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Trip to Bongili (1981)

Updated: Dec 17, 2019

Excerpt from draft of "Apostle to the Pygmies – The Doctor Jerry Galloway Story”


In December, I took a four-mile bicycle ride to Bongili and started training the fifth member of the barefoot doctor program. Yende was the oldest of the five barefoot doctors. He was timid and was the least educated, but he was a dedicated Christian and very skilled at technical work.


While I was in Bongili, a sixteen-year-old boy came. The boy was as thin as a rail, and he was very weak. He had bloody diarrhea for the past three weeks, but he did not come to the clinic because he did not have any clothes, only a rag wrapped around his waist. I told him that if he would come to the hospital, I would give him a pair of shorts, shirt and enough food for one week. Sure enough, the next day he came. He had amoebic dysentery with severe ulcerations of the bowel. Amoebae were a huge problem among the people. The springs and creeks were contaminated with them because they did not have outhouses, and for those that did, the children did not use them.

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