I blame my mother for making me feel guilty about all the poverty and starvation in the world, and making me feel uncomfortable about the affluent life that I lead. Its her fault because when I was a kid if I didnt eat all the food on my dinner plate she would rebuke me severely and remind me that in other parts of the world kids who werent as ungrateful as me were starving to death. The thing is this guilt has stayed with me, and Ive always had a feeling that in some way starvation in the world is my problem and I should be doing something about it. But I never have.
Valerie Browning on the other hand is a remarkable Australian nurse and midwife who did do something, and her story is told in a book I read last weekend called "Maalika" . She has spent her entire adult life living with one of the poorest peoples on earth, the nomads of the Afar region in Ethiopia. This is undoubtedly one of the most inhospital parts of the world, a place of apalling heat and arid desert, a place where maternal and infant mortality is enormous, a place ravaged by starvation, tuberculosis and malaria, a place where female circumcision is widely practiced with horrifying brutality, a place where there has been civil war and yet also a place where a fragile and peaceful nomad culture has existed for millenia.
This place is so poor that there are no roads to much of it so public health officials just ignore it. Valerie on the other hand, is so determined that the people of this vast isolated region wont miss out that she simply walks through the desert to find them. She says its nothing for her to have to walk 50km a day. Once when walking with camels carrying vaccines packed in ice to isolated villages she fell and badly injured her ankle. She ordered the rest of the team to leave her there and to continue on with the precious vaccines then come back for her later. And they did. She describes her bedroom in the book : its a concrete room with a door and no windows, a couple of bits of furniture and some pictures torn out of magazines stuck to the walls. She owns virtually nothing. She had a baby out there and after a long labour needed a caesarean - they made her wait at the Government Hospital from Thursday night to Saturday afternoon because Friday was a Prayer day! But still she forges on against the odds, working day and night to bring vaccines and medicine, education and training, health and nutrition to the people she has committed herself to.
Its her deep christian faith that led her there and sustains her there, but what is so different about her religion, and what I really like about her is that she isnt in the least interested in ramming it down anyones throat.
She is so loved and admired there she is known as Maalika which meaans Queen.
So if youre feeling depressed and bored and finding life a struggle, I suggest reading "Maalika" You will be inspired and amazed at what this exceptional woman has achieved and probably also develop a new and happier outlook on your own struggles.
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