanus treatment until Monday (nothing in the hospital is ever open when you need it!), so we went about trying to figure out what we would do for the night.  Sara had to head back to the mission, but she said she would return later. In the meantime, I tried to find him and his daughter some food to eat and a bed to sleep on.  The food was easy; James and I had lots of leftovers, so I made a big plate and gave it to them to eat while I investigated the bed.  The on call nurse had told me that all the beds in the hospital were full.  I was extremely skeptical of this, since I had rounded that morning and knew that half the surgical suite was empty.  Nevertheless,  I went to Jean de Dieu's house; he is the head of the nursing staff (but practically speaking, is much more like a PA).  He told me I could kick out patients who had been discharged but hadn't paid.  On my way back to the ER, I ran into Maski, a short little nurse who looks like Speedy Gonzalez.  He told me that there were beds free in the surgery suite.  Voila!

        I got a wheel chair for my Aka friend and had the security guard wheel him to his bed.  His daughter, however, was a little more difficult.  She was very frightened of the hospital and was beginning to cry.  It's hard enough trying to comfort a crying child, even more hard when you don't speak their language, but somehow, I managed to convince her that it was safe to follow me and I brought her to where her dad was staying.  I could see that she was still pretty upset, so I sprinted back to our house to get the last of our coconut cookies.  I put one in her hand and mimed eating.  She hesitantly took a nibble, but once she realize what it was, she got a big smile and wolfed the rest down.

         The sad part of this story, is that when I went to his bed the next morning, they was gone.  I asked Sara what had happened to him, and she had no idea.  It was frustrating, having gone to such lengths to get someone the care they need, only to have them reject it.  Just like life and death, you can't win them all.

         On a more positive note, I had the privilege of doing rounds with Jean de Dieu.  Jean is a character.  He's easily the funniest person here and fittingly also possesses the world's best laugh.  I don't understand what he's laughing at half the time, but his laugh is so infectious that I can't help but laugh too.  I just about lost it today when we were checking up on this overweight lady with a respiratory infection.  Jean was doing her physical exam and was giggling like a school girl the entire time, not entirely sure why; in the States, I'm pretty sure you could get sued for that.  Jean has been learning English and is probably the best English speaker of the Africans staff (admittedly, not a high bar to pass).  He is proficient enough to make puns in English, which made me pleasantly surprised.  We saw a premature baby this morning, whose weight we've been monitoring closely.  After looking the patient over, Jean said "and now we wait for weight."  He repeated it several times until he was sure I got it, and then let out a roar of laughter.

        It's really quite hard to believe I will be gone this time next week. I have just started to feel at home here and really wish I could stay here for a long time...

Ah such is life.  I hope to make the best of my last few days here and go out on a good note.  On the bucket list is eating Little Jerry the Chicken, camping with the Aka Friday night, and maybe playing music one last time.

As usual, here are a few photos to go along with the stories:

Here's a picture of the village we went to church at.  The stone building on the right is the church.  The village itself extended to the left for about 200 yds or so.

This is a picture from the Aka church service when the congregation all lined up to greet us afterwards.

I like this picture, or rather, what it reminds me of.  This appeared to be some sort of gathering place in the village; if you notice, the center of the shelter is a tree that sprouts up and then spreads over the top of the shelter in nice yellow flowers.  Also, you can see that the middle boy of the three on the bench is albino.  Yes, he's an albino African.  Apparently, it used to be (and still is, in some places) a great stigma to be an albino in Africa, but one of Dr. Harvey's daughters told us that now people around here generally understand what albinism is and are accepting of it.  This little boy looked pretty happy and everyone seemed to treat him the same.

Here's a picture of the back of the pickup truck with all of the Aka loaded in.  I think we counted 33 passengers in all!

Well that's all for now.  I will try to write again before I leave, but no promises.

Cheers,

Ben