It’s a sound that inspires an instant, primal fear.  It has featured in this world for barely a hundred years, but it may as well have been with us since we left the trees. 

The squeal of rubber tires on a street.  The keen, desperate note of wanting, of praying to stop in time.  Please, please, stop in time.

In every language, in every head, for the moment there is only “Oh, no…”.

All had stopped in the market, and people were gathering.  They had heard the awful sound, and the shouts that followed.  They came to the fallen man without thinking, commanded by their humanity.  They stood or crouched nearby in good will, anxiety and confusion.  They did not know what to do.

I’d been across the street, enjoying a Tusk, a very good local beer, and reading the contentious and interesting local newspaper.  Now I was at the man’s side.  People had made way silently for me, just because my face was white. 

“Can you help him?” asked a lady in orange.  But it wasn’t a question, not really.  “Help him,” was what she meant.

“I have training as a medic.  I can help.”  These were the words I’d been taught to say, and they had their effect.  The crowd moved back a few steps, to offer space.

The man on the broken asphalt was unconscious, and there was blood.  He was on his back, surrounded by the fruits and vegetables he’d purchased.  I turned to the lady in orange and handed her my phone.  “Will you please call for an ambulance?”  She began to dial.  A grizzled, upright, middle-aged man in a shabby brown suit spoke to me and to the concerned circle of people.  “I will get Dr. Mann,” he said, loudly, and left at a trot.

I used my backpack and a borrowed purse to immobilize the victim’s head.  I checked his airway, breathing and circulation.  So far so good.  I put my hands on him, feeling his neck, gently lifting him and running my fingers along his spine, then over his limbs.  He had a fracture to his left forearm, and to his collarbone.  But I was most worried about the back of his head, where a quantity of blood was pooling.

As slowly as I could, I raised his head slightly and felt his skull.  I winced in anticipation of what I might find, but then sighed in some relief.  My hand came away wet and red, but there was no depressed fracture.  I opened the man’s eyes one at a time, and the high sun helped confirm that his pupils were responding normally, and equally, to light.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and squinted up at a large silhouette.  “I am Dr. Mann.  Are you a physician?” the shape said in a soft baritone.

“No, sir.”  I rose to get out of his way, explained myself and relayed my initial assessment.  He nodded and knelt beside the man in the road.

Before he went through much the same procedure I’d performed, Dr. Mann did something curious.  He grasped the patient’s good hand, and gently touched his face.  “Who knows this man?” he asked, without looking up.  “His name is Ben.  He’s a driver,” someone offered.

“Ben, you will be alright.  Can you hear me, Ben?”  And he continued to talk to his unconscious patient as he touched and checked and looked and tested.  “Where is the driver of the car?”  A frightened young man came forward.  “Don’t be afraid.  But I have some questions, and you must tell me the truth, so I can help Ben.  Will you do that?”

Dr. Mann proceeded to learn about the physics of the accident.  He discussed with me the need to understand if a contrecoup injury to the brain was likely.  He hoped not, since the local hospital was not well equipped to deal with complex injuries.

Ben’s eyes opened.  He was groggy and confused.  The first things he knew were Dr. Mann’s soft voice and Dr. Mann’s strong grip.  “Ben, you have been hurt, but you will get better.  Can you squeeze my hand?  That’s good.”  He talked with Ben and questioned him, satisfied with his patient’s relatively clear cognition.

Through the shock and pain, Ben asked the two questions that mattered most to him.  When could he get back to driving?  “Not for a little while, but soon.”  Where was his woman?  “I will bring her to the hospital.  Is she at home?  Where do you live?”

We had been waiting what seemed a long time.  There was no ambulance, nor even any police.  Dr. Mann commandeered a bystander’s old Toyota and asked me to help him transport Ben to the hospital.

***

Later, Dr. Mann agreed to join me at a dusty restaurant that boasted shade and cold drinks.  He was a handsome, gregarious man in his early 60s, with closely cropped grey hair and a large belly.  He carried himself with gravitas and a certain coiled energy.

I was looking at his business card.  It featured the usual physician’s alphabet soup of degrees and certifications.  And, after a final comma, one odd word at the end.  “Shaman”.

As I was supposed to, I asked.  He smiled and spoke in his melodious West African accent.  “Shaman is a Russian word, you know.  Or from Siberian tribes, anyway.  I studied in Moscow, at Patrice Lumumba University.  In the 1960s and 1970s, the communists thought there was good propaganda in educating some black Africans, telling us they were our friends.  I didn’t care about their politics.  I wanted to be a doctor, and they made me a doctor.  I forgot all their political education, but I did not forget what they taught me about healing.

“When I came home, I learned something else that they did not teach me.  My role… my role, you see, is different.  I do not have all the machines and the medicines I would like to have for my patients.  I cannot cure many ills that I know in my head how to cure.  For this reason, very often, I cannot be a good doctor to them.  It is not in my power.”

He paused to sip from his soda.  When he looked at me again it was with a fiery conviction.  “But I can be their shaman.”

“Healing is more than fixing sickness and injury, my friend.  A shaman heals other things.  In my country, many people do not feel that they control their own lives.  There are forces… you understand?... forces that are powerful.  Forces that are frightening and confusing.  Politics, money, big companies, rich people in far places.  War.

“These forces do not care for the people.  They do not even notice the people.”  He paused.  “But I notice and I care.  I know the names of my patients.  I know their families and their people.  I will listen, and I will talk to them.”

He leaned forward and grasped my arm.  “Even when I cannot stop death, I can help them.  I can ease their minds.  I can talk about God with them, and they believe me.  When they do not believe the priest, they believe me.  Because I care, and because I do not lie.

“I can give them strong medicines to ease the pain in their bodies,” he continued, an almost messianic look in his eyes, one large finger tapping his temple.  “And I can give them powerful words… powerful words that work to ease the pain and fear inside their heads.”

He released my arm, sat back and watched me.  “That is why I am more than a doctor.  I am a shaman.  What do you think of that, my friend?”

I had a lot of thoughts, and many more questions for this fascinating man, and I’d get to them in time.  But, for the moment, I simply said, “A shaman is also a kind of holy man, Dr. Mann.”

He smiled dazzlingly for a few seconds, his eyes shining with inner light.  “I hope so, my friend.  I hope so.”

 ### 

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