Book Review part 1

Tracy Kidder. Mountains Beyond Mountains. United States: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2009.
Précis: Chapters 1- 3
• In 19994 I was working as a reporter for the US army base. One evening Farmer came to speak to head commander and announce the peoples plans to revolt with some Haitian friends. The man intrigued me and as a coincidence we met on the plane, we then meet up in Boston and had lunch his personality and determination scared me, until 1999 we met once again. I wanted to learn more about Farmer so I shadowed him at the hospital in Brigham Boston. That day he discussed with his team of students about a certain patient, Joe. He was thought of having tuberculosis so Farmer with his team went up to visit him. He deemed it a case of phenomena. While there farmer nested a deep connection with his patient. Getting to know and later meet his personal desires and necessities to nurse him to health. Farmer then returned to Haiti and I wanted to learn more, so he told me to go see him, and to Haiti I went. When arrived at the airport a pickup truck Farmer sent brought me on a 35 mile journey up a mountain that took 3 and a half hours, seen on the way was the up mounting poverty and the growing of absence. Cangre, Haiti is the poorest part of poor. The next day we went to Zanmi Lasante medical complex, Farmer took me on rounds. The first case we saw was gangrene forming from a minor cut happening 15 days previous; Farmer said minor incidents became huge health problems. The rules of the medical complex are no one can be turned away. The price 80 cents for everyone except women, children and the desperate, basically everyone. A million peasant farmers rely on the complex; a hundred thousand live in the catchment area. The staff is entirely Haitian besides Farmer and has 7 doctors not all fully competent. The complex has reduced H.I.V transmition from mother to babies to 4 percent. No one has died from tuberculosis since 1988. It has a 1.5 million year budget versus a Boston hospital serving the same amount of people with a budget of 60 million. Farmer is a poor man but rich in achievements. He lives in a little 1-room house with a tin roof and concrete floor in Haiti most of the year, but 4 months a year he lives in Boston in his fundraising organizations basement. Farmer takes care of all patient personally and to the best of his ability aids there personal needs in however possible, from getting them sunglasses to getting there children an education. One elderly woman who is dying comes in everyday for money and food; Farmer greets her as “my mother”. People respect him and see him as the sorcery of healing. All day long he is diagnosing patients from ulcers caused by starvation to pregnant women with aids & tuberculosis. He keeps a 2 do list by his desk and checks off a “bwat” every time he has completed a task. Voodoo is the Haitian religion and in Farmers eyes a way of explain suffering. Farmer is rich with knowledge on Haitian culture and helps breach holistic & allopathic methods for the people. He tends to narrate Haiti explaining their suffering and daily struggles. At 3 in the morning Farmer is called in to the complex because a Girl arrives by donkey and needs a spinal tap, while she is screaming from excruciating pain she is also complaining of hunger.

QOUTES
• “She poured out her family’s story, her sadness, her present worries, and Paul listened intently, never sating she shouldn’t feel as she did, but only now and then suggesting ways she might accommodate her feelings.” Pg.69
This quote really hit me deeply because I recently lost a friend because of multiple issues, one of them being her bad position and my inability to facilitate them. I think Farmer has the magical quality to not tell the person not to feel the way the do (as I would) but how to help cope with the feelings. That in its self is HARD to do, that made me realize what I did wrong and the desire to improve, and not put my self down for my inability.
• ‘“bondye konn bay, me li pa konn separe” in literal translation “god gives but doesn’t share”’ pg.79
I thought this was beautiful and saddening, A great representation of finding explanation for tragic suffering. I think it is so true of our whole world and I wish greed could be abolished!!! I also don’t understand how people can be so greedy when they themselves come from the same horrible position as the people they grow to oppress.
• “Some people said that medicine addresses only symptoms of poverty. This, they agreed, was true, and they’d make “common cause” with anyone sincerely trying to change the “political economies” of countries like Haiti” pg.100
This passage (like many others) ignites the thought within me of, what do I want to do with my life. I know it is to help aid this world in some manner like Farmer has amazingly done. I have known this since I was young but now I want to now HOW? I feel I will lean towards the politics because as amazing as all the work Farmer is doing I still see it as a band-aid in a sense because it is only one part of Haiti and all of his issues stem from poverty, which stems from the governments unjust ruling. WHICH seems to be the actions of all government, the favor of the rich. It sucks that money is the easy power to attain that simply overrides other powers with simplicity.
• “He came down with dysentery, probably because his budget obliged him to eat food sold on the streets if the cities and towns. He remembered lying in a grubby hospital in Port-au-Prince, on a floor that lacked a toilet, and a middle-aged American woman, a public health expert whom he’d gotten to know, visiting him there. She was saying that, if he got any sicker, she was going to take him back to the states, and he was telling her, no, no, he was all right, while thinking, please take me home.” Pg. 78
This part of the book seemed to really pin point that Farmer he to is a human susceptible to the harms of poverty. It really drove home the point of the horrible disposition that his patients were in whereas Farmer could just get up and go. This was a true demonstration in the differences between being “blan” or Haitian.


Flesh’s Insight
I think this book shows that health has a cost, like everything else in this world. We have come to a point in this world where material has a higher value than our life. As a result if one has money one can be healthy, if not one becomes ill. With a huge scale the richer, the healthier, the poorer the sicker.