Hitting the Big Time

We McLaughlins and Faders were of course excited for John when he was featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer for his international medicine interests several months ago, but secretly jealous as well. Angling for some fancy publicity of our own, we finally landed a magazine deal and photoshoot just this past week.

Seriously, Jason and I (Rachel) were surprised to find out last week that St. Joe's recommended us to a Detroit area magazine called the Ambassador for a medical doctor "human interest" feature the magazine was doing. Basically, every year they feature area doctors who have a unique story to tell. Last year two of my OB-GYN attendings, who happen to be married to each other, were featured and interviewed about family life and their son, who they had recently adopted from Vietnam. This year, we were invited to talk about our plans to head to Kenya after residency.

So, two nights ago a reporter and photographer came by our place and spent a few hours with us, getting our story and then doing a fairly professional-looking photo shoot in our kitchen. I know, sounds like a weird place for a photo shoot, but I think it worked. We even got Anna to participate in the fun as the pictures demonstrate (she gathered up some props from around the house). The magazine article should be coming out in early summer, before we leave, so stay tuned and we'll provide a link when it's available.

Where Moth and Rust Destroy

March has come, and two McCropder homes are for sale. With this come thoughts of moving, and with this comes rising excitement. And with this move comes a process of shedding a large portion of our "things".

I may be somewhat sentimental when it comes to keepsakes, but overall (with the help of my wife) I think we have done well to minimize our focus on things. Saturday morning, we were laying in bed pondering what will find a place in the seven pieces of luggage that we're allotted to bring to Kenya for two years... Well, there are the obvious things... but the food processor will be incredibly handy... and maybe our down mattress pad... whoa, my guitar takes up a lot of space. And then there's our baby. She'll be small, but man does she take up a lot of luggage...

Let's obtain a little perspective. We heard about a Peace Corps volunteer who brought 90 pounds of toiletries. That is not us. I can get by with less clothing than any other American I've met (possibly excepting fellow McCropders), and Rachel and I together will take a single small backpack for an enire weekend.

And yet I'm forced to admit my attachment to "things". My piano, my CS Lewis books, the pottery I made in college, my awesome antique copy of The Book of Common Prayer. They will likely all stay behind. This thought broadens my horizon, and I remember that this life itself is finite, and all things will be left behind. The music I've recorded, our family photos, our wedding rings.

Paul says that he counts it all as rubbish compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus. There is no clenched fist, but a joyful casting aside, like a river rejoicing to fling itself over a waterfall, to crash on the rocks below. Jesus tells us to store up treasure in heaven, for here on earth moth and rust destroy; thieves break in and steal. He says to put our treasures in a safe place, away from these destructive elements, and our hearts will then be safe as well.

This is true, universally, but I earnestly need the reminder, for the rubber is meeting the road. I wish I could say that it is easy. I wish I could say that my treasure is not on earth, for that has serious implications for the place of my heart. But honest acknowledgement is a necessary beginning, and so I know I need help. Thanks be to God, my ever-present help.

Aid and Accountability

More and more, I'm learning that international aid and its ramifications are quite complicated issues, and I'm far from a nihilist on the issue. Nonetheless, I think the following comments from Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda are very interesting, and bear close scrutiny. The context of this video was found here, and the comments to the original post provide some necessary feedback.


Andrew Mwenda on Taxation and Accountability in International Aid from DRI on Vimeo.

What about the kids?

One of the more frequent questions I am asked when people find out I am moving to Kenya concerns raising my children there. Far from being a reason to stay here in the U.S., raising my kids in Africa is one of the more compelling reasons for me to live there.

Having spent much of my childhood in Kenya, I experienced many things of which I would hate to deprive my children. I attended school at Rift Valley Academy, which is attended by children from over 20 different nationalities. This environment provided a wonderful perspective of the diverse world we live in. Family vacations consisted of driving to game parks and watching lions play, or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, or scuba diving in the Indian Ocean. I had a dirt bike (see picture), and my friends and I used to ride down to the Great Rift Valley, which I could see from my bedroom window. I was able to spend a lot of time in the operating room starting in 5th grade when I watched cardiac surgery. Being in the hospital gave me the opportunity to see many desperately sick patients and certainly had an impact on my desire to spend my career back in Africa.

Sure I missed out on some things… We rarely watched movies. I did not always have the newest toys. There was no McDonald’s for thousands of miles. And my sense of fashion was always several years behind (though my sister tells me I still have a lot of work to do on this one).

Although no place is perfect, I feel very blessed to have grown up in Africa, and I hope to provide my children the same opportunity.

- Jason

Signs of Africa

This series of photographs of "Signs of Africa" posted on the BBC is awesome. Who wouldn't want to move there?

Rick Donlan and Training in the 'Hood

Rick Donlan, an innovative doc among the Memphis indigent, has a talk that he titles "From the 'Hood to the Hindu Kush", which is all about why serving in the American inner city is the perfect training ground for international medical work. One of the facets of his clinics in Memphis is that they take young docs from around the country, bring them to Memphis where they work (and live) among the inner city, get their loans paid off, and (in his words) then send them off to some place real scary.

My family medicine clinic is in Ypsilanti, MI, which is a relatively small outlying area of the greater Detroit area, that has an uncanny inner-city feel, given its size. Thus, some of the points Donlan made were already apparent, but some generated further thought. Overall, I heartily agree that the inner city is a great training ground for international service. Reasons why:

1. Immigrants pool in urban areas: my patients are quite often only speak Spanish, French (West African), Thai, Somali, Arabic, etc.

2. Plenty of experience working in limited-resource scenarios.

3. Both the inner city and communities abroad are very tight-knit and often very large families.

4. Both environments may have quite a bit of mistrust towards outsiders professing to want to help (and often times for historically good reasons).

5. Often the simple answer (hygeine, money for food, education, neglect) trumps the more complicated answers you learn in med school.

6. You have to stretch your mindset to see things from a very different point-of-view.

7. Lastly, there are some people in both places who will defy your categories. Are they wanting help? Do they want to help others? Or are they after something else? Sometimes you just will never know.

Atheists, Priests, and Dependency in Africa

I don't think that I'll try to provide a direct answer to the questions from Paul Theroux, as posted below. Instead just a couple stories and thoughts that seem to bear upon the issue. The most significant is an amazing article sent to me by the good James Paternoster from The Times, by Matthew Parris, entitled "As an Atheist, I Truly Believe Africa Needs God." I recommend it in it's entirety. It's subtitle reads: "Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset." He then goes on to make claims that even I, as a Christian, might not be so bold as to make. The main supposition is that Africa needs a new worldview, one that encourages initiative and ingenuity, and does not bow to thuggish pseudo-dictators. He (almost reluctantly) admits that he finds this change taking place in the areas where missionaries have been the most active within Africa. Of course, this falls into the category of "faith in God as a means to an end", which is a camp in which I cannot put myself, but nonetheless, it gives me great optimism about our goal of Word and Deed.

The second story that has seemed relevant to me is that of Abbe Pierre, a French priest that Paul Brand (long-time leprosy doctor/hand surgeon/missionary in India) met years ago. His story is that he started a mission to help the homeless of Paris, and found the greatest effect in having the homeless serve someone more needy than themselves. This apparently turned out to be enormously successful, to the end that they were in the danger of not having enough need to serve. This, in turn, brought Abbe Pierre to Dr. Brand in India, and he found in Indian pariah lepers someone for the homeless of France to serve. He expressed his great concern to Dr. Brand that a lack of service would turn their focus inward and thus be their own destruction. Service as simply a means to your own fulfillment is fraught with difficulty, but I do agree with basic ideas here, and thus remember that turning a blind eye or a hard heart to the suffering in the world is just as likely to be our own end as theirs.

Paul Theroux and "Agents of Virtue"

A friend lent us Paul Theroux's African travel tale Dark Star Safari, and it has given me enough to think about that it likely bears sharing. I have never read anything of his before, and was comforted to hear at the end of this story that recognizes himself in the phrase "Pessimistic Globetrotter", since that makes me think things aren't as glum as he paints them. Theroux lived in Malawi in the 60's for 2 years and then taught in Uganda for a number of years, but hadn't really been back to Africa since. He left in the optimism of the independence movement, and since then had only heard the harsh news with which we're all familiar. It left him wanting to find out if it's really "that bad", and if so, why.

It was on the whole a pretty engrossing story, and a great primer on tons of geography and culture. And I must give him credit personally for two main things: First, he travels overland all the way from Cairo, Egypt, to Cape Town, South Africa (with a couple minor exceptions in Sudan that couldn't be helped). In doing so, he can provide first-hand observations from many unknown parts of Africa, especially the areas around the national borders, which appear to be often minimally-governed. In Ethiopia, he asks the Kenyan ambassadors how the road is to Kenya, and they reply that in decades of their work, they have never once taken it. Thus, Theroux's perspective is a novel one.

Second, he provides a little push back for which I can't help but cheer. On entering Malawi, a young man on the bus repeatedly refers to him as Muzungu, a generic pan-African term for white man. This bothers him, since he knows that decades ago, a young man would have always addressed him, as a senior, with a term of respect. So, he turns to him and says in Chichewa "Do you want me to call you 'dark man'? Because if you don't, please don't call me 'white man.'" The young man casts his eyes down, and addresses him as is appropriate for Malawian culture.

However, the reflection that causes me the most pause is Theroux's conviction that foreign donor aid is not only not helping the situation in Africa, but is actually hurting, a net negative that at its best is well-meant, but nevertheless is fuelling a culture of dependence and sloth on the part of African nationals, who no longer take the initiative to solve their own problems. He all but explicitly states that the best thing to help Africa would be for every foreign "agent of virtue" to pack up and take themselves and their funds back home. Some Africans that he talks with seem to back him, and some think they need more money.

Since I am now a would-be "agent of virtue", this is a very personal question. I think there is something to his argument, and the strongest evidence is perhaps the lack of results of the past three decades of donor aid. However, he never attempts to take stock of the interim confounders (most notably the advent of the AIDS pandemic), nor does he offer any solutions except a vague admonition to have Africans more involved, which I believe is actually happening more than he describes. It strikes me that just walking away is not the final solution, and what's more, such action may be quite a severe blow to the dwindling compassion of Western nations as well.

We agree on this: Dollars do not equal aid. Also, that thoughtful, and if possible African-led, attempts at aid should be the mandate. Perhaps more significantly, Theroux's questions lead me to consider the deep underlying causes behind African struggles, the mindset and the worldview. And strangely, this gives me hope about our plans, since our goals are more wholistic than some. I'll have a bit more to say in another post, but in my opinion, the antidote to Theroux's pessimism is hinted at here.

Our Christmas Gift

We are pleased to introduce you to the newest member of the "McCropders" -- Micah John Cropsey, born on Christmas Day 2008. He was 7 lbs, 4 oz and 20 inches long. Elise loves her baby brother, but is adjusting to the fact that she now has to share mommy & daddy with someone else!

Settlers of Kisumu

Years ago, after a couple summers in Eastern Europe, where German is a useful trade language, I was trying to learn some Deutsch, and had a goal of playing an entire round of the German board game Settlers of Catan in its Muttersprache (i.e. in German). In fact, it was John Cropsey who taught me the game in the first place (and slaughtered me, but that's another story).

Years later, we still play the game, but it is Swahili, another trade language, upon which we have set our sights. And so tonight, as Jason, Heather and I (Rachel being in Arizona for a wedding) sat down to play a couple games (in which Heather trounced us repeatedly), we endeavored to revive the old tradition, this time in Swahili. None of us knows all that much of the language, but we found the following makeshift phrases useful:

- Ninataka kufanya biashara jiwe.
= I am wanting to trade rock.
- Je una kuwa na kondoo?
= Do you have sheep?
- Sina kondoo.
= I don't have sheep.
- Hakuna matata. Duru yako.
= No problem. Your turn.
- Asante sana.
= Thanks much.

It actually wasn't that smooth at all. Heather kept injecting Spanish words into the conversation, and a couple times a trade was made, only to realize you had been asking for the wrong thing. At any rate, it is a fun way to inject some pre-language learning, and even though I played one of the worst rounds ever, I still got some education out of it.