One of my favorite characters in this book is a woman named Ophelia Dahl. She met Paul Farmer when she was 18 and he was 23. She told me that she remembered, from many years ago, deciding that Farmer was an important person to believe in. Not as a figure to watch from a distance, thinking, Oh, look, there is good in the world. Not as a comforting example, but the opposite. As proof that it was possible to put up a fight. As a goad to make others realize that if people could be kept from dying unnecessarily — from what Haitians call “stupid deaths” — then one had to act. I don’t plan to give away all my worldly goods and go to work with Farmer in Haiti. For one thing, I’d just get in the way. But I can’t tell myself anymore that the great problems of the world, such as the AIDS and TB epidemics, are beyond all hope of amelioration, or of repair. In other words, I don’t think I can feel comfortable anymore in this world, by resigning myself to despair on behalf of billions of other people. There’s always something one can do. It’s not my place to make a fund-raising pitch for Farmer and his organization, Partners In Health. Well, actually, I don’t know why it isn’t my place. I happened onto something remarkable and I sat down to try to describe it to others. I hope what I’ve written is artful. I believe it is at least accurate and truthful. And one true fact is that Farmer’s organization, Partners In Health, represents a real antidote to despair. [...] A donation to Partners In Health of, say, $200 will save an impoverished Haitian from dying a horrible death from tuberculosis.
I think reading this book is, in some sense, being in Ophelia Dahl's shoes (and Tracy Kidder's). It seems easy to be overwhelmed by Paul Farmer's person, but I think the more important part of this book and Paul Farmer's life isn't Paul Farmer, but the truth outside him. As it happens, writing a biography of Paul Farmer is a good way of illuminating some oft-ignored truths that exist independent of him: about what it means to be poor in this world, about Haiti and stark historical injustices, about sickness and 'the great epi divide'. I should hope that at some point, anyone talking about me could not do it without talking about some vital truth.
I was pleased with out discussion on Sunday and I hope you all felt the same way. Feel free to email me or post any suggestions or other info you find interesting. Those of you reading other Farmer-related material, earmark especially tasty bits.
I love her statement that Farmer was to her "proof that it was possible to put up a fight." Up until I met Jesus, most everything in me wanted to get up and fight, but losing the fight seemed inevitable to the point of despair. Knowing that our ultimate enemy has been defeated and that God himself is calling us into a collective revolution changes everything. And, reading the story of someone who's fight is changing the world makes me want to get up and dance! (Though dancing unfortunately is not the most useful long-term response.)
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed possible to put up a fight! And as Ophelia says/implies, the point is not to stand back and clap for such extraordinary people, but to realize that there is no real reason we can't make that kind of a difference too and then get up and fight.
"I should hope that at some point, anyone talking about me could not do it without talking about some vital truth." Me too! Meaning I hope that for you or I hope that for me? Both, and for the rest of us as well! And more than that, that they could not do so without being challenged to act on that truth!
This of course means that all of this is useless talk unless it leads to action and reminds of one of my favorite quotes from this book which I did not have a good excuse to bust out at our meeting. This one is not from Farmer but from Jim Kim, defining political correctness as "a well-crafted tool to distract us. A very self centered activity. Clean up your own vocabulary so you can show everybody you have the social capital of having been in circles where these things are talked about on a regular basis." God save us from such things and make us genuinely useful!