On The Trail of Livingstone

When David Livingstone died while exploring the depths of Africa in 1873 his heart and other internal organs were buried there and a memorial was built. His body was then embalmed and carried by porters over 1,000 kilometres to Zanzibar for shipment to England, where it was eventually buried in Westminster Abbey. While spending a weekend in Kasanka National Park for our Country Management Team (CMT) meeting, I learned that the Livingstone memorial was located only about 30 miles away. I didn’t have the opportunity to go there, but I did take time to think about his explorations and to wonder who would later follow him into this region. Based upon the number of signs I saw on the roadside from Kasanka to Nchelenge the most obvious guess would be the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The CMT meeting was attended by Kodjo (the Head of Mission & Medical Coordinator from Togo), Vera (the Project Coordinator from Holland), Charles (the project doctor from Uganda) and myself. It was certainly a much smaller group than I was used to at CMT meetings in Pakistan. Not surprisingly, I was nominated to record the meeting minutes, which presented me with plenty of challenges while trying to follow the discussion. At one point I reminded my colleagues that I was new to Zambia, that I was non-medical, that I last worked in an earthquake response, and that my only background in the field of AIDS/HIV was having watched that Tom Hanks’ movie (Philadelphia). I was also baffled by Kodjo’s Togolese/French accent at times and at one point he got my attention when making a statement that sounded like “We must test all ‘ruuupveeeteeems’ for AIDS/HIV.” I thought he had said rugby teams, but this didn’t seem quite right. When I asked for clarification I learned that what he had actually said was “We must test all rape victims.” I think over the course of the day the others found my confusion to be quite entertaining.

Kasanka was a nice place to hold a meeting, as we sat outside on the covered deck and watched the Impala grazing in the field. It seemed to be a fair trade-off for working through the weekend. Later that evening when discussing the day’s events Charles said he was wondering what I was thinking during one hotly debated medical discussion. I told him that I was contemplating whether or not I would see any elephants across the field.

At the conclusion of the CMT weekend I had seen neither elephants nor Livingstone’s memorial. Fortunately, I wasn’t too bothered about missing the resting place of Livingstone’s internal organs, as I couldn’t recall having seen where the rest of him had been buried during a long ago visit to Westminster Abbey. Besides, I half-expected to find that dwarfing his memorial would be a sign for the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.