Giving everyone credit for what they know

He who does not know one thing knows another. (Kenya)

Dear Zayda,

Even as a baby, you know things that others do not know and need to know. There is so much you do not yet know, but you are the expert on when you are hungry or soiled, when you need attention or just want to play.

Parents and teachers are wrong if they think children are empty vessels waiting to be filled. A child may not yet be able to do calculus, but the child knows mathematics long before reaching school. He knows that two sweets are more than one; she will know if she has fewer wooden blocks now than a moment ago.They both know the difference between a small ball and a large ball.

Children are born knowing a lot. The job of adults is to help them to be aware of what they may know by instinct or by childhood experience. Teaching a child can be easier if we help them make sense of what they already know. On the other hand, teaching can be a battle if we insist on filling the child with what we decide the child ought to know. The word “recognize” really means “to know again”. So we can assume a child already knows, but we are helping him to “know again”.

We, not our doctors, are the experts about our bodies. We do not need to have passed medical exams to know how our bodies function.

Zayda, our elders lived in deep rural villages where they reached doctors only in the most serious of cases. They had to learn how to be in harmony with nature and at peace with their bodies. Elders learned from their elders how to eat foods that helped them to be healthy. In contrast, today’s junk foods are linked to diseases. Our elders also knew which herbs and bushes to use to promote health. In contrast, today’s medications may help in one way, but have side effects that may harm the body. Our elders' connection with nature and with their inner spirit helped them relieve stress. They had limits on what they knew about health, but their knowledge survives today as “alternative medicine”.

Many assume that someone who has a doctorate knows more than someone who cannot read and write. However, that highly educated person is mistaken if she thinks the illiterate person knows nothing. Many who cannot read and write need to be extra sharp to survive. One grandmother hid her reading “disability” so well that her family knew about it only when she died and they saw she signed her will with an “X”. She had supervised homework, discussed world politics, sang her hymns, and had the longest memory of anyone in the family. She may not have known how to use a computer, but no one anywhere could match her sweet potato pudding with the custard on top.

We gain a lot, my grandniece, if we accept that each person knows things we do not or cannot know. We need always to respect others for what they know and can teach us.

Blessings,

Your shangazi Nothango (Yvonne)

Vivien Hamilton: surgeon-janitor

Creation: Spring & Easter
Sense make before book. (Grenada, Tobago)













A sister-author‘s comment on yesterday’s post led me to Vivien Thomas. She wrote, “Hamilton Naki is the Vivien Thomas of South Africa. Wow!!! When will we get our just due?”

When, indeed.

Like Naki, Thomas assisted a white surgeon, Alfred Blalock, in animal research. Like Naki, in a time or place without segregation Thomas would have been recognized everywhere for his medical research and his surgical skills. With no little education and no formal medical training, both men performed operations, did post-doctoral research, and trained student surgeons while holding menial positions: Naki as a gardener and Thomas as a janitor.

Thomas and Blalock worked together to disprove the theory that medical shock resulted form toxins in the blood. Their research into the causes of shock saved lives of thousands of soldiers in battle. At the same time, Blalock and Thomas worked on experiments that were to revolutionize heart surgery.

When Blalock became Chief of Surgery at Johns Hopkins in 1941, he asked for Thomas join his team. Thomas then became the only Black employee (except for janitors) at Johns Hopkins. The appearance of this Black man in a white lab coat created as much confusion as his surgical skills without a medical degree.

When a paediatric heart surgeon sought a cure for blue baby syndrome Thomas had the answer. He created the blue baby condition in a dog, and then corrected the condition through surgery. Thomas worked on the process for about two years, operating on 200 dogs. Blalock performed the surgery only once, as Thomas’ assistant. Thomas therefore needed to direct Blalock step by step when the surgeon used the procedure for the first time on a child. At Blalock’s insistence, Thomas stood at his right shoulder for his first 100 operations on blue babies.

The medical world hailed the blue baby surgery as a breakthrough, and neither Blalock nor Johns Hopkins acknowledged Thomas’ contribution. Indeed, Johns Hopkins did not accept its first Black surgical students for another thirty years. Thomas continued to be so poorly paid that he sometimes worked as a bartender, often at Blalock’s parties. Lines between the two men may have been blurred in the lab, but the distinctions were reinforced in the medical school (low pay, separate bathrooms and entrances) and on social occasions. Johns Hopkins raised Thomas' salary and appointed him senior lab technician only when, in 1946, Thomas threatened to resign to return to carpentry.

Thomas (August 29, 1910 – November 26, 1985), grandson of a slave, was born in Louisiana and grew up in Tennessee. He wanted to become a doctor, and tried to earn money for his education by working as a carpenter and an orderly. The 1930s depression wiped out his savings and ended his dream. Thomas had difficulty finding permanent work of any kind, and was a janitor when Blalock hired him as laboratory assistant at Vanderbilt medical school. Within three days of his employment, Thomas was performing surgery on dogs. He tried to enter college again in 1950, but gave up on medical studies when his years of experience could not go to his credit.

Thomas’ partnership with Blalock lasted 34 years, and his work in surgical research continued for 15 years after Blalock's death. One of the many surgeons Thomas trained said of him, “Even if you'd never seen surgery before, you could do it because Vivien made it look so simple.”

In 1971, Thomas’s former medical students commissioned a painting of Thomas to be hung next to Blalock’s painting at Johns Hopkins. In 1976, Johns Hopkins presented Thomas with an honorary Doctor of Laws (not Doctor of Medicine), and in 1977 Thomas became an official member of the Johns Hopkins medical school faculty.

Thomas' story inspired the PBS documentary, "Partners of The Heart" and the HBO film, "Something The Lord Made."

Naki – South African surgeon gardener

Creation- Spring & Easter
Knowledge is like a garden: if it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested. (Guinea)









Hamilton Naki’s work helped to bring about the world’s first heart transplant. Contrary to myth, he was not present when Professor Christian Barnard carried out the operation, because Black men were not allowed in white hospital rooms in apartheid South Africa. However, Naki’s skills in animal research paved the way for heart transplants on human beings.

In the late 1950s, Barnard’s hospital employed Naki to maintain the grounds and tennis courts. He was later sent to work at the medical school, cleaning the animals’ cages – work people avoided because it is so messy. One day, a professor of surgery asked Naki to help hold a giraffe on the operation table; as a result of the competence he showed, researchers gradually allowed Naki to do more serious work.

Naki proved to be a skilled surgeon and anesthetist. In particular, he had surgeon’s fingers and did open heart surgery, pulmonary bypass, and heart and liver transplants on dogs. He was skilled in the post-operative care of animals, and he was able to do almost all the work of a qualified surgeon. Indeed, Barnard thought Naki did a better job of stitching than surgeons including Barnard himself. Naki taught transplant techniques to about three thousand young surgeons who studied under Barnard.

Naki gained his surgical skills because of his intelligence, memory, and capacity to learn by observing and practice in secret. The hospital promoted Naki to the highest position possible for him under apartheid law – senior lab technician. Nonetheless, when he retired he received a gardener’s pension.

Barnard acknowledged Naki’s work only after apartheid ended, when he referred to Naki as. “one of the great researchers of all time in the field of heart transplants.” Naki’s work as Barnard’s principal assistant was particularly important when Barnard developed arthritis in his hands.

Naki (26 June 1926 – 29 May 2005) was born in rural South Africa and migrated to
Cape Town when left school at 14. He had only sixth grade education, and could not have received medical training under the apartheid system. While he worked with Barnard, he lived in a Black township where he had no electricity or running water. Most of his wages went back to his village to support his extended family.

During his retirement, Naki organized a mobile clinic for his rural community that was 50 miles from the nearest doctor or hospital. In addition, he organized support for schools with funds collected from doctors he had trained.

In 2002, Naki received one of South Africa’s highest honors – the presidential award of the Order of the Mapungubwe. In 2003, the University of Cape Town awarded him an honorary medical degree.