At the time that Linda was embarking for Asia, another woman, who'll be called Anne, had just received her undergraduate degree in philosophy from a different college than Linda's. She, too, entertained an idea to engage in social service volunteerism for the upcoming summer months. Yet instead of Asia, her plans inevitably took her to Africa where it had been arranged that she would work with the one doctor available in a region that covered roughly a hundred square miles.
In the territory, various interconnected tribes lived in small communities. Therefore, the doctor's job was to make the rounds and visit one site after another each month after which he would repeat his tour unless an emergency, like a major fire at one of the locations, were to immediately redirect him.
At the same time, each village had at least one paraprofessional health care worker, generally a woman, who delivered babies and provided a modicum of aid in the doctor's absence. So she would be the first person with whom he would consult upon arrival to each tribal compound so as to get an overview about what he was to do next.
Meanwhile, the American lived with one of the health workers near the doctor's hut so that she could learn further about medical intervention from the assistant. As a result, she learned many details about therapeutic care.
Likewise, she learned about its limits. For example, there was in this region, as there was in the area that Linda visited, a dire shortage of medical supplies. Therefore, they had to be doled out very sparingly and only to the recipients who best qualified (i.e., the ones who had the best chances of showing improvement upon receipt of intervention).
This choice naturally precluded people who were either too sick to get well or who were otherwise rejected, as were very old and very injured people. Moreover, the villagers all had a policy that, if someone were somehow grossly defective, he would be left to his own devises and shunned as there simply were not enough food and other supplies to give any to anyone who was severely impaired.
With such a custom in place, it was regretful that approximately a decade earlier a mother, who noted that her child had infrequent seizures, was forced to place him in the dump near to her settlement and he, despite being thought of as doomed to die, managed to stay alive by eating garbage, small grubs, worms, bugs and other discovered fare. So he somehow coped year after year in the trash, outgrew his early childhood convulsions and was, nonetheless, an outcast due to his prior history.
In addition, no one openly communicated with him except for Anne during which time she discovered that he felt ill. As such, she pleaded with the doctor to briefly visit with the boy, who was now a young teen.
In response, the physician got very angry with her and told her that he could get in trouble with the clan's rulers if he did so. Yet, she persisted about it and, finally, he, reluctantly, went to the dump and lightly examined the lad after which he gave him a few tablets and told him to take one a day.
After leaving the youth, he told Anne that she should never ask him to do such an act again and that he only gave the teen sugar pills. Why?
He explained that, aside from having to save the "real" medicine for the strongest members of his community, he realized, upon checking the boy, that he had less than two months to live from parasites that were currently in his intestines, but that were slated to move throughout his body. In short, he was bound to die in short order. Moreover, there simply were no pain drugs to spare to help him through that two month crisis period. No, there were none at all.
He further added, "I neither have the time, nor the supplies, to spend on a hopeless case like him. I need to use my energy and treatments for people who I CAN help."
"Unfortunately, your country and other wealthy ones have lured our doctors and nurses away with promises of high salaries. I am sorry that you have such a scarcity, too, but it makes my time all the more difficult as I have far too many people to tend and not enough money to pay for life saving medication, equipment and stores of simple things like thermometers."
"So if you pray, then pray for that boy. It is all that we can offer him."
