The martyrs among us
On my regular blog, I mentioned the martyrs I knew when I was a missionary....
The reason I left Rhodesia was that one of the doctors at a Swedish mission hospital was shot when he went to the hospital for an emergency...
People don't realize that you make choices...and I discussed this with one of my doctor friends...we both decided to stay until things got bad...
You see, if you are a doctor and you leave, people die. But if you are killed, you aren't doing anyone a favor. So you chose.
People don't realize that doctors and nurses and EMT's chose all the time...
This patient needs care, but there is blood all over and he may be HIV positive...yes, gloves protect, but the shattered glass all over the wounds often pierce the gloves.
So you care for him anyway.
I once had a patient stop breathing on me, and there was no Ambu bag nearby, so I did mouth to mouth for about a minute til it was fetched...later it turned out that he had TB...
Ditto here.
You don't chose to be a martyr. You chose to help, and judge the risk/benefit ratio.
So that means you shudder when you go to the hospital at night (I always took my dog with me for protection). You shudder on bus day, when the guerillas would probably be coming into town. You shudder and don't answer your door at night.
And you judge whether or not the local guerillas will kill you or not. OR the local toughs or the local troublemakers or the local witchdoctors...
In my case, the local guerillas were helpful...when they came to the hospital (shortly after I left)
they sent a teacher to "invite" the nuns to a pep ralley that they held at the local high school...
But even if these "official" groups were friendly, that didn't mean you were safe.
One overlooked problem of civil wars is that they spawn anarchy...we see this in Iraq, but it also occurs (but is not reported) in Gaza, in Algeria, in Colombia, etc.....a good story of this anarchy is found in the book Cold Mountain...where the hero never could trust those he met...
You have the "official" groups...their aims are know, and they are borderline rational. But then you have the criminals, the theives, the murderers, the sociopaths...and you are never safe from them...
So when the doctor was killed, I left. But my friend put it off...she was older than I (I was 30, she was 62 and had worked there 20 years)...and so one day some robbers came in the hospital and shot her...and all the patients fled...no one defended her, because in African society, there is not a tradition of self defense...you keep your head down and survive...or you protest and die...which is why there are so many modern African martyrs...
So the martyrs don't chose to die. They chose to live and help and their very presence is a witness against the evil ones who chose to kill...
And that is what people forget: That martyr means witness...your life and death is a witness to truth...
The reason I left Rhodesia was that one of the doctors at a Swedish mission hospital was shot when he went to the hospital for an emergency...
People don't realize that you make choices...and I discussed this with one of my doctor friends...we both decided to stay until things got bad...
You see, if you are a doctor and you leave, people die. But if you are killed, you aren't doing anyone a favor. So you chose.
People don't realize that doctors and nurses and EMT's chose all the time...
This patient needs care, but there is blood all over and he may be HIV positive...yes, gloves protect, but the shattered glass all over the wounds often pierce the gloves.
So you care for him anyway.
I once had a patient stop breathing on me, and there was no Ambu bag nearby, so I did mouth to mouth for about a minute til it was fetched...later it turned out that he had TB...
Ditto here.
You don't chose to be a martyr. You chose to help, and judge the risk/benefit ratio.
So that means you shudder when you go to the hospital at night (I always took my dog with me for protection). You shudder on bus day, when the guerillas would probably be coming into town. You shudder and don't answer your door at night.
And you judge whether or not the local guerillas will kill you or not. OR the local toughs or the local troublemakers or the local witchdoctors...
In my case, the local guerillas were helpful...when they came to the hospital (shortly after I left)
they sent a teacher to "invite" the nuns to a pep ralley that they held at the local high school...
But even if these "official" groups were friendly, that didn't mean you were safe.
One overlooked problem of civil wars is that they spawn anarchy...we see this in Iraq, but it also occurs (but is not reported) in Gaza, in Algeria, in Colombia, etc.....a good story of this anarchy is found in the book Cold Mountain...where the hero never could trust those he met...
You have the "official" groups...their aims are know, and they are borderline rational. But then you have the criminals, the theives, the murderers, the sociopaths...and you are never safe from them...
So when the doctor was killed, I left. But my friend put it off...she was older than I (I was 30, she was 62 and had worked there 20 years)...and so one day some robbers came in the hospital and shot her...and all the patients fled...no one defended her, because in African society, there is not a tradition of self defense...you keep your head down and survive...or you protest and die...which is why there are so many modern African martyrs...
So the martyrs don't chose to die. They chose to live and help and their very presence is a witness against the evil ones who chose to kill...
And that is what people forget: That martyr means witness...your life and death is a witness to truth...
posted by Nancy Reyes at
8:44 AM
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