Review: Mountains Beyond Mountains

Review: Mountains Beyond Mountains - Written by Tracy Kidder.

This is the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man who would cure the world, as per the book cover. Dr. Farmer has an unorthodox career. He was an intermittent attendant at his medical school, while he slipped off to Haiti to administer to the people there. He continued that into his medical career in the USA, with increasingly frequent trips to Haiti and other parts of the world, to help cure the world and make it a better place.

He is an inspiration. Dr. Farmer does not give up or give in. One of the first lessons of the book is “lives of service depend on lives of support”. Those that chose service, or activism, are dependent on others to give support to enable that choice. And Dr. Farmer got help from a lot of people. One of them was a man who had made a fortune, and wanted to spend it in a worthwhile fashion before he died. He is still doing that, as far as I know.

A more important lesson of the story of Dr. Farmer’s life is that he did not give up. He worked tirelessly, for years, to improve the health and the lives of the people of Haiti. He made significant progress in this area. Dr. Farmer than took on working on TB around the planet, particularly in Peru. He brought the fact of multiple drug resistant TB to the attention of the world, and developed methods for treating it. Dr. Farmer was a citizen of the world, and he felt his calling was to be a doctor to the world. He held on to hope that the people of the world, particularly the rich people (that would be us) would someday revolt and come to the aid of the poor in Haiti. He felt the people of Haiti could not revolt – they are facing starvation and serious illnesses – leaving them too weak to revolt.

Farmer is part of Partners in Health, an organization that promoted health initiatives in Haiti and around the globe. Their mission is to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care. One of their sayings (out of many) was that “not all suffering is created equal” which came from their reaction to rejected fund-raising appeals based on the supposed universality of suffering. I think many Americans are blinded by the fact that their level of suffering is often minute compared to other countries, like Haiti, for example. Farmer said that the most fundamental of all human errors was the ability to “erase, not care, not remember” the suffering of others.

Overall, this was a good book on the work of Dr. Farmer, of what has happened in Haiti in the past, and of what has happened in TB and AIDS treatments. It is most importantly about how one person, who never ever gives up, can make a difference. Dr. Farmer talked about “the long defeat” meaning that you never are really defeated until you quit trying, even if it seems like things are going backwards. Maybe you will be defeated, but it will be a long time off.

Haitian proverb: The rocks in the water do not know how the rocks in the sun feel. They also have a proverb that says “beyond the mountains, there are more mountains.” That’s where the book’s title came from.