An Adventure of Hope and Pride

Congo: Wednesday, February 4, 2004

I was up at 5:30 a.m. and ready to meet for breakfast with all the medical doctors and hospital department heads. It was good to also be traveling with the president of Congo’s Covenant Church and the medical director of all the northern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Our touring part of the assessment took us until 12:20 p.m. Following lunch, I had group and individual meetings with the leaders of Karawa. The Karawa Township had about 350,000 villagers tucked away down jungle pathways. Plus, people traveled on foot for many days to get to the Karawa hospital for help. There were five doctors stationed at the facility along with 35 nurses. Only about 50% of all the patients could pay any amount of money toward fees for their help. Some patients' families stayed at the hospital to work to pay off their medical bills. The Congolese government paid nothing to support the hospital or the 48 rural health clinics that fed patients into the hospital. In fact, the government would send its soldiers to Covenant Church clinics and hospitals in expectation that the church would cover all their expenses. 

The Karawa hospital was the largest of the hospitals I visited but was totally pathetic. Again, as with the hospitals in Loco and Wasolo, they were trying to make their own IV solutions out of poorly filtered water that was in no way sterile. They desperately needed a new 20-kw, electric generator to cover their “current” needs. They needed almost everything for their surgery room and there was not an EKG machine, ultrasound, defibrillator, sterilizer monitor, ventilator, centrifuge, cauterizer, working x-ray machine, lead apron or gloves or good microscope anywhere in sight. They were washing all the surgery gowns and contaminated surgical drapes and sheets by hand in an open tub. I thought, as I viewed, “my God, we have so much excess and these people have absolutely nothing!”

But I knew down deep inside me that God loved those village people as much as he loved my successful sons and it was imperative to help them in their need. They had an old autoclave someone had given to them. But it had not worked. So, the maintenance people had stripped everything from the outside of the autoclave down to the pressure tank, then adapted it so that they could set it in a pit of hot charcoal to get it hot enough to steam. It did not thoroughly sterilize even the operating room instruments. 

When I had walked the halls and different wards I noticed a four-year-old boy whose shirt had been ignited by an open cooking fire. The shirt had stayed on him and burned him. He was sitting upright in an old dirty bed with no sheets underneath a makeshift mosquito net. His mother was sitting close by trying to comfort him but the hospital had absolutely nothing to treat a burned child. He would probably die in a few days from infection. The mosquito netting would certainly not be enough. 

Another teenage boy was in a filthy bed. They threw back the covering over his lower leg. He had a tumor below the knee. His lower leg was as big as his thorax and almost impossible to move. “He is not strong enough for us to try any kind of surgery so it just keeps getting larger,” said the doctor who was with me. 

At one time the Karawa compound had been a thriving community. Then wars came and even people like the Gustafsons and many of the medical staff had to leave the country. Now they were returning, including Keith and Florence Gustafson, to try to help strengthen the needed facility. That was why Project C.U.R.E. was there. 

As I returned to my mosquito-net-enshrined cot and my rusty water and plastic dipper, I reflected on my experiences at the three different Congo hospitals. Nowhere else in my 17 years of Project C.U.R.E. had I seen hospital beds so disgustingly filthy, or walls, floors, and ceilings that so desperately needed paint to cover the dirt. 

There had not been one working monitor in all of northern Congo. All doctors, nurses, and medical staff personnel were indigenous workers who were discouraged to the bone. The only defibrillator I had seen was a monstrous contraption that looked like an electric execution machine out of a Cambodian torture prison (fortunately the thing did not work). 

At my final meeting with the doctors and head nurses, I made them promise that if I sent them pieces of medical equipment for their hospital they would be trustworthy in throwing out all the old “prehistoric” pieces of equipment that had not and did not work. Together we would start on an adventure of hope and pride and together we would push for excellence and significance at the Karawa Hospital. They loved it! The president of the Covenant Church of Congo, Rev. Luyada, the medical director of the zone, Dr. Mbena Renze, and the hospital chaplain all appreciated it immensely! 

Thursday, February 5

I was up at 4:30 a.m. Sam and Rod, our MAF pilots, would be ready after breakfast to take us on our long airplane ride back to Kinshasa. Keith Gustafson stayed at Karawa so our first flight segment back to Gemena was to drop off Rev. Luyada. At Gemena we picked up two paying passengers who needed to get back to Kinshasa. They were two US embassy workers who had been out to Gemena studying the possibility of placing some grants and loans for development in the area. 

We flew another seven hours in our cramped Cessna 206 jungle flying machine, stopping once to refuel at a MAF base. 

At the Kinshasa airport I met up with another MAF pilot who had helped me on my previous trip to Congo. After hanging around with the pilots while they refueled their planes and tied them down, just outside Kinshasa’s main terminal, the three of them took me back to their headquarters office. It was in the same building where Larry Sthreshley had his office. As we drove up Larry came out to greet me. He had insisted that I spend the night with his family before going on to Cameroon. 

However, Rev. Mossi and Mr. Ndimbo, my official Covenant Church hosts, said that Martin had stayed home from her law school classes all day to prepare dinner for me. So, it was agreed that I would go to Rev. Mossi’s house for dinner then they would take me to Larry’s home to stay the night. 

The Sthreshleys and I stayed up into the night discussing my previous visits with them in Denver, in Younde, Cameroon, and Douala, as well as Kinshasa. 

I can’t tell you how nice it was to sleep in a house with some cool air, clean sheets on a regular bed, and real lights and nice warm water from a pipe in the clean shower stall. It all felt so good. 

© Dr. James W. Jackson

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

A Burning Desire to Help

Congo: Tuesday, February 3, 2004

Wasolo was an area of about 50,000 villagers, and the Wasolo Hospital had 11 different outlying health centers feeding into the main hospital. There was no water system for the area or for the hospital, but a public well was close by. Tuesday morning, I met with all the doctors and staff people of Wasolo Hospital at 7 a.m. The hospital, over the years, had earned a strong and positive reputation and drew from a much larger catchment area than just the main town. I discovered that throughout Congo a lot of the surgeries such as caesarean births and appendectomies were performed not by doctors but by the attending nurses. Nowhere did I see a functioning anesthesia machine. Surgeries were performed with local injection or nothing at all.

Dental services at Congolese clinics or hospitals consisted only of extraction procedures. Deadening was only used occasionally if available. 

The illnesses that most often affected the villagers were malaria, acute respiratory diseases, meningitis, diarrheal diseases, sleeping sickness, TB, HIV/AIDS, anemia, whooping cough, measles, and many varieties of intestinal parasites.

At 11 a.m. Tuesday, the MAF plane met us at the grassy runway and whisked us off over the jungle floor to bounce us into the medical zone of the Loco hospital. Once again we were met by scores of common villagers wanting to welcome us to their area. We needed to work swiftly because we needed to fly on to Karawa before it got dark. 

As we made our way in the back end of a pickup truck to the Loco hospital from the landing strip, I really struggled with how in the world those remote jungle hospitals could even continue to exist. There were 14 health centers or rural clinics that fed into the Loco hospital, but it had been ten years without the use of even the most simple x-ray machine. They had no dental facilities, almost nothing in their surgery room. They had never known an EKG machine, a defibrillator, suction pumps, or an anesthesia machine. 

They were even trying to make their own sterile IV solutions out of a simple series of fabric filters. One of the nurses told me they knew if they had not done a good enough job on filtering the IV solutions because the children would get the “jerks” while receiving them. 

There was no such thing as a continual electricity supply. Patients simply waited throughout the night and a small generator was used if there was a “drastic emergency” for the operating room but the high cost of diesel fuel prohibited much use of even the small generators. 

Just our “showing up” brought great encouragement and hope to the tired doctors and nurses. You could just feel the surge of excitement and enthusiasm pulse through the hospital as we walked the halls and talked to the patients, the department heads and nurses. No other groups had come alongside those remote jungle hospitals. Hardly anyone else knew them. Hardly anyone else came. The desire to help those needy people burned a hole right into me, and I could hardly wait until they received the first shipments of Project C.U.R.E. donations. 

The hospital at Loco had been built by the Belgians as a leprosy hospital, but it had never been finished or used. Then in 1963 a Covenant Church doctor by the name of Dr. Carlson traveled to Congo and began working among the people. He was shot to death by warring soldiers, and later the government honored the request that the facility be given to the Covenant Church as a permanent memorial to Dr. Carlson. It was a fine facility as far as Congolese medical facilities would go, but oh my goodness, it needed everything! 

In the late afternoon we once again bounced down the dirt runway and headed south to Karawa. As we were trying to beat the darkness we ran into a horrific rainstorm above the jungle. Sam, the MAF pilot, was flying our Cessna and for a while we completely lost all sight of the runway, the jungle, the sky, everything. He almost had to pull up and out of the approach path because we could not see anything out the front or side windows. Then suddenly there was a break in the fierceness of the burst, and Sam caught a glimpse of the runway and set the plane down in the layer of rain and mud. We were back on the ground in Karawa. 

It was dark as we walked from the landing strip area down the jungle pathway to Keith and Florence Gustafson’s house for candlelight dinner with the two MAF pilots. I felt great admiration for the missionary pilots. They risked their lives on a daily basis to keep open the only available lifelines into those remote areas. There were simply no roads available from Kinshasa to the health facilities in the north. Part of our challenge at Project C.U.R.E. was to figure a way to transport the donated medical goods into northern Congo. No one else had been willing to accept that challenge. But after having been there I was convinced that we could get the goods delivered even if we needed to ship them into Douala, Cameroon, and transport them inland across central Africa and into northern Congo. I believed God would help us figure out a way of delivery. 

At about 10:30 p.m. our candles were burning low and our energy was burning even lower, so we stopped our discussion with the pilots and the Gustafsons and I went to a nearby guest facility in the old compound. There was once again no electricity and no running water. The only water was in a rusty, 50-gallon barrel, and there was just a plastic bucket to dip the water out and pour it over myself in the darkness of the Karawa compound. 

Mosquitoes were on the lookout for soft, white, Scottish/Irish meat and blood, so I had to hurry right along and get in under the safety of my mosquito netting over my bed. 

Over the years of Project C.U.R.E.’s existence God had been gently preparing me to adjust to really bad and awkward situations in the most remote places of the world. I had slept in Kyrgyzstan in a log house in the middle of a severe winter storm with the snow blowing in through the spaces between the logs and onto my bed. 

I had experienced thugs in India who wanted to rob me. They tried to smoke me out of my hotel room in the middle of the night so they could attack me when I came out of the toxic smoke for air. 

Living without electricity or running water had been my lot in places in India, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Africa, and Central America. Burma was a lot cleaner, but every bit as remote and primitive as anything I was putting up with in the Congo. But God had allowed me to gently adjust and be able to cope over the past nearly 20 years without the feelings of panic and fear. I had traveled around the world enough to know that it was already “tomorrow” somewhere in the world. Instead of getting overwhelmed by the tough circumstances, God had allowed the candle of hope to burn just a little brighter as each tough circumstance occurred. 

Next Week: An Adventure of Hope and Pride

© Dr. James W. Jackson

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Jungle Pilots & Water From a Rusty Bucket

Note: Democratic Republic of Congo may well be one of the most difficult and dangerous venues in all of Africa. Torn by decades of war and want, it’s culture struggles to manage it’s deficiencies. It seems like my Congo assessment trips were always edgy and perilous, but the result of Project C.U.R.E.’s work in Congo has always been spectacular.

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Congo: Saturday, January 31, 2004

My flight from Brussels jostled over the rutty tarmac and came to a lurching halt at the terminal gate. I had arrived in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa. It was about 8:45 in the evening, Rev. Mossi Nzimba, the overseeing Evangelical Covenant Church pastor, met me along with one of his faithful churchmen, Mr. Sido Ndimbo. Mr. Ndimbo would interpret from French to English for me. We loaded into a dilapidated yellow Trooper and the official church driver worked his way across the city to the Kasa Vubu district of Kinshasa. Pastor Mossi’s wife, “Martin,” was waiting on us for dinner. She had prepared whole-fried fish, casaba, boiled eggs, and some chicken pieces for us, along with a generous helping of fried plantain. 

By 11:30 p.m. I was bumping back across Kinshasa in the beat-up van to an old, neglected missionary guesthouse. The place was dark when I arrived but the little African guard opened the gates and let us in. My hosts sort of handed me my bags. I asked if I was to take breakfast at the guesthouse in the morning, but they didn’t know. I asked if I would be returning to the guesthouse after I had traveled to the hospitals in Congo’s northern country and they didn’t know. 

Through the dark hallway I was shown to my cot. Fortunate for me it did have a mosquito net hanging from the ceiling over the cot. I can’t express how tired I was having traveled straight through from Denver to Washington, D.C., to Brussels and on to Congo without lying down. I didn’t even have enough energy to think about my nice bed at home in cool Colorado. 

Sunday, February 1

On Sunday I was met by two young Caucasian men who told me they were from Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF). They were there to check if there really was a Dr. Jackson who would be going with them Monday morning in their airplane to the hospitals in Loco, Wasolo, Karawa, and Gemena in the northern part of Congo. They also asked me to show them how much luggage I would be taking with me. However much space I didn’t take up in the plane they would fill with cargo to deliver to the north. 

The MAF personnel coming to my door certainly gave me the assurance that there was a plan for me for the next four days. I told them that I had flown with MAF over the years in other parts of the world: Brazil, Zimbabwe, and even in Congo the last time I was there. 

I was sort of waiting for the ugly yellow van to come and pick me up for a bite of food when dinnertime rolled around. But dinnertime came and went and about 9:25 p.m. Pastor Mossi and his family came by to talk about my trip to the north and then said they thought it was too late to take me to dinner. For such a time as that I was glad I had a granola bar in my bag. 

Monday, February 2

At 4:45 a.m., I moved the mosquito tent off me and went down the hallway to share the bathroom with a legion of cockroaches and spiders. 

At 6 a.m., a white van arrived with two MAF pilots. After a brief stop at their headquarters building we honked our way through the Kinshasa morning traffic zoo to the municipal airport. Even though I was flying with a private carrier, I nonetheless had to go into the terminal and proceed through passport control and all the security functions. 

Sam and Rod would be my pilots for the next four days. Sam was from Sweden and Rod originally was from America. They had both joined MAF as flight missionaries and had been assigned to Congo. MAF provided a most valuable service to the missionary communities throughout developing countries by enabling them to fly to points within a country otherwise unreachable due to inaccessibility or time restraints.

There was no place to get any breakfast Monday morning, and my stomach growled a reminder to me that we hadn’t had dinner the night before either. 

MAF kept three of their airplanes at the main airport at Kinshasa. The plane we would be using was a single-engine Cessna 206 with five seats and some luggage space, a capable little plane to be getting out of valleys in the heart of the Congolese jungle on mud and grass runways. 

Our flight path took us north and a bit east. We flew for about an hour and a half, and then landed to refuel in the small village, Suliaim, where MAF kept a spare airplane. Our next leg of flight took us on north for nearly four hours to the old insurgency city of Gemena where we took on an extra passenger, Rev. Luyada, the president of the Covenant Church of Congo. 

Another takeoff and another nearly one-hour flight took us to the landing strip of Karawa, a Congo town of about 350,000 people. Keith Gustafson, our main Covenant Church contact in the north and the medical director for the whole Wasolo medical zone, and Mbena Renze joined us on our little plane as we once again took off and flew to the town of Wasolo. There, scores of village people came to meet our airplane on the dirt and grass runway another hour and a half later.

It had been a full day with over seven hours of flight time to get us from Kinshasa to Wasolo in our small Cessna craft. It was getting dark as we walked from the landing strip to the compound where we would be staying. Since there was no regular electricity there we decided to eat first and then hold our introductory meeting with the medical and church leaders outside around the lanterns. 

Keith Gustafson and I shared a small room together. Candlelight was our only source of lighting, and water for washing was dipped from a rusty bucket. That bucket was also the only source of water for drinking. I dipped and poured the water through my nifty portable REI purifier for drinking. The people were kind enough to give us mosquito nets to go over our beds. We were in a “high malaria” area. High risk balanced by zero comfort . . . I must be in Congo. 

Next Week: A Burning Desire to Help

© Dr. James W. Jackson

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

 

Happiness

Life is full of alternatives.

Ultimately, you have to make choices.

Choices set into motion consequences.

How you reconcile and manage the consequences

of your choices

Determines the measure of your Happiness.

- Dr. James W. Jackson

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Beautiful Bulgaria

The Bulgarians already knew too well that the old Soviet system of keeping everyone separate for easy control was not efficient. They were the ones who experienced on a daily basis the fact that there was no way from an economic standpoint to replace all the broken and worn-out equipment in the laboratories set up for each and every department and clinic. But changing that old system would be very, very difficult and would demand a whole new culture of cooperation. 

Friday, March 26, 2004

At 10 a.m., we conducted the needs assessment on the respiratory and lung hospital. Dr. Ivina Kammanova was the director of the facility. She had access to almost no diagnostic or therapy equipment. Her tuberculosis patients were not confined but had access to roam and intermingle with the other patients, as well as those from dermatology and psychological hospitals. 

At 11 a.m., we assessed the psychological hospital where Dr. Mihalov was the director. The whole institution and its function reminded me of some scene out of a terrible Woody Allen movie. At one end of the fourth floor the really bad patients were secured behind metal restraints. Most of the rest of them were free to go visit their friends on the upper or lower floors or even the nearby neighbors. The psychological department was also responsible for conducting tests on the local citizens as a requirement for them to receive licenses such as for marriage, driving or carrying a gun. 

The lady doctor who was the child psychologist held the distinction of being the only child psychologist in the region. She was very sweet and appeared normal, but some of the other help at the institution caused me to study them quite closely to determine whether they were part of the help or the helped. 

We hurried back to Haskovo to meet with Dr. Damianka Kolchagova, who was the director of the large city’s outpatient clinic. She was a talented lady and was really trying to efficiently run the clinic of 4,500 patients a month. She literally begged for medical supplies, as well as simple pieces of diagnostic equipment. 

Following a very successful meeting with the Ministry of Health on Friday, I met with the head of the “regional municipalities association,” Rayna Yovchera. Much like the health ministry spokesman, Rayna wanted Project C.U.R.E. to not just play favorites with Haskovo, but to also spread our help through her organization to every municipality across Bulgaria. 

Saturday, March 27

I was going to be in Haskovo the two extra days because I had not been able to secure any return seats on flights back to the US until Tuesday morning. Saturday morning, I was picked up at the hotel and we traveled a couple of hours across the country to the north and west to an old Roman city called Plovdiv where the old Roman marble amphitheater and Roman walls could still be seen. 

Now a newer city with a population of 500,000 had been developed adjacent to the ancient city. Many of the old homes and stores and opera houses dated back to the 1700s and 1800s and many had been refurbished since the fall of communism. It was a wonderful place to visit and soak in the ancient atmosphere of the conquering Romans. 

I had been observing the excellent work that had been accomplished by Laura Marzahl in preparing for the assessment trip. Every detail had been well administered. I had covered a lot of territory in the brief hours of my visit to Bulgaria and the success was, quite frankly, due to the pre-planning and coordination of the trip. The Peace Corps could certainly be proud of Laura’s work. 

On the trip I was able to talk to Laura and suggest that when she finished her tour with the Peace Corps in July she should consider, since her home in the US was in Memphis, Tennessee, going to Nashville and helping our Project C.U.R.E. people there with our organization. Ed, Tommy and Carol could certainly use her energy and talents. Surprisingly, she said that would be very appealing to her since she had grown to really appreciate and admire Project C.U.R.E. and its worldwide work in just the short time she had been acquainted. “Project C.U.R.E. is going to change Haskovo and its medical approach in the future, and I can already see what a great influence it will have on the world.” 

Sunday, March 28

Pavlina, Dmitri and Deedow insisted that they wanted to take me to see more of the beauty of Bulgaria.We stopped along the roadside and grabbed some breakfast on our way. 

Our Sunday trip took us to the borders of Romania on the north then to the east about 50 miles from the Black Sea, close to Serbia on the west, then again south toward Turkey. 

On the way we visited Shipka, high in the pine-covered mountains of central Bulgaria. There a monument sat atop a hill commemorating an 1877 battle where Russian and Bulgarian troops had lost their lives fending off an attempted invasion of the Turks. 

In addition to the stone monument, an Orthodox church had been constructed in the antique style of the 17th century “Moscow Baroque” orthodox churches. There were five, onion-shaped domes clad with real gold. The center dome was the largest and in front of the golden domes was a magnificent bell tower containing 17 bells, the largest of which weighed over 12 tons.

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From miles away I could see the splendid golden domes shining from the mountainside, nestled in the bright green fir and evergreen trees. We stopped and lit candles in the chancel and marveled at the beauty of the paintings and hand-hewn woodwork inside. 

Further to the north we stopped at an ancient village that had been set aside as a preserve called Etur Ethyographical Museum. It was in the old Gabrovo region and prided itself with a whole village operated by waterpower. They had years ago harnessed the small river and run it through the village’s mini factories to power lathes, spinning wheels, metal working machines, and other pieces of equipment. My new friends were so proud of their history and culture, and I loved every minute of their sharing it with me. 

What a fortunate man I was to be able to travel around the world and share so many things with so many special people. Recently, I told someone that if they stood across the room in my office and threw a dart at the world map hanging on the wall next to my desk, and if the dart hit some place other than snow or water, somewhere within three inches of that dart I would have a friend who knew me and loved me there. Indeed, I was a fortunate man! 

Monday, March 29

So much for vacation on Saturday and Sunday. Monday was back to work! Following two meetings in Haskovo on Monday morning to make sure we had all the necessary details covered for the shipping of the future container loads of donated medical goods from Project C.U.R.E. into Haskovo, I checked out of my hotel room and started our trip back to the capital city of Sofia. I was accompanied by Pavlina Passeva and our driver and “bodyguard” Deedow. Before we left Haskovo I had given Deedow my “Project C.U.R.E.” jacket, which he wore with great pride. 

Our trip to Sofia had two objectives. First was to get me back to the capital city so I could catch my airplane flight back to Munich, Germany, early Tuesday morning. But the second assignment was to meet with the US embassy people in Sofia. I was eager to meet them and they were likewise eager to make the connection with Project C.U.R.E. since it was possible that we would be ultimately pouring into the country several millions of dollars worth of medical goods. 

Actually our donations to the hospitals would almost be as an extension of their gift of over $300,000 to the regional hospital’s renovation project. 

Once in Sofia our US embassy contact people were Mark Watkins, chief, and Olajide Ijadare, deputy chief. Olajide Ijadare was born in Nigeria, so, when I told him the story of my being made a royal chief, “Chief Uzoma of Nkume People,” on one of my trips to Nigeria, he just beamed with smiles. He then started referring to me as “chief.” It was a great time and a great meeting with the US embassy folks. They were so appreciative that Project C.U.R.E. had agreed to come alongside the healthcare institutions in Haskovo and asked if there would be any possibility to extend our help to other areas of Bulgaria. 

I was certainly not going to be leaving Bulgaria being able to say that we had run into closed doors in that country. The doors of opportunity were not just wide open, but they had been completely taken off their hinges to allow Project C.U.R.E. to freely enter the country and set up shop. That would be easy for me to be a part of because I had quickly fallen in love with the people of Bulgaria.

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Broken Bulgaria

Sofia – Haskovo, Bulgaria: March, 2004: I had visited all of Bulgaria’s neighbors, including Romania, Turkey, Greece, old Yugoslavia, Albania, and the other sovereign states near the Black Sea, but never Bulgaria. 

Bulgaria, about the size of Tennessee, was a mountainous country of over eight million inhabitants. I had peered across the Danube River in the south of Romania over into Bulgaria in the past. That part of the world reminded me a lot of parts of Colorado. Both areas lay in about the same latitudinal position on the globe. 

Poor Bulgaria had twice fought with Germany – once in the first World War and again in World War II, so defeat had exacted a high price from the people. Then, following World War II, the communists had grabbed control of the country and it wasn’t much later that the Soviets swallowed them up. Now they were declaring independence and moving toward democracy and stability. But, the old corrupt and criminal ways of the communist philosophy and regime had made it extremely difficult to overcome poor work ethic and corruption that had continued to show itself through unemployment, inflation, and the breakdown of ethical business practices. 

In order to encourage Bulgaria, the United States had given the country more than $390 million specifically to support financial development and democratic institutions. One such grant generated from the US embassy in Sofia was a contribution to the municipality of Haskovo to enable them to renovate the most dilapidated departments of the hospital buildings. The grant was for something in excess of $300,000, earmarked specifically for the Haskovo Regional Hospital’s departments of surgery, endocrinology, and maternity. By early 2004 the renovation was completed, and while part of the facility had become better looking on the inside and outside, they were still woefully needing newer medical equipment and nearly begging for the most common medical supplies. 

A young Peace Corps volunteer from Tennessee serving her assignment in the municipality of Haskovo heard about Project C.U.R.E., logged onto our website, and fired off an application to Project C.U.R.E. on behalf of the Haskovo Regional Hospital. Her name was Laura Marzahl. 

By the first week of February, Anna Marie had reviewed all the application forms and supporting documents from Laura Marzahl in Bulgaria. In reviewing the complete list of countries waiting for us to visit and perform the needs assessment study, we both felt drawn toward Bulgaria. There were some 57 hospitals in the queue and the application from Bulgaria was at the bottom of our list since it had been received just days before. But feeling prompted to act on the Bulgarian request, I asked Anna Marie to reply as quickly as possible to the lady and see if they could move quickly enough to host us for a needs assessment study. Laura Marzahl replied with equal haste and said everything could be arranged for the visit even though it was very short notice. 


Perhaps in the 63 years that I had been alive I was beginning to learn that I could rely on the prompting of the Holy Spirit and trust the fact that God, indeed, was in control of every little detail and timing of my life. About 30 hours from the time I left Denver, I arrived in Munich. It was cold, and a mix of snow and freezing rain covered the German landscape. I could only hope that things would be a bit warmer in Bulgaria. 

Wednesday, March 24

It was late afternoon on Tuesday when my Lufthansa Airline flight landed in Sofia, Bulgaria. I was immediately met by Pavlina Passeva, director of the municipality of Haskovo, and Laura Marzahl, the Peace Corps volunteer who had become the head of the Bulgarian/American Development Committee in Haskovo. It took us about two and a half hours to drive from Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria to Haskovo, a city of about 300,000 people. “I could very well be riding through the beautiful countryside of Colorado,” I remarked to my new friends. “The snow-covered mountains, the rich, rolling farmland, the fruit orchards and rural farms … all closely resemble the state of Colorado where I live in the US.” 

Once we had arrived in Haskovo I was taken to a picturesque old hotel located adjacent to the sprawling city square. At the end of the square was situated the municipal building with the big storybook clock tower and bell tower. I had fallen in love with Haskovo within the first 15 minutes of being there. 

Thursday, March 25

They wasted no time at all in putting me to work on Thursday morning. Following a breakfast meeting I was whisked away to the large Haskovo Regional Hospital where I was not only met by all the medical personnel, but also by a bevy of television and newspaper reporters. 

All the hospital’s doctors, head nurses, and chief administrative folks had been summoned to a small, theater-type auditorium with a long speaker’s table positioned up on the stage adorned by flowers and coffee cups and water glasses. To me it had the appearance of being more of a medical convention than a needs assessment interview. 

With TV cameras running and flash attachments popping, the meeting began. The folks of Haskovo were going to make a big deal of Project C.U.R.E. being there. It took me until well after noon to walk the hospital hallways and meet the department heads and senior nurses. At the morning meeting I had given them each an assignment to be prepared to discuss with me the three things they needed most in their department. Each was eager to have me listen to their particular needs. No one had ever come to their hospital to just listen to them individually and laugh with them and be their friend. 

When finished with the main regional hospital, Dr. Yasen Yanev insisted that I go with him to a different building where the cancer center was located to also assess its needs. 

At 3 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, there had been a meeting scheduled on the third floor of the historic municipal building. Most of the city fathers were present, as were eight medical doctors who comprised an august group known as the municipal council commission for healthcare. It had been the oversight committee for the large renovation project at the regional hospital which had been financed by the US embassy in Sofia. 

The group was primed and ready for me, But, many of the questions were completely out of my league. They were asking such questions as, “Does your being here on the heels of the US embassy financially helping us with the needed remodeling of our dilapidated facility indicate that NATO is going to choose Haskovo as a regional medical center?” Or, “How are you going to be able to help us with our disabled groups … both the old and the children?” Or, “Do you have a program to cure illicit drug addiction?” Or, “Can you help us put together a national health insurance program in Bulgaria?” Or, “Can you train us for emergency health procedures?” 

Soon I was in deep discussion explaining just how narrow and boring Project C.U.R.E.’s scope would be in Haskovo. “Our mission is to simply collect, warehouse, and distribute medical supplies and pieces of medical equipment based on imperative need around the world.” I went on, “I plan to be very narrow and very focused here in Bulgaria. I also plan to be very successful in my efforts to help meet some of the needs here if I can have your help and assistance.” 

My honest and open approach quickly won them over and they saw that I had not just come to patronize them or shove something down their throats. I had come to be of help and to be their friend and to work from a common denominator of seeking a more excellent healthcare delivery system for Bulgaria.


Before we finished they pressed me to tell them what I had seen as their major weaknesses. “You have many fine physicians and nurses in Bulgaria, but you have inherited a system from the old Soviet days that is almost impossible to render efficient. In the old days there was a strong desire to control everything and everybody and not let the left hand know what the right hand was doing. In Russia I witnessed doctors who were trained only to remove gall bladders. Indeed, they were specialized and they could remove the organ with haste, but they knew almost nothing about medicine. When there was not a gall bladder to remove they had nothing to do but go outside and smoke. Still, it was easy for the statists to control that technician.” 

I was watching the doctors’ eyes for response. “Your system here is based on separation and overt control. Today what I saw in your hospitals was to me very sad. There were six different departments within the regional hospital. No one department could communicate with another. Each specialty block had its own laboratory, each had his own x-ray or radiology department, each had its own diagnostic department, and each had its own surgical block that included at least three complete operating theaters for each of the six departments. That’s 18 complete operating theaters with only about 15% of them busy! But each specialty block has requested new anesthesia machines for each of the three theaters in each block. That’s 18 new anesthesia machines. I won’t help you with 18 anesthesia machines. Maybe three. I do not believe that your new healthcare delivery system will be able to financially sustain a fractured system. Besides, it’s not all that bad to get along with each other.” 

I could tell that I had hit a home run. They knew that the old Soviet system was not efficient. 

I summed up my medical philosophy on that point by stating, “Free medical care for all the people simply means no medical care eventually for any of the people.” 

Next Week: Beautiful Bulgaria

© Dr. James W. Jackson    

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Little Princess (Part 2) Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: April, 1998: “Please,” she sobbed, “don’t leave me here with him. You must take me away with you.” 

The driver at last had to peel her from his leg and tell her, “Princess, you wait here.” 

The screams and sobs filled his confused head as he drove away. 

The entire emotional episode of Princess being removed from the orphanage had taken place while Binh was in Colorado. When she returned on this present trip she patiently worked with me and with those who had come to help her with the orphanage. But her obsession and driving goal was to seek and find Princess and learn of her condition. 

At breakfast one morning, I overheard Binh talking to Mr. Minh and another man. Binh was determined to find the worker who had returned Princess to her house. He was the only one who had any knowledge of where she had been taken.


“I have failed in my duty to protect the best interests of that child,” said Binh. “I will go to any lengths to find her and check on her.” 

The driver was located and indicated that he thought he could once again find his way through the rice paddies to the house where he had left Princess. Mr. Minh, Binh, Louise Bryer, and the driver headed out that same hour in search of Princess. 

“We drove to the end of the world and then walked to hell,” Binh told me, recalling the search. 

Later Mr. Minh confided that he would not have approved of the trip had he known the perils and dangers of getting there. “One of the bamboo and wood bridges should not have carried the weight of the car. We had to chase off the bridge a herd of water buffalo because their additional weight along with the car would have surely collapsed the structure.” 

The “road” was simply the top of the earthen dike that separated the soggy rice fields. There would be no way to turn the car around to drive out. When the earthen dike became impassable, they parked the car and walked a long distance to a small cluster of Vietnamese rural houses. The driver was confident he would be able to remember the correct house. How could he ever forget? The scene was still burned into his mind. He could still hear the uncontrollable, pleading sobs ringing in his ears. 

When they approached the house, none of the four was ready for what they found. There was a seven-year-old girl, a five-year-old girl, and a five-month-old baby lying on the filth-littered floor. An old, scrawny Vietnamese village grandmother was outside. No mother, and the father hadn’t been there for some time. The ages of the children would indicate that they had found the right house. But the children were not the right children. The middle girl was emaciated, and layers of putrid filth covered her body. The pigs, chickens, and other animals had free run of the premises, and no one cared to clean either the house or the dirt-encrusted children. 

Binh stooped down to get a closer look at the five-year-old girl as she lay curled up on the floor—not a sound, not a response. She scooped up the child, grabbed a filthy cloth, and headed out to the hand pump to wet the rag stiffened with dried muck. 

“Oh, God,” pleaded Binh, “don’t let this be Princess. Let me clean the terrible accumulation of grime from this child’s face, and let me discover that the driver was horribly mistaken. Surely he has brought us to the wrong house. We must go to another house and find my Princess. This child must not be her!” 

But it was Princess! Once her face was cleaned of the layers of dirt, the fine features of her face could be recognized. 

As Binh looked into the child’s lifeless eyes, there was no response, no recognition. 

“I have lost my baby. She is gone again. What have I done to this child? God entrusted her to me, and I have let her die again! God will certainly hold me accountable. I have failed both the Princess and God.” Binh laid the weak child back down on the floor and went out of the house and vomited. 

Later the stepmother rode up to the house on a bicycle. Binh pointed out to the scrawny, old grandmother that Princess was now smaller in size than when she left the orphanage. 

“Yes,” was the reply. “The child has been sick for the past three days.” 

Binh asked to please be allowed to take Princess back to the orphanage where she could be fed and attended to medically. The two village women flatly refused. 

“Look,” said Louise, “the dress Princess is wearing is the one we bought for her. But it is so filthy you can hardly recognize it at all. There are no washing facilities here. It is most likely that she hasn’t had that dress off since she was returned to this house.”

The father was not expected to return to the house, so the option of appealing to him to once again return Princess to the orphanage was impossible. Soon some curious, old village women began to gather at the home and peer in through the doorway. Mr. Minh sternly insisted that Binh and Louise leave right away. There had been no response from Princess up to that moment. The visitors concluded that it was no longer possible for Princess to respond intellectually or emotionally. But just as Binh and the other three were about to go, Princess made an effort to stop the driver from leaving. He had left her there once before to be consumed by her nightmare. He had told her to wait there. He had returned once again. Was it not to take her with him? Surely he would not have come just to leave her there—not again! 

Princess broke into a wail. Certainly they would not leave without taking her with them, she thought. The stepmother began yelling at Princess and telling her to shut up. If she did not, she would be punished. More curious old village women began to appear. Everything was in total emotional confusion. Mr. Minh now harshly insisted they quickly leave. 

Their walk back to the car along the tops of the rice-paddy dikes seemed much longer than their walk in. But the wail of Princess in the hearts and heads of the four visitors did not quiet or diminish even though they moved farther away from the house.


By the time Binh and Louise returned to our hotel in Viet Tri, they were emotional basket cases. The story of Princess has not yet ended well. All the people involved in the plot did not simply ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.

But the story has come to me with crushing impact. It has forced me to grapple spiritually, emotionally, ethically, and behaviorally with the sobering realization that there are millions of Princesses in the world I travel who have no advocate, no help, no hope. Certainly we will not cure all the ills and save all the children. But “as ye have done it unto the least of these orphans and widows, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40, paraphrase). 

Project C.U.R.E. is now, and always will be as long as I have an ounce of influence on it, a holy structure of humanitarian outreach dedicated to easing pain and building up the least of these in the name of Christ. We have the power of attorney to work the works and accomplish the desires that would have driven him during his earthly ministry. I believe his all-encompassing ministry includes working out his heart’s desire through my human hands and feet, ears and eyes. My personal life and the life of Project C.U.R.E. must be the manifestation of the eternal life and heart of Jesus Christ. That very real manifestation must be worked out in Evergreen, in Denver, in Nashville, in Los Angeles, in Vietnam, in the Ukraine, in Mongolia, in North Korea, and in all the additional locations that will be added to the present list of sixty-one countries around the world. 

Binh Rybacki’s love for the orphaned and the leprous children of Vietnam has both encouraged and challenged my heart and mind. Thank God for the faithful ministry partners of Project C.U.R.E. As I travel, I find myself praying for her; for De, the blind musician in the orphanage; and for little Princess, wherever she might be.

 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Little Princess (Part 1) Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: April, 1998: My flight from Vietnam to Denver seemed unusually long. The flight segment from Bangkok to Los Angeles was almost eighteen flying hours. I am eager to get back to my own home along Upper Bear Creek, where I can be with my wonderful wife and family. It will be a short stay of three days at home and then back on an airplane to Paris, France, and south to the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Benin, West Africa. 

As I rested my head against the coach seat, I reflected on a situation I had observed in Viet Tri over the past few days. Many elements of the episode, such as hardship, love, perseverance, rejection, dashed hopes, and deep emotion, I had seen at work in my own life under different circumstances. But the emotionally packed principles involved allowed me to vicariously revisit some of these elements once again in the following saga of the “little princess.”


Binh Rybacki had poured her heart and their family money into the orphanages she had established in Vietnam. Her living now in Colorado, and endeavoring to manage the orphanages in Vietnam, required her to make the tiresome trip many times a year, But it was almost as if she were driven on the inside to make a difference in the lives of the abandoned children. Had she not been able to escape to America there was a big possibility that she too, would have lived the fate of an orphan. 

When rice harvest is finished in a local Vietnamese village, the workers will sometimes walk to another village where the harvest is just beginning and work for wages in the neighboring community. Once the harvest there is complete, they will return to their local village or sometimes choose to continue on northward following the maturing harvest. 

An attractive, young Vietnamese mother left her two children with her husband and traveled with some of her close friends to work at a neighboring harvest. The family was having financial problems, and it was decided the wage labor could ease some of the pressure. Later it was revealed that the problems at home may have included more than just financial troubles. 

When the pretty mother from the village failed to return home, the community gossip machine flared with fury. Some of the older women swore they knew the girl had simply decided not to go back to the stress but, rather, had decided to take up residence in a mountainous area far away. But some said she had been lured away into crossing the border into China. Others declared they had read of kidnappers who had captured her and sold her into slavery and prostitution in China because of her beauty. 

One thing was known for certain: She never returned. No one had heard from her or of her since the day she departed. Her husband was left with two small children—the oldest was age five, and the youngest, eighteen months. The father was overwhelmed. An old relative took the older child but wanted nothing to do with the baby, who was still nursing. Malnourished and dirty, the baby was brought to Binh Rybacki’s orphanage and abandoned by the father, who wanted nothing more to do with the child. 

Binh and her workers took the baby and began cleaning and caring for her. She began to gain weight and function physically, but emotionally something was wrong. As a result of trauma or unknown abuse, the baby would only sit and stare. She would not focus, nor would she respond. Soon she was affectionately dubbed “Stone Face” in Vietnamese vernacular. The only word that passed her lips was “more” when they stopped feeding her before she was satisfied. 

Everyone who came to the orphanage was immediately attracted to Stone Face. She had inherited the fine features of her beautiful mother. She was the most beautiful baby to ever be brought to the orphanage. But what was going on behind the blank eyes of Stone Face? She would neither play with the other children nor reach out for an adult. 

Binh’s two sons, Preston and Craig, went to the orphanage in Viet Tri to work after school was out in Loveland, Colorado. Stone Face was now three and a half years old. Another teen, Joel, went with Preston and Craig, and when they set foot inside the orphanage compound, they were attracted to Stone Face as if she were a magnet. They were taken with her rare beauty but puzzled by her unresponsive and empty stares. “She’s spooky,” they said as they increased their efforts over the following days to try to get Stone Face to smile or speak. But there was no response.

The boys decided to take on the challenge to awaken Stone Face. Binh told them they would each be presented a ten-dollar bill if they could succeed in awakening her. The contest was on. The boys’ clowning and goofy antics fully deserved an Oscar award. Love and attention flowed to Stone Face like a river on a rampage. From morning to night, the boys packed her around on their backs, on their hips, or on their shoulders. They laughed, coaxed, stood on their heads. They were determined to awaken the inner beauty of this little princess. They just knew they could help her respond. Little by little the abuse of the past was replaced by confidence in her new friends. Little by little she began to anticipate when they would be coming for her and would turn and look for them. She then began reaching for them to pack her around. A light began to slowly—ever so slowly—be rekindled behind her blank eyes and her stone face began to soften. Little Princess was coming to life. 

Before the summer was over, the boys earned their ten bucks each. Princess was not only smiling; she was walking and singing and eating on her own. She was tagging along everywhere her new teenage friends went and even began making friends with another little orphan girl named Peanut. Princess was like a beautiful butterfly that had been freed from the long nightmare of the cocoon. The metamorphosis had been stimulated by nothing but love and affection. The young boys went shopping and brought Princess a complete new wardrobe and pretty new shoes. 

Princess was now nearly five, and the flow of love and affection was soon to be shut off. Binh was back in the United States with her family when she received a most disconcerting call from Mr. Minh, the orphanage director: “They have come to take Princess away from us. Her father has remarried, and he is trying to save face with his new wife by denying that he abandoned his children. He cares not one whit for the child, only for what he wants this new woman to think.” 

“Over my dead body” was Binh’s reply. “The cruelty of that child’s abuse and trauma will not be repeated again in her little life. We shall protect her and fight to preserve our successful efforts on her behalf. She was for all purposes dead when we received her. She is now alive. I will not allow her spirit to be killed again by abuse, rejection, and cruel neglect.” 

But the determined father appealed to the court, and permission was granted for him to take Princess back to his home. When the day came for Princess to leave the orphanage, the workers packed all her pretty new dresses in a box, along with her new pairs of shoes. But Princess refused to leave. She perceived very well what was happening. At the sight of her father, she became uncontrollable. Eventually it was necessary for an orphanage worker to load Princess and her box of belongings into a car and take her to her former rural village miles away. 

For the entire trip, Princess clung to the neck of the driver, sobbing and begging him to take her back to the orphanage and her friends. Once inside the house, she spotted the father and grabbed hold of the car driver’s leg and would not let go. 

Next Week: Little Princess (Part 2)

 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Miracle of the Water Deal: Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: April, 1998: The ride to and from the temple mountain gave me a rare opportunity to get better acquainted with Mr. Nguyen Van Vinh of the planning and investment department of the People’s Committee. I found that he is a walking source of names and contacts. I explained to him about our goals for Hanoi and also about Project C.U.R.E.’s relationship with North Korea. I asked if he could help me arrange meetings with the important people I needed to see. Mr. Vinh was flattered and eagerly agreed to help me. After all, if Project C.U.R.E. can be encouraged to participate in his regional capital, then Mr. Vinh will gain a tremendous amount of job security.

After our delegation returned to the hotel in Viet Tri at 5:00 p.m., I was informed that a meeting was scheduled with Mr. Vinh’s boss, Mr. Hong. He had been keeping close tabs on the possibility of Mr. Jackson coming to his region and helping with the hospital. At the meeting we talked of many things that are taking place in his region. Then he said something that really made me blink: “Mr. Jackson, in addition to the medical supplies that our seven-region area needs, we also desperately need help with our water-purification problems.”

I was listening very closely to Binh Rybacki’s translation of Mr. Hong’s request. His mention of a water project made me blink because of the timeliness of the subject. The day before I left Denver for Vietnam, I had a meeting on that very subject.

During an evening dinner party at Daniel Yohannes’s home in Denver, he introduced me to Mr. Dick Campbell, a prominent corporate attorney in the Denver area. Daniel is president of the large U.S. Bank conglomerate. Mr. Campbell and his wife were very taken with the work of Project C.U.R.E. Subsequently, Dick Campbell, Daniel Yohannes, my son Doug, and I had several lunch meetings regarding Project C.U.R.E. On one occasion Dick asked if I knew Mr. Sam Perry. I inquired if he was the same Sam Perry of the large real-estate company in Denver, Perry and Butler. Dick confirmed my guess. I told him that twenty-five years ago, when I was still very active in the real-estate industry, Sam Perry and I had put some deals together between our companies.

Dick informed me that he and Sam had grown up together, and both of them are devoted Catholics who had been on some spiritual retreats together. He also mentioned that Sam had gotten quite serious about spiritual matters and was looking to get involved in some humanitarian efforts. Dick gave me Sam’s personal phone numbers and almost insisted I call Sam.

When I reached Sam, he was very eager to get together and asked if I would mind if he brought with him to our meeting three of his close friends and business partners. He said he had been reading and hearing so much about the work of Project C.U.R.E. from Daniel and Dick and others that he was hoping he would get to meet me.

At our first lunch meeting, Sam and I were joined by John Peterson, whose brother is the head of the prestigious Blackstone investment group of New York City and whose sister sits on the board of directors of Johnson and Johnson medical group. Greg Bohannon also joined us. He is the president and CEO of a new venture called Aqua-Asia, a firm devoted to producing water-purification systems, especially in developing countries. They have created a new purification process that utilizes electronic collectors to remove harmful pollutants from the water. The system doesn’t require traditional electric sources of power or generators, because photocells are employed to power the facility.

A lot of the discussion at the lunch centered around what God had been doing in our lives and about values and priorities. I challenged them to consider joining Project C.U.R.E. and setting up some of their purification units on a donation basis in some of the most desperate areas of the world. By the time lunch was over, they had agreed to join efforts with Project C.U.R.E.

Our next meeting additionally included my son Doug, who is now president and CEO of Project C.U.R.E., as well as Mickey Fouts, who has large real-estate holdings in Denver. Mickey had just returned from Hanoi, Vietnam. Sam and Mickey told me about Tobin Lent, a young investment banker they had mentored. At the time he was in Vietnam establishing a base for Aqua-Asia. They told me how very keen a young man Tobin is and gave me his phone number in Hanoi. They said they would inform Tobin about me and the work of Project C.U.R.E. “Perhaps the two of you working together in Vietnam can locate a suitable project for us to do our first pro-bono venture,” they told me.

Around the office in Denver, the staff and volunteers continually say they can’t stand being away from the office because they are afraid they will miss out on one of the regularly occurring miracles. I, too, am continually amazed at how God proceeds ahead of all our domestic and foreign scrambling and prearranges the pieces of the mosaic to bring about a product that is pleasing and desirable to him.

With that in mind, you can only imagine the tingle that went up my spine today when Mr. Hong said, “In addition to the medical supplies our seven-region area needs, we desperately need help with our water-purification problems.” Could it be happening again?

My evening with Tobin was one of the highlights of the trip. The young man is sharp. He is focused. He is from Littleton, Colorado, and his parents now live in Beijing, China. He has been an investment banker and a mortgage broker. I sensed he has a tender heart beneath his driven surface. I think Tobin and Doug will hit it off very well. Tobin is not only fascinated with what has happened in my life, but just from the things the guys from Denver have told him, he is already in love with Project C.U.R.E. 

He took me to a small restaurant located in an old French home. It was very classy, in addition to serving delicious Vietnamese food. While visiting with Tobin, I explained all the things that had taken place leading up to tonight. I also explained to him about the town called Phu-Tho (pronounced “Fu Ta”), which Project C.U.R.E. and the Denver guys are proposing as the target town for the first water-purification venture. It is a smaller town with a lot of residual French influence. It presently is home for a well-respected, smaller university. I expressed how I think the town is small enough to be able to collect accurate data on the before-and-after effects of the purification plant. Also, its setting in the mountains will make a perfect show-and-tell location for Aqua-Asia’s product. Tobin really got excited about the possibilities. 

After thinking about all the apparent miracles that are taking place and about my meeting last night with Tobin Lent, I felt an urgency not to lose any momentum on the water project. At breakfast I asked Binh to contact Mr. Vinh and Mr. Minh in Viet Tri and have them bring their boss to Hanoi for a meeting with Tobin either this evening or early tomorrow morning. Our time is running out before I return to Colorado. I need to be at the Hanoi airport by 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. I know that we are pushing our luck on getting the bigwigs to come to Hanoi from Viet Tri on such short notice. But the next step in the deal is to get Tobin introduced to them personally so they can all move forward together on the project with the Needs Assessment Study and projections. Another miracle is taking place right before my eyes.

 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House