Author: Out of control Ari
If you just want to enjoy the scenery, it's as charming as most mountains.
The sky is blue, the dusk sun is gentle, and the bright green baobab trees cover the burnt country dirt roads. Teenagers playing football in the wilderness, peasant women sifting sorghum, cattle walking loosely...
When the wind sounded, all the people stopped alertly and raised their ears nervously. Almost instinctively, they recognized that the muffled sound was not the sound of the wind, but the engine of the bomber.
Running, screaming, crying, panic replaced calm.
People jumped into the nearby foxhole, a child of about three years old was left behind by the team, watching the other children hiding in the pit, he was so anxious to cry, a pair of hands reached out of the pit and carried him in, the crying still did not stop.
Source: Screenshot of "Heart of Nuba"
Shrill cries pierced through the sounds of explosions and houses collapsing, and the camera shook violently, with smoke and fire all that could be seen.
Source: Screenshot of "Heart of Nuba"
The smoke had not yet cleared, but the casualties had already appeared. The wounded men were carried away, and the bloodied children lay on the ground trembling.
Source: Screenshot of "Heart of Nuba"
This tragic and dramatic scene is not a movie, but a real existence.
Director Ken Carlson went deep into the Sultan Nuba Mountains and followed the film for three years, just to document the work and life of his former classmate Tom Catena in the area.
The Heart of Nuba
（The heart of Nuba）
Source: Douban
1 million people, 1 doctor
The Nuba Mountains are 200 miles around, with a population of 1 million, and only one hospital, the Mother of Mercy Hospital; the only doctor, Tom Catena.
It's hard to imagine that this tall, skinny, bald, sunken middle-aged man in front of you was once a football star in college.
When he graduated from Brown University's Mechanical Engineering department in 1986, Tom received an offer from General Electric. But instead of choosing that broad avenue, he went to Duke University School of Medicine.
After graduation, Tom traveled to Kenya as a volunteer on the Catholic Medical Task Committee (CMMB) to work as a medical aid worker for 8 years. In 2008, he participated in the establishment of the Nuba Mercy Hospital Mother of Mercy Hospital and remained at the hospital.
Tom in his youth
Source: Screenshot of "Heart of Nuba"
In 2011, sudan's civil war broke out, journalists and international aid organizations evacuated due to lack of protection from the local government, and the medical staff of Mercy Hospital were evacuated, including 8 expatriates from Uganda and Kenya, 15 local staff, most nurses, all anesthesiologists and clinical laboratory personnel.
At the last minute, Tom chose to stay, "If I go, someone will die because of it, and if I go, it shows that my life is more precious than the people here— it's ridiculous."
"The root of most conflicts lies in the unequal values of life." In interviews with the media, Tom has said this many times, with an almost compassionate piety, and he has also practiced it.
The hospital has a total of 435 beds, almost every day full of beds, the most intensive period of bombing, as many as 550 patients admitted to the hospital, organ lacerations, blood and pneumothorax, head trauma, disfigurement and other kinds of injuries all poured into the hospital, huddled and crowded with wards and corridors of the open space.
Unlike most films, which obscure the tragic situation, the director does not play mosaics for the injured, but clearly presents the flesh-and-blood, bloody scenes – as if intended to emphasize – the tragic and real of these scenes.
Source: Screenshot of "Heart of Nuba"
True general practitioners
Tom is the only permanent physician in the Sultan Nuba Mountains.
He serves more than 1 million people and is on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Resources are so scarce that he sometimes treats 400 to 500 patients a day, often in a building without electricity or running water, and performs about 1,000 surgeries a year.
A hospital is unimaginable.
The trickiest part was the lack of an anesthesiologist, and Tom's first surgery after the evacuation has impressed Tom to this day.
It was an arm amputation and the patient was a little girl who needed general anesthesia before the operation. As if catching the ducks on the shelves, Tom and an assistant found a basic anesthesiology and followed the steps in the book.
When the trachea is intubated, he is very nervous, because as long as he takes a wrong step, the result is fatal. What's even more difficult is that throughout the operation, the assistant must manually ventilate the patient with a micro-ventilator...
By holding up a hospital by himself, Tom became a true general practitioner, inside, outside, gynecological, pediatric, tumor, burn... If you can get on it, you can't get on the hard scalp. When you encounter something you don't understand, you can chew on a book, and when you encounter an unfamiliar surgical procedure, you can go to YouTube.
Even though Tom keeps reminding himself of "First do no harm," mistakes and regrets are hard to avoid.
He remembered the 10-year-old boy with bomb shrapnel on his face, and after a thorough cleaning and disinfection, the boy contracted tetanus and died within a few days. There have been many such deaths, but the image of the boy trembling in the roar of the plane has forever engraved Into Tom's memory.
Another time, shrapnel splashed embedded in the man's abdomen, leaving a dense hole in his intestine, a total of 23 holes. "We cut off his intestines, we mended them, we cut them again, we resected them... It seems like it will never be sewn..."
There were also 6 patients with minor burns. Their village was constantly bombed, so they slept in the foxhole at night. On the night of the incident, the burning straw was transferred into the pit, and none of the 6 children were spared, all of whom were burned in the third degree, with burns exceeding 60%. After the rest of the patients died, a small patient stubbornly dragged on for two months, and the last days were extremely painful.
Fear and power
And if technical difficulties can be solved as much as possible, then ethical torture is a huge ordeal.
There is no distinction between life and inferiority, but under extreme conditions, Tom has to make choices in life.
For example, for patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), Gleevec is necessary. But the drug costs as much as $7,000 a month, and "I can't spend $70,00 to treat a patient because it could save hundreds of lives."
The work at the hospital exhausted Tom, and the greater drain came from the mental level of fear.
He gets up at 6:30 every day, holds a rosary, and goes to a humble church for half an hour to give a Mass—a habit of Tom's thundersweet and the best and calmest moment of his day.
For the rest of the day, he had to face the bombing that could appear at any time, as well as the shocking wounds and heart-wrenching cries left by the bombing.
People hid in the foxholes
Source: Screenshot of "Heart of Nuba"
Fortunately, he always drew strength from the Nubas.
Nuba, who were injured by the bomb, often endured severe pain and walked for several days to reach mercy hospital. On the way to the hospital, knocking on the door of any family, you can get food, water and accommodation for free.
Danger has brought the Nuba people closer together, forming a fragile and resilient community of life.
In the midst of a long, great panic, the Nubas did not despair, but instead burst out a strong desire to survive— the unique texture of life fascinated Tom, and he began to think about the meaning of happiness.
"It feels like home there." When asked about his true intentions to support Nuba, he always replied.
From exclusion to acceptance
As a foreigner and a pagan, Tom was initially unpopular.
The Nuba people have a closed, self-contained "medical system": they believe that burned skin can "release" the disease – almost all Nuba people have burn marks on their bodies. They also believed in various herbs and superstitions about the shamans known as "Kujur".
In addition, most of the people here can't walk out of the Nuba Mountains in their lifetime, and the older generation has no concept of the ocean, has not heard of the United States, and does not even know About Africa.
In this context, how can the Nubas understand that they do not have a sense of superiority, let alone from insulting pity for the unfortunate?
All words pale, and Tom must prove himself with his actions.
In the process of treatment, the hostility dissolves little by little, and trust is slowly established.
They came to understand that this emaciated foreigner, this pagan, was in fact deeply connected with them.
They gave their bodies entirely to Tom, for which they endured pain and hiked for days; they did not expect medical miracles, and they had a strong tolerance for poor prognosis and even death.
"They just want to be treated like a person and treated humanely."
Yes, people who are always not treated well, those who can best recognize kindness, those who have been on the "edge of survival" for a long time, also value life more.
Tom not only sees patients in hospitals, he also regularly travels to communities where lepers congregate, just to shake their hands and touch them.
This disease, once highly stigmatized by the people and transmitted through droplets from the mouth and nose, is feared for its contagiousness and strong teratogenicity.
And Tom knows that for lepers, touch is the most sincere acceptance, "they are people who are rejected by society, so touch is particularly important." 」
Tom is touching a leper
Source: Screenshot of "Heart of Nuba"
As he spoke, Tom gave a friendly touch to everyone around him: he shook the man's arm, patted the old man's shoulders, poked the half-cut buttocks of the nursing child, and grabbed the children affectionately, under Tom's "encirclement", the children laughed and scattered, and the men and women also laughed together...
Such a scene is incredibly touching.
Source: Screenshot of "Heart of Nuba"
The man who threw the starfish
In an interview, the host told Tom a story:
Two people walked by the sea, the tide struck and receded, leaving a dense sea of starfish on the beach. Starfish will die after too long from the sea, and thinking of this, one of them bent down to pick up a starfish and throw it back into the sea, repeating the action every few steps. Another was confused, believing that the number of starfish was too large and that throwing was no different than not throwing.
"Yes, but for the one that was thrown back, it was the difference between life and death." With that, he threw a starfish back into the sea.
Tom is the one who keeps throwing starfish.
Starter: Lilac Garden
Curators: Chestnut, Joy, Carollero
Executive Producer: Gyouza
Caption: Visual China
Resources:
1. Documentary film "Nuba's Heart"
2.https://peterattiamd.com/tomcatena/
3.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/27/doctor-in-sudan-foreign-aid-saves-lives
4.https://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/articles/2016-11-08/a-life-in-war
5.https://globalshakers.com/tom-catena-is-the-only-doctor-for-over-one-million-patients-in-remote-sudan/
Thank you To Yang Yue for providing videos and interview materials