[ExI] chinese colonization of africa etc

[spike at rainier66.com]

...> On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson via extropy-chat

>...Haiti is essentially a small bit of Africa plopped into the Caribbean...
I'd spent a year in Brazil earlier, and it was NOTHING compared to Haiti...
-Kelly

================================


Kelly generously shared a personal memoir of his missionary or charity work
involving Haiti.  I too have a Haiti personal story, but mine is second
hand, for I have never been there and have no plans to go.

A friend from my youth, Mr. Carl, was a flight instructor and owned a Cessna
152, which is a small two seater.  A local pastor had made contact with a
small village in Haiti which had an airstrip with access right out to the
sea.  Mr. Carl and the pastor would go down to Haiti two or three times a
year with a Santa bag full of donated medications, mostly over the counter
stuff they couldn't get down there but also (this is the part which made me
reluctant to post this story) donated half-eaten bottles of left over meds,
a lot of it Amoxicillin, other aminopenicillin meds, which may give you
pause, or if it doesn't, it should.  It wasn't entirely clear if they might
be doing more harm than good.  

I am reminded of the words of Arthur C Clarke, who opined (my best
paraphrase):  Whenever two societies of vastly differing technology levels
come into direct contact, it is always to the severe detriment of the lesser
advanced society, often leading to its complete destruction.

There was a medicine man down there who claimed no formal training but who
could read English and had a medical book (of unknown vintage.)  So the
pastor and Mr. Carl made these runs down there with the Santa bag full of
these meds, putter in quietly shortly before dawn, meet the chief (mayor?)
and the pastor, drop off the Santa bag while they refueled his plane, get on
back out of there before the local drug lords and war lords and whatever
other variety of lords they had down there noticed their presence and
offered to buy that aircraft for zero down and zero a month forever.

They had made about a dozen runs over the years by the time the following
incident took place.  They dropped in unannounced before dawn, chief and
fuel guy came out, they got ready to take off when a local woman came up
with a very sick baby, urging, pleading with them in French, which the chief
(mayor?) translated: PLEASE take my baby, PLEASE save my baby, he will die
otherwise, take him to America, PLEASE save my baby (etc.)  

She pushed the obviously very sick feverish baby in the elderly pastor's
arms.  Neither of these guys had a trace of medical training.  As she was
confronting the pastor, Mr. Carl was standing behind her shaking his head
side to side, NO we can't do this NO, it is illegal as all hell YES we will
get in big trouble etc.  The tenderhearted elderly pastor didn't know what
to do, but came to a firm decision.  That mild-mannered man climbed into the
passenger seat and demanded: MISTER CARL, fly this plane!  NOW!

Yes sir.

Outta there they flew, to a fuel stop in the southern end of the Bahamas,
but that is all it was: there was no hospital, clinic or anything resembling
it nearby, not even any good roads.  It was just a fuel stop for planes and
boats.

After they fueled and flew, Mr. Carl chose to divert west to Miami to get
help sooner, rather than fly up the coast towards home.  Coming toward
Miami, the pilot had to figure out how to request an ambulance over the air
traffic control radio, where the vocabulary is limited to about a few dozen
critically important words which don't sound like anything else.  Nothing
else rhymes with mayday for instance.  ATC radio is not a telephone, it is
low fidelity.  The pilots have that terse code they use, about runways,
weather patterns, visibility etc, and no chatter for it uses bandwidth that
other pilots need.

So the pilot was up there trying to figure out how to tell Miami tower he
needed an ambulance to meet him on the runway, for he had a critically-ill
passenger.  ATC isn't accustomed to hearing the words "request ambulance,
incoming with patient" etc.  

Long pause: Cessna repeat please, this is a medivac?

Negative Miami tower, bringing critically ill patient, not on original
flight manifest.  Repeat request ambulance on runway.

Pause: Affirm Cessna, receive request, land on two niner, drop her on the
numbers, turn right, ambulance will be there.

All of this was stuff an ATC with three decades of experience has never
uttered over the radio.  About this time the airport came in sight, Mr. Carl
saw the ambulance on its way out to two niner, blinkety lights ablinkin (his
words, not mine.)  As instructed, he dropped the plane on the numbers,
pulled in, the ambulance crew started in on the baby, who was inert.  We
think the patient died in the pastor's arms perhaps minutes before they
landed, but the ambulance crew went about doing what EMTs do, which is
whatever they can to try to resuscitate a patient.  

As that was going on, Immigration Control ossifers pulled up, two men got
out, and the four of them watched and hoped the medics were doing better
than it appeared.  After a few emotionally draining minutes, the ambulance
crew closed the doors, switched off the blinkety lights and drove off in no
particular hurry.  Damn.

The ICE ossifers then had some questions for the makeshift medivacs.  They
determined they really were a tenderhearted elderly pastor who related the
story which had unfolded that morning with tears streaming down his face,
along with comments like "Here am I, well past threescore and ten, very
nearly fourscore, and that perfectly innocent child doesn't see his first
birthday!  I am utterly unworthy, we are all unworthy, of the blessings
bestowed upon us (etc, stuff elderly tenderhearted pastors say.)

The officers turned to the pilot and said Mr. Carl, you know this was
illegal, correct?  

Carl: Affirmative officer.  It will not happen again.  

They closed the book and turned to leave.  The pilot called Thank you for
being reasonable about all this.

One of them turned around and said: Mr. Carl, we are immigration officers
second, but human beings first.  And I am a grandfather myself.

As they prepared to take off and fly on home, Carl told the pastor: Sir that
was the last time.  No more, too risky now.  Too risky before, but that was
my last trip to Haiti.  

The pastor nodded.  They never went back.

My poignant memoir has no moral, no point, there was no reason I should post
it in this forum, but Kelly's Haiti story reminded me of that event which
happened over fifty years ago.

spike