MY EXCHANGE OF CORRESPONDENCE ON
REPRESENTAION AND CARE
FOR DEVELOPING WORLD HEALTH PROJECTS
WITH A SYMPATHETIC COUNTER-CRITIC OF MY
NUTRITION ARTICLE ON HYPOTHYROIDISM IN THE CONGO
From: Glenn Geelhoed
To: lvanmid@physiol.utmem.edu
Date: 5/29/03 3:08PM
Subject: Fwd: Return from Embangweni Hospital after eventful climax in Theatre salvaging an intrabdominal ruptured pregnancy and having just arrived in Lilongwe
L. VanMiddlesworth, PhD, MD
Professor Emeritus of Physiology and Biophysics
Professor Emeritus Medicine
University of Tennessee
Health Science Center
Dept of Physiology
894 Union Avenue
Memphis, TN 38163
Dear Professor VanMiddlesworth:
I have just returned from a medical mission to Malawi, where I had tried to repeat the kinds of intent and practice of the type of medical relief I had attempted in the Congo (see also "Out of Assa: Heart of the Congo") I had summarized in the article you had cited in the Journal Nutrition. I am chagrined to have carried your very kind and insightful letter with me in my travels without an apparent response from me.
I have been familiar with the kinds of critique invited by invited or self- styled "critics" of remote field work who have seldom left air conditioning, since one of the examples you had cited was "Darkness in El Dorado."
My advisor and close confidante at the University of Michigan was James V. Neel. I was astounded at the posthumous criticism against him, and heartily encouraged by the investigations by the University of Michigan which exonerated his reputation and went on to place on exhibit the work he had done in Amazonas, which I had followed. I had also followed closely the ethical debate put together by the American Association of Anthropology, with a great deal of sensitization, after the earlier sensationalism, to the current "PC Tenor of the Time" for a retrograde anachronistic judgment on facts which were in dispute as well as motives.
I find that there are barriers enough artificially erected between peoples, be they economic, linguistic, cultural, or the more easily understood geography and gender- - without now trying to hurdle the even higher hurdles erected from the "developed world's" end- - on what is now "P. C." and therefore must have at all time been hegemonic in this post- post- modern era.
I had tried to address these issues in a thesis put together for the PhD in Human Sciences at GWU, with "Darkness in Eldorado" and my own case in the Congo as exhibits of the mutual misunderstanding of different life worlds in collision, collusion or (as the critics have pointed out) exploitation in this neo- colonial effort of delivering help and health care abroad. (See "Treating Others"). This thesis was dismissed, since I had declined to couch it in terms of Michel Foucault's "subjectivity", a position I had expressed fundamental disagreement with at the outset. I may agree that any interaction with "others"
may be freighted with inequality in this not- quite thoroughly homogenized world of hybridity, but the biggest barriers I have encountered- - a few of them impossible to surmount toward understanding- - have been thrown up from the constructs of the developed world's side. There are few cultural practices I have encountered in my third world explorations, whatever bone through the nose, elaborate headdress, face paint or tatoos, or ritual practice, that have been as impossible to ignore or forgive nor as intolerant as the prejudicial assumptions of imperialist exploitation in my trying to explain to one group my interactions with the other. One would assume that this wariness might come form the side of the putative victim, but has been most prominent among my first world colleagues, who have an absolute faith in the original sin of depravity in the accident of birth in a given Western place, time and culture. Since I have found the kind of critique you have remarked I the controversy of my Congo report to be insurmountable in my ABD completion of my Human Science thesis efforts, I have elected to abandon further efforts in this field. I might have to seek a different forum for the exploration of the ethical interactions of developed and developing world stripped of- - to borrow their own linguistic framework- - the "P. C. Hegemony" of post- modern rules of discourse.
I would be interested in your views of how this impasse might be broken to achieve some kind of resolution in "Treating Others."
Thanks you for your very kind and helpful letter.
Yours truly,
Glenn W. Geelhoed
>>> Glenn Geelhoed 05/15/03 01:36PM >>>
>>> Glenn Geelhoed 05/15/03 01:29PM >>>
I have just returned (late- - due to a stranding in London from an in- flight "disappearance" of a passport, which made a "woman without a country") and managed to accomplish a somehow efficient re- entry of make- up missed appointments.
I attach only the "read by title" headings (Apr- C- I, May- A- 1, and May- B- 1) of the exhilarating experience in Malawi which is expressed by each participant as a life- changing encounter for the students of all ages.
It is more than malaria, malnutrition, Tb and AIDS- - this is, again, a powerful experience of a spiritual richness that carries these wonderful people despite overwhelming poverty, hunger and what might otherwise be despair. It is what I call "gifts from the poor."
We will be back.
GWG
>>> "frank dimmock" <fdimmock@malawi.net> 05/09/03 08:43AM >>>
We have arrived in Lilongwe for a brief stop at the Dimmock’s from which I will try to send this email. The cascade of fascinating cases has continued down to the end, and each of the post- op patients that were “long shots” have recovered and are doing well—even the young man who had a large chunk of his dead bowel excised, and exteriorization of the ileostomy and colostomy as a last ditch salvage effort- - - he was sitting outside and eating Nzima and waved as I left last night. The Pastor is peeing normally after his large prostate was removed, despite multiple pluggings of his catheter, and all of my C- sections and their babies are gurgling cheerfully. The young man with the huge osteosarcoma which had broken down and caused such a foul stench that he was an outcast, even from his attentive family, had his A- K amputation yesterday, and he has lost his ostracism, being triumphantly admitted to the main Male Ward. As Kevin had said, we have finished our six month’s work in two weeks, and a look back at the “Theatre Log Book” shows two full pages with my name, which seems like the product of several years’ work, all of it passing so quickly that the arbitrary distinctions of the days seen in the attached emailings (the only parts I have been able to type have been the titles, since I had been too busy doing it to type it up—but I have written the usual “serial letter”., I will show and tell a real mini- universe of the “real Africa” upon the return of the cascade of photographs and completed stories. Virginia will also have a “show and tell” of the full program she had led through the Deaf School, culminating in a touching formal “Program in Honor of Virginia” in which they had formal speeches, presentations of gifts and tribal dance and even a formal poem spelling out “VIRGINIA” before the piece de resistance- - - the Bell Choirs performing several of the two dozen songs she had written iont scores, including quite a number which she had never heard and had to sing in Chi- Tembuka. I will tell more of this but the special bragging rights would probably have to come form my side about the music program she had sparked here, especially among the Deaf School’s very grateful students and staff. But, we are now going for a very short hop to Zambia, which is billed as “the Real Africa”- - - a safari inot the game- rich South Luwangwe National Park, an extravagant old- time big game safari for our brief exit introduction to the natural history of Africa on the kind of game drives I have so often led myself. The open question I will leave hanging is—“now, just which of these worlds is the real one?” Then, “Out of Africa—once again, to return ASAP. GWG