Flying Doctors and the Migration of the Wildebeest

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We all head up to the adult wards to find them crowded, around 20 men in a room built for 8. Here, two other survivors of the massacre were recuperating, two more patients rescued by Dr Dan. Bullets had blasted legs and shoulders, and now they were holed up in a rank-smelling room, wired up and pinned with metal and rope, surrounded by maimed and sick men reading bibles beneath sheets caked with dry blood. For all the action movies I watch (and I watch a lot of them), I’ve never come face to face with the reality of gun violence, the truth behind a bullet wound. It is unforgettable, and horrifying, and something that will haunt me always. In real life, you don’t get shot, continue to fight the bad guys, and get the girl. If you’re lucky, you’ll experience only months of extreme pain and discomfort, a permanent physical disability, a vicious scar. Sean Culligan points this out in graphic detail, showing me where an AK-47 bullet obliterated his anklebone during a violent home attack in Nairobi a few years back. The story of this incident, and his survival, is too remarkable for me to account here (if you read his account, from the Spectator, you’ll understand why). Real, mindless violence is not cartoon violence. When I saw it firsthand, it stabbed me in the worst place of all: my invincibility, my delusion that I can brucewillis a violent attack, and come out a hero. Culligan is a real life hero. In real life, you’re lucky to walk away with nightmares, and a metal rod holding your leg together.

On the way back from hospital, numb from the experience, haunted by the sight of tin coffins being wheeled past us in the corridors, the traffic is backed up. In all my travels, I have never seen so many accidents as I did in Nairobi. It’s like drivers and passengers here should wear helmets. Our ambulance turns on its siren, but there’s no give in the chain of cars ahead. Dr Dan and Kizito jump out to see if they can be of assistance, and I chase through the cars with them, my heart pumping, nervous of what I might see. One car has collapsed into a deep trench on the side of the road, a mini-van is shattered, another car is crushed on its side. Glass is everywhere. Fortunately, the victims had already been taken to the nearby hospital, probably in private cars since ambulances are few and far between, and fortunately the FD’s were not needed. It would take hours for the wrecks to be cleared, and the traffic was snailing past, curious onlookers wondering how anyone could have survived the crash, if they did at all. Tomorrow, Dr Dan would be taking off for 2 months of volunteer work in a rural hospital. Then he would be returning to Canada as the assistant professor of surgery in the trauma unit of McGill University. He has too much experience to be phased by the blood and guts of what he does, but way too much heart to be a cold and clinical physician. I bid him safe travels, and walk away hopeful…that there are people like him out there in the world, and that somehow they are blessed with the strength to keep doing what they do. Would I? Would you?

On returning to Wilson Airport and the Flying Doctors HQ, we had just missed Robin Hood in action. A wealthy, obese American trophy hunter had taken ill and was evacuated. The plane had arrived, and the staff had trouble fitting the guy through the door. The hunter, through his insurance company, had paid the Flying Doctors for their service. In turn, part of that money would be used for charity cases like the evacuation of Lopotunye. Culligan is proud of what his service does, and how it operates. Earlier I had passed a busload of school kids getting a tour of Wilson Airport. He hopes they’ll be inspired by aviation, by medicine, and the fact that they live in a city with the continent’s largest medical aviation service. Maybe the school tours of AMREF’s hangar will create a few more Robin Hoods.

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