October 2006 Cameroon, West Africa
“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.” - Ps. 37:7-8
Sometimes in our ministry we run into people who can be a real challenge. Not everyone feels that what we do is a blessing. This was the case on one of our visits to Cameroon a number of years ago.
We were scheduled to work in a hospital, in the city of Foumban, which had a small dental clinic. Usually a Cameroonian “dentist” worked there but she was not scheduled to work the day we were to be there. She was actually trained as a dental technician, not a dentist. As you’ll see, we had a reason to want to be there on her off day and we were surprised to see her when we came to set up for clinic. She and her dental assistant were there intending to treat patients. We also had a trained Cameroonian dentist with us that the government had required to “shadow” us as part of the agreement for us to practice in the country. That made for a crowded clinic room that day!
When it was time for clinic to begin, the crowd of patients in the hall formed two lines, one for the technician and one for us. As time went by we could not help but see how roughly she was treating the patients, especially the children. As they came to be treated and began to cry out because of fear, she would slap them and tell them to be quiet. Not even waiting for the anesthesia to work, she would extract teeth. There was not much we could do as we were guests, and all the Cameroonian dentist who was shadowing us would do was shake his head. On one patient who needed an upper tooth extracted, she was so aggressive that she thrust her extraction instrument up into his sinus cavity. Then, she asked Jack if he could “fix it”. The patient had to be put on a large dose of antibiotics and sent to a surgeon miles away to have the hole repaired.
Seeing these things, the waiting patients began to switch lines so that there were only a few in her line to be treated. She became angry and said she was refusing to see any more patients. We breathed a sigh of relief for the sake of the patients! Then her boss came by to see how things were going and to our dismay she jumped up and began working again.
The dentist who was shadowing us was almost finished with his government service and nearing the time when he would have his own practice. He came to us with a request. He told us how difficult it was for dentists to find good quality dental instruments in Cameroon and asked if he could buy some instruments from us. Since we were leaving the next day to head home and because we had duplicates of some of our instruments, we sold them to him at a largely discounted price.
Meanwhile as we finished up the last few patients we noticed an odd thing. Our disposable dental supplies were disappearing right in front of us into the handbags of the dental technician and her assistant! Nonchalantly, packages of gauze, plastic cups, paper bibs and even used dental needles were being tucked into their handbags without a word being said. We had felt badly for the technician, in a way, when her line of patients became our line and we were planning on giving her some supplies as a gesture of good will, but it was kind of shocking to see them taking things without asking.
The next day our host missionary came to us and said the technician had visited him and was quite upset, claiming that we had “wronged her” by “giving” instruments to the dentist who shadowed us and not offering her any. She was insulted and felt it was only fair that we give her some of our instruments. We explained to him that we had sold the instruments to the other dentist and that she had taken supplies from us without asking! He was in a tough spot because she would tell her story loudly if she wasn’t compensated in some way. So for the sake of the missionary’s reputation in the community, and the gospel message we had been sharing with the patients, we gave her some of our dental instruments. We now understood what the missionaries in this part of the world mean when they use the expression “WAWA,” meaning, West Africa Wins Again!
Sometimes, you just have to give the situation to the Lord, knowing that it isn’t fair but trusting Him to bring good out of it. No one really gets away with anything in the end, do they? Every time we have suffered a loss of some kind on the field, God has abundantly provided more than enough to take care of it. That’s the kind of God we love and serve.