Gift of Revelation (9 page)

After Nigel's death by a sniper bullet, the enemy let our vehicles pass to the Doctors Without Borders camp, although we saw them shadowing us in the darkness, occasionally giving out grotesque bird cries. We carried Nigel's body in the rear of a Land Cruiser, wrapped securely in a blanket, almost like a corpse cocooned in solemn Islamic white. The caravan pulled up into a clearing carved out of the trees and bush. In the clearing were ten hastily built all-weather tents; two large buildings, where the staff lived; and four sheds containing the camp vehicles. Men armed with automatic weapons stood guard on towers surrounded by barbed wire.

It was daybreak when we were greeted warmly by Drs. Bromberg and Arriale, who shook our hands, then turned their attention to the medical supplies. For some reason, Elsa stayed outside when they showed us into one of the staff buildings. Everybody but Carter sat down, resting their weary bones.

Saddened by his friend's death, Carter informed the doctors that the enemy was just outside the camps, well armed and numbering about forty men.

“I'm so sorry about your loss,” Dr. Bromberg said, tugging on the stethoscope around his neck. “He was a good man. Did a lot of good. We'll miss Nigel.”

Carter allowed his body to sag as he leaned against the door. He seemed on the verge of tears, but that was not possible. He had cried when his loyal friend stopped breathing last night. Suddenly, Elsa walked into the place like she was royalty, straight from Buckingham Palace, and ordered the staff to put her luggage in a room.

“Where's the food, Doc?” she asked. “I'm famished.”

Dr. Arriale, the taller of the two men, spoke with authority in a quiet voice. “Someone will get you something. What we are concerned with right now is the fact that a couple of villages were attacked last night. We're still counting the dead and dying.”

“Are there any government troops in the area?” Carter asked.

“Or UN peacekeepers?” Elsa asked, reaching for a cigarette.

I kept my eye on Addie, who seemed completely distracted. She was still stunned by the sudden demise of Nigel, who had been gunned down in an instant. I could tell she was really having second thoughts about this trip. Elsa had told me that Addie was weighing the idea of going back to the States before the journey took a tragic turn. The country girl had not talked to me since our blowup in her room.

“What are your qualifications, Doc?” Elsa asked, without her tape recorder or her pen and notebook at the ready.

Dr. Bromberg walked over near the barricaded windows and spoke in a low, clear voice. “I got my schooling at Johns Hopkins, while some of the others trained at Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic. One of my surgeons attended Columbia and NYU. We've got an eclectic bunch of medics here. Come on. Follow me. I'll show you around.”

When they left the room, I trailed behind them, remaining just within earshot. I watched through an open doorway as several staff members herded some of the refugees into the tents and carried others who were too weak to walk any longer. The critically wounded were loaded onto stretchers and lugged into the makeshift clinics for treatment. Those who were stronger and were able to work lifted boxes and equipment, stacked them in front of the sheds, and waited for other orders.

“The reason the rebels tolerate us is that we don't choose sides,” Dr. Bromberg explained. “We're simply neutral. We're in the business of patching people up and saving lives. About six days ago, there was a fierce firefight not that far away from here, uh . . . wounded on both sides. It turns out that some of the injured were from the rebels. The refugees recognized them, but they didn't say anything. And we didn't say anything, either.”

Just then Elsa noticed me lurking, listening. “But isn't that permitting the bloodbath to continue? These are killers, cold-blooded killers, and you patch them up. Isn't that odd, Doc?”

“Not really,” the doctor replied.

Elsa proceeded to butter him up. “They told me about you, how you were an amazing fellow. They told me you were the one to meet.”

A staff member whispered to him about the supplies, the shortage of antibiotics and bandages, and the fact that the camp needed approval to build another shed for storage. Balding and short, Dr. Bromberg flashed an easy grin and touched the staff member on the shoulder.

“Great. We'll work that out with the camp administrators,” he said. “CARE is sending us another doctor, one who worked in the war zone in Croatia and Afghanistan, and is capable in everything from surgery and maternity care to pediatrics. He's flying in from Nairobi the week after next.”

“That's very good,” Elsa said. “However, some of the media say camps like yours are good breeding grounds for the enemy. Do you agree with them?”

This was making the doctor uncomfortable. He just wanted to get this interview over with so he could get some rest. I knew all the medical staff worked ridiculous hours, put themselves in danger from both sides, and got very little financial compensation from anyone.

“Maybe you want to hear this, Reverend,” the doctor said, waving me over to his side. “Elsa, you asked about whether we're breeding terrorists or the enemy in our camps. I say we are Christians and we are here for people who need us. We treat people who are sick, displaced, wounded, or dying.”

Elsa looked serious. “Have you treated government troops?”

“Yes.” The doctor glanced at me as he said this. I realized he was a man of deep faith, one who believed in the power of the Lord and everything that went into a follower of His word.

“That's insane,” she countered. “The government is arming and financing the very people who are killing and raping the villagers you are treating and housing here. They are the real killers. They are the real plague in this area.”

The doctor's face reflected his frustration with the reporter, for he knew that she would never understand how he could treat the enemies of his people, that she would never understand why the scriptures said that those who did good would receive blessings from the Lord.

“Like everybody here, we're in God's hands,” he replied. “We're Christian healers. We hold fast to our faith in God. There are words of wisdom that I often recall by the writer Madora Kibbe. “Let Christian healers not be defined by sect and deed, but by word and deed.”

“What does that mean?” Elsa asked.

“It means just what we're doing at this camp,” the doctor answered. “We're here to save lives. We're here to ease suffering.”

I couldn't help but interrupt. “That's what I was trying to explain to you back in Khartoum. Christians obey the scriptures, which often call on them to take action against evil and suffering. I salute you, Doctor, for what you and your staff are doing.”

Elsa was incensed, and she went on to recount atrocities and human rights violations she had witnessed while she had been in Sudan. She accused us of putting our heads in the sand while the bloodshed and slaughter continued. She thought it was sheer stupidity in the service of salvation.

“How can you be so blind!” she exclaimed. “Neither the government nor the rebels protect you. You're out here alone in the wind. They bombed the UN facilities the other day. They bombed two of the refugee camps in the border region last week. They slaughtered the inhabitants of five villages near here. In fact, didn't they strafe your camps last Easter?”

“That's true,” the doctor grunted.

“How does your family feel about the work you're doing here?” Elsa quizzed.

Doctor Bromberg stared at the door that led outside, wishing he could leave right now.

“I said no personal questions,” he replied tersely.

“What do you feel about South Sudan, Doctor?” she asked.

He moved toward the door, watching the long stream of refugees stagger through the medical compound and head to the camps beyond, weary and starved. What was the use? How many lives could they save? His explanation about Sudan and its liberation from colonialism in 1956 was something the reporter knew. The violent civil wars and the genocide that followed independence, and the truce between Khartoum and the southern rebels in 2005, didn't solve anything. The crisis exploded after South Sudan's independence in 2011, and the result was two million killed and hundreds of thousands maimed.

Refusing to be denied her story, Elsa said she knew the history of the region. She wanted his thoughts about the mortality rates in the refugee camps in South Sudan. Workers at one camp she'd visited in the Upper Nile area said they lost twelve children daily because of the shortages in supplies.

“What do you have to say about the high mortality rates, Doctor?” she asked.

“It's true about some of the camps, especially in the remote areas of the country,” he explained, looking past her at the refugees marching past the building. “We lose a lot of them from preventable diseases, because of the crowded conditions and lack of medical supplies. We get cholera and other bad microbes from the contaminated water. Others suffer horrible injuries to their limbs from walking along roads filled with land mines. We treat plenty of these people who are just fleeing violence, trying to get food, water, and shelter. It's a shame.”

“Do you think the world is tired of hearing all this bad news?” she asked. “It seems they've turned their attention elsewhere . . . to Kim K's fat butt or the tiff between Jay-Z and Beyoncé or the royal heir's first steps. With Africa, it's bad news all the time, and they're tired of it.”

The doctor walked closer to the door and scratched his weary head. “That's probably why the funding for these places has fallen off,” he suggested. “The world has a short attention span.”

I took two steps toward him, hoping to divert his focus on how badly things were going around the camp. “Has your Christian faith helped you in the business of healing?” I asked him, and his face lit up.

His smile was contagious. “Let me tell you something about myself,” he said. “At first, I didn't believe in God. When I got accepted into medical school, I believed only in science and research. Through logic and reason, I'd argued against any kind of deity. I had several arguments against the existence of God, for I couldn't see anything positive in this uncivilized world. There was no God.”

“What changed you?” I quizzed him.

“It didn't happen overnight,” the doctor said. “After medical school, I did an internship in one of the teaching hospitals in the inner city. I had all kinds of proof that there wasn't any divine intervention in the affairs of humanity. The ghetto is a very hard place. As a white man, I wondered how people survived in that dismal environment, where disappointment and hate breed so rapidly.”

I was a survivor of the ghetto. I had got out alive and had thrived, as many black and Hispanic people did. But I knew what he was saying as a white man. Looking at the “cullud” neighborhoods from the outside, I could see how he could come to this dismal conclusion.

“However, we shocked this black bus driver back to life, and I discovered that miracles do happen in this life,” the doctor said excitedly. “He was dead, dead as a doornail. We worked on him for about thirty minutes. We were determined not to give up. And after three shocks, we got a pulse, at first faint, and then very strong. He was alive.”

Elsa grimaced. She'd had enough of this spiritual talk.

The doctor continued, his words flowing out like those of a kid reciting an Easter piece. “I looked around and saw that some of the medical staff were praying for him to live. His family was outside, wringing their hands in fear. When I took my life over to Christ, I experienced His power and grace. Finally, I understood the limits, the areas where modern medicine was ineffective, and discovered how divine grace can enter into a medical recovery. In my practice, I saw it every day. For instance, two people came in with the same disease, and one would die and the other would get well. We gave them the same treatment, but the results were different. Only God's grace can grant a miracle like this.”

“I know what you mean,” I agreed.

Elsa was fuming. “I don't. God doesn't have anything to do with it. It's fate. It's destiny. But it has nothing to do with God or Jesus or Allah.”

The doctor shook his finger in her face and said that was not true. “Medical treatments, no matter how supposedly foolproof, often do not work,” he asserted. “I see that in this camp, where life and death are in a constant battle. Elsa, you have no faith. But faith is important to physical healing. If you stick around long enough, I'll show you examples of faith at work.”

“Faith involves the whole person—soul, spirit, and body,” I said. “Christ's healing power cannot be denied. Prayer heals. It's not about false hope when you put yourself in God's hands.”

Eventually, Elsa strutted outside, presumably, to get more local color. She was allergic to any talk of religion, spirituality, or God. We watched her through an open doorway as she talked with one of the soldiers, a big Dinka man in combat fatigues, with an automatic strapped to his waist.

“I'm glad you're here,” the doctor said. “Elsa is wrong. You never know why healing doesn't occur in all situations. Every time I go into surgery, I know I must have faith in a good outcome, because all miracles begin with faith.”

We went outside and stood watching the sad, unending parade. Suddenly, a young woman, a skeleton with skin stretched over it, stumbled up to us, one arm cradling a baby. Her other arm was a dark stump missing a hand. It had been hacked off, possibly with a machete. She moaned and then thrust the infant into my arms before she collapsed on the ground and died. The baby, sucking one finger, was nearly dead.