Description Dr. W. Sidney Gilchrist

W.S.Gilchrist, Bailundo, Angola

Dr Harold Scammell, 196 Atlantic St. Halifax, Canada, N.S.

Arr. Jan 1/64

15 Dec 63

Dear Harold:

I owe you a letter.  Will write one day.

Thanks for your action re the young doctor — I've lost touch of him.  He was held here longer than expected. --- & his plans probably --ed.

Francie & I — now in 7th year — are staying on here indefinitely. 

Be good — Happy Xmas — Greetings to your good wife — S--- Sid

How many of us left now - ? - S.

H. Hope you still get strength from D. Concillo*.  He did me much good also. Any new books about his adventures out lately?  S. 

October 63

This letter is about miracles.

I suppose the first step should be to define a miracle..... When I got that far I went and fetched the dog-eared old Oxford Dictionary, arbitrer in many a game of Scrabble (Not for me; Scrabble is work and I'm allergic!)

It didn't help for it gave a number of very different answers.  Most of them would mean looking up some other word. —"Supernatural" for example.  Well, that would mean trying to find what "natural" really means.  And so on... and, as I said, a lot of my cells start squirting protest juices ad. lib. when work gets too close to them.  I think you and I can get along when we talk about miracles.  Our concepts are probably not too far apart.

We see a lot of miracles here.  That's probably why I started this letter off in the plural but just now I changed my mind.  I'll talk to you about just was a miracle at all.  Funny, but this is happening to all of us all the time--adults, children and post-adults like me.  (Post-adult means "old guy"; post as in "post-cibum" like when you tak a pill after dinner)

I was walking down the flower-balustraded corridor of the wonderful new Bailundo hospital that the African churches here have built when I saw Debora carrying a baby in her arms. They both looked very happy.  "Hi!", I greeted them, "Who's the baby, Debora?"... "Filipe", she called back. ("Filipe" is our version of Phillip)....My wheels started gyrating...I had left the hospital three weeks --no, four-- before, and just as I was giving final orders before going I had stopped by a crib containing a mite with thighs as wrinkled as the skin on my forehead; a skinny, whining little mite of hard-luck.  I had picked up his chart and written "A.T.C." which stands for "Amor, carinho e ternura", which means "Love, and tender care".  That was my prescription...Now here he was ..not yet fat but on the way to fat, skin a nice shiny chocolate brown, eyes bright, and a happy, trusting expression on his intelligent little face...Later I began to see that he was quite a miracle...but half of a double-header miracle.  How come?... Well two years before, in company with a young doctor who was with me for a while, I entered a room where Debora lay struggling on a bed to which she was lashed with strong ropes.  Her clothes were torn, her hair unkempt, her speech a torrent of abuse and nonsense.  She had been treated for days with potent herbs, potions and purges.  Now they had brought her to us.

The young doctor took over.  He took Debora by the hand.  He spoke quietly to her in her own tongue.  He called for a syringe and some ampoules of medicine... Day after day he spoke with her about herself and taught her to believe that she would be well again.  He steered the course of her medicinal therapy as well.  It was not a quick recovery nor an easy one.  But Love and Science found the way.... The day came when she joined the hospital staff and began to care for her fellow-African sufferers.  She grew in confidence in herself and in others.  She grew in love and compassion.

When I wrote the "ATC" prescription, the head nurse had chosen Debora to provide the love, the care, and the tenderness and she had filled the prescription full-measure and running over.  And that's why I found a new and happy Filipe in her shapely capable arms.

Now, if that's not a double-header miracle, what is?:  Sid G.