Excerpt from draft of "Apostle to the Pygmies – The Doctor Jerry Galloway Story”
On Friday afternoon there was a fifteen-year-old boy named Ikengo sitting on the church steps. I asked him what was wrong, and he held up his right hand. The third finger was dead and there were three holes in the palm of his hand with pus pouring out.
Shocked, I asked, “Why didn’t you come to the mission sooner?”
The boy replied, “I do not have any money, and I am afraid to go to the hospital.”
Both of the boy’s parents were dead, and he was left to fend for himself. I felt sympathy for him, and sat him on my bicycle, deciding to take him to the clinic for treatment. I was amazed at the amount of suffering the people would endure before they came for help, and I knew that this made the “barefoot doctor” program even more necessary. With this program, patients like Ikengo could be discovered and treated much earlier.
In my spare time, I began to study some Lokanda words, which I thought was the language of the Ekonda and the Batwa. I wanted to learn the parts of the body and basic words like ‘sit,’ ‘stand,’ and ‘breathe’ to help me examine patients who did not speak Lingala. However, I soon learned that the Batwa spoke Lotwa. I asked the prayer group why they always said their language was Lokanda, and they told me they did not think I would want to know the slave’s language. I immediately decided to give up learning Lokanda and focus on studying Lotwa.
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