Attack of the Hound of Malembi

[Iain]

Greg Laden, an anthropologist blogger, has been recently posting up blog entries about his field work experience in Zaire, beyond the 'Blender Line' and the 'Beer Line'.

This was posted today - http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/06/attack_of_the_hound_of_malembi.php

It's fascinating initially, to me at least, because of the discussion that was necessary with the local people after the dog bit six people. Here he describes the 'coin drop' moment:

No one was getting it. This was due, in part, to the lack of day to day discourse on disease theory, infectious disease, and so on. And partly because it was very very unusual that we, the outsiders, would know something that they, the locals, would not know. We had spent a very long period of time and a great deal of effort convincing the people here that we did not have much to offer them, but that they had a lot to offer us in terms of knowledge, and indeed, the knowledge generally flowed one way, from them to us. It was against our policies to have much knowledge flowing the other way. That would often constitute undue interference. We wanted them to teach us, not the other way around. That may be the main reason that no one was getting it.

Finally, here's what happened: Grinker handed me one of the medical books that had a description of the rabies symptoms in it, and said "Read this out loud for everyone to hear, one sentence at a time. I'll act it out."

So we made a bit of space in the middle of the crowd, and I translated the descriptions of the symptoms of rabies as Grinker acted them out. Grinker sucks as an actor, but he did a pretty good job at foaming at the mouth, convulsions, and hydrophobia. Finally, I threw a glass of water on him and he screamed and screamed at the top of his lungs, rolled around in a convulsive fit for a while, and died.

The crowd fell silent. Suddenly, one of the men from the village next to our base camp started saying something -- in an agitated fashion -- in the language that these people speak that we only understood a few words of. But I heard the word dog, and the word for illness. Someone else started to speak and I heard the mention of a year, a date a few years back, and someone's name and the word for "old woman" and the word for "to die."

Others joined in. People were remembering a story. They were piecing together previously unconnected events that had happened several years ago. One of the men stood up and shouted something out and pointed to Grinker and said in KiSwahili "Just like that. There was a woman here, seven or eight years ago, who was bitten by a dog and two weeks later she died just like that!"

Bingo. Now everyone had it.

So, they trekked to an old mission where Greg fixed the old radio and radioed out on a frequency that they thought might be monitored. They had no receiver, just a transmitter so they had no idea if they were being heard. They then cleared the old mission airstrip. A Cessna appeared and dropped 6 cure doses of rabies.

Six cure doses of rabies vaccine, and six reusable, new needles, packed in such a was as to easily survive a drop from a passing small plane. The nurse, who happened to be living at this mission, started treatment right away. Everyone lived.

~~~

Over a year later I was in the city arranging to fly into the very airstrip we had cleared. I was speaking with the Missionary Air Fellowship pilot about this.

"You are going to have to navigate, because I have no idea where this is."

"No problem" I confidently replied, having no idea if I could do this or not.

"If you can't find the airstrip ... or if I don't like the looks of it ... we fly on to Beni and you'll actually be farther from your destination than you are now."

"I'll take my chances. No problem," secretly calculating how I was going to get to the study site from Beni should that happen.

"By the way," he suddenly said. "I'm the pilot who dropped that rabies vaccine last year!"

"You are! Well, thanks, you saved six lives!"

"Well, that was God's work, I was just helping," he laughed. "By the way, how are they doing?"

"Fine, all six are just fine."

"Are they back in the 'States?"

"Huh?"

"The States, are the six who were bitten back in the States?"

"Well, ah, no, they were Zairois, from a nearby village. They weren't Americans."

Silence.

Then ... "Well, OK, I'll see you in the morning at the airport. Bring your map!"

So the next day I met up with the pilot, and we found the airstrip, and landed with no difficulties. Well, the landing was not really without incident, but that is another story for another time. But in any event, I got to the project area in a day or two.

Then, a month later, someone passing by the research camp stopped in with a bag of stuff.

"This is from Andudu, some mail that was dropped there for the Americans," he said.

"Thanks." ... and when we opened the mail, there was an item from the Missionary Air Fellowship.

It was a bill for over $600.00, for rabies vaccine and the cost of flying the vaccine from Nairobi, Kenya. Some 16 months after the fact, and we just got the bill. And the date the bill was written was one day after that conversation with the pilot.

[AZRedhawk44]

Sounds like the pilot thinks that Africa is a lost cause and more of a social experiment than an actual humanitarian mission.  Willing to help westerners, but not Africans.

Can't tell if it's racism or just latent frustration at the continent to make any progress in at least 2 generations of Western education and aid.

[roo_ster]

I recall Kim DuToit had a very bleak view of the continent.

Kind of difficult to make progress when the mean IQ is 70, a large proportion of the population suffers from malaria, and another large proportion of the population suffers from AIDS. 

Toss in vicious tribal warfare that paused only for a few decades while the imperialists exploited the place in new ways, and ladle over top the whole thing a thick, viscous scum of socialism and victimology, and you get a right mess of human misery.

Oh, and the preferred means to pump aid into the country is to throw it at the most corrupt leaders the world has yet to spawn.

I can not claim to understand the pilot's actions, but I suspect despair might be one of the primary components.

[Stand_watie]

Sounds like the pilot thinks that Africa is a lost cause and more of a social experiment than an actual humanitarian mission.  Willing to help westerners, but not Africans.

Can't tell if it's racism or just latent frustration at the continent to make any progress in at least 2 generations of Western education and aid.

I doubt if the pilot had any more to do with it, than just reporting back to his local person in charge. The scenario described sounds like an issue of money/billing issues/government aid/philanthropic beaurocracy. I doubt anyone at "Missionary air fellowship" actually expected that Zairos would pay the bill. They were probably fulfilling a requirement of U.S. beaurocrats to actually submit a bill and have it be unpaid, in order to submit a bill to Uncle Sugar.

Edited to add:


If my hypothethis is correct, the billing party was rather shortsighted from the perspective of PR, not to include with the bill, an explanation of the reasoning behind the bill.

[LadySmith]

That description of the "coin drop" moment was pretty cool.

[Stand_watie]

I recall Kim DuToit had a very bleak view of the continent.

Kind of difficult to make progress when the mean IQ is 70....

I usually agree with Kim DuToit's thinking, but I generally disagree with the notion that substantial differences of intellect can be explained by race. My own experience with people of various races suggests to me that the VAST majority of racial difference in intellect is due to nurture rather than nature.

[Iain]

That description of the "coin drop" moment was pretty cool.

I thought it was too. It's interesting to see what it takes to make a connection of cause and effect that we take for granted. Human beings have spent much more of their history not understanding these things than understanding.

[roo_ster]

I usually agree with Kim DuToit's thinking, but I generally disagree with the notion that substantial differences of intellect can be explained by race. My own experience with people of various races suggests to me that the VAST majority of racial difference in intellect is due to nurture rather than nature.

In the case of Africa, the consensus is that a maximum of 15 points is attributable to diet.

As for your other contentions, the empirical data inconveniently states the contrary position. 

This does not mean that the moral and ethical course of action is not to treat the humans that one comes into contact as more or less* individuals but as group members.







* Within reason and experience.

[roo_ster]

I thought it was too. It's interesting to see what it takes to make a connection of cause and effect that we take for granted. Human beings have spent much more of their history not understanding these things than understanding.

Good point.  Also, making the jump to abstract logical thought (best exemplified by mathematics) is wholly un-natural to the majority of humanity's existence.

[LadySmith]

Also, making the jump to abstract logical thought (best exemplified by mathematics) is wholly un-natural to the majority of humanity's existence.

Wut?