gcls_WFP_124

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[newspaper clipping]
the horn sounds for rations he does not wait more than half an hour before appearing with his plate; if he throws all refuse in its proper place; if he does not steal fowls from the missionary or let the latter catch him plundering his fruit trees or his banana plants; if at cleaning-up time on Saturday afternoon he helps without too much outcry; if when the lot falls upon him and his condition allows it, he jumps into the canoe ready to paddle it; if when there are cases and sacks of rice to be unloaded he lends a hand, even if fate has willed that he ash first to be routed out from behind his cooking-pot as fit for the job--any one who does these things and a few others like them passes with us for a virtuous and rational being in whom we gladly overlook many shortcomings in other directions.

"But we are not tried only by the entire absence of discipline in our savages; we suffer from their absolute inability to understand that anything can be valuable. The hospital being so near the forest it is really not at all hard for them to get firewood.

"But, as it is rather less trouble, they prefer to burn the beams and planks which I procure with so much trouble and such heavy expense, and having no place which I can make secure with lock and key, I am quite at a loss for a way of keeping my precious timber safe from them.

"This unsuccessful struggle, repreated day after day, to produce in these savages some notion of what is meant by value, is atrial of patience and nerves as severe as any that can be imagined."

But the humanity of the doctor is ever uppermost. He writes of being "allowed" to spend his life among the savages. he appreciates it when a savage is grateful, and there are some among even the Bendjabis who finally learn that the good doctor is not working among them to enrich himself. One runs to meet him when he is on a journey, or a cherrful halloo floats to him from a passing canoe, and he writes:

"I daresay we should have fewer difficulties with our savages if we could occasionally sit round the fire with them and show ourselves to them as men, and not merely as a medicine-men and custodians of law and order in the hospital.

"But there is no time for that.
"All three of us, we two doctors and Nurse Kottman, are really so overwhelmed with work that the humanity within us can not come out properly. But we can not help it. For the present we can condemned to the trying task of carrying on the struggle with sickness and pain, and to that eveything else ha so give way.
"In the middle of September we get the first rains, and the cry is to bring all building timber under cover. As we have in the hospital hardly a man capable of work, I begin, assisted by two loyal helpers, to haul beas and planks about myself. Suddenly I catch sight of Negro in a white suit sitting by a patient whom he has come to visit.
"Hullo, friend,' I call out, 'won't you lend us a hand?' 'I am an intellectual and don't drag wood about,' came the answer. 'You're lucky,' I reply. I too wanted to become an intellectual, but I didn't succeed.'"

[photograph of seven children hanging out on a wooden bunk bed frame. The photo is captioned: When Sickness Comes to Africa
Sick-bay in the new hospital at Lambarene, which Dr. Schweitzer helped to build with his own hands when he wasn't doctoring, operating nursing, and looking after things in general.]
[photograph of a man with patterened scarring on his face and a necklace made of teeth. The photo is captioned: THE SCARS ON THE FACE OF THE CHIEF OF THE BAPTOOS MAKE HIM THE ADONIS OF HIS TRIBE
To make these scars on the brow, nose, and cheeks is child's play coompared to the painful operation of making those on the lips. Neither boy nor girl, however, would like to be without them.]
[photograph of two children sit in front of an instrument resemblind an extremely large xylophone. The image is captioned: CONGO XYLOPHONISTS AND THEIR HOME-MADE INSTRUMENT]

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