num_pages: 419
description: Im sitting in the back seat of the US embassy car after that hurried whispered phone call my anxious gaze fixed on the American flag fluttering from the cars flagstaff. As I hold my two young children I ask myself What am I doing here?In the back seat that day I didn't know I would one day put the whole story in a historical memoir Vaccines &amp; Fighting Smallpox in Africa amid Tribalism Terror and the Cold War . I had no choice but to write it. I have stories personal archives to confirm them and a mission to share them. You see things had turned out nothing like the filmstrip-inspired dream of Africa I'd nurtured since grammar school or the pride I felt as we left the US to help eradicate smallpox or my feeling of self-importance reading the protocol Representation of the United States of America.With wide-eyed ideals I'd followed my husband Carl to Africa. First to Nigeria still in the throes of civil war. If others hadn't cared about Africans killing Africans they did care about starving Biafran babies. Images sped around the globe. The powerful chose sides. The world watched and wept.Then we were transferred to Equatorial Guinea. Independent only eighteen months its people were suffering torture and murder at the hands of a brutal dictator. A Hollywood-worthy tropical paradise hid the atrocities. The powerful chose silence. The world didn't watch didn't weep didn't even know the place existed.In Nigeria I saw the disfigurement of smallpox the deformity of leprosy and a mass grave's reminder of tribal hatreds. And I ached for the people I met. I could though enjoy the sounds and color of a marketplace visits with a princess in a medieval palace and the warmth of the people. I loved my new African friends.In Equatorial Guinea I walked through eerily silent streets and searched through the few tins of food in the not-yet-abandoned shops. I wondered where the other shoppers were not yet knowing that abject fear had emptied the streets. I'd soon see too many rifles and the business end of too many rusty bayonets even in our home as we unpacked to remain unaware. I made no Guinean friends because locals were forbidden contact with any foreigner. My heart hurt for the people I would never know. One of only two American women living there I kept cryptic notes and hid them in the sock drawer.And now here I was in the embassy car wondering what had happened this time and asking for a moment what I was doing there.But. I did know what I was doing there. My husband was one of an army of public health warriors on the front human vs. microbe. And our family was a part of the struggle. We were winning the war with a virus as we were eradicating a human disease. Never in history had there been such a victory. Through the many challenges we would yet face before returning home I'd still know why we were there.In memory's kaleidoscope of my African sojourn I see hope. Because I see the triumph of the human spirit in the many brave people who risked all to fight for their future. I think back to a Nigerian woman covered by the ugly scars of smallpox and I feel deep personal gratitude knowing that smallpox had visited her family her village for the last time.And me? No longer that young wife who set out with her romanticized notions I'm still in love with Africa. And I share my stories. Some may make you laugh. Some will make you cry. And maybe just maybe one of them will inspire you to do something to change the life of one other person or of thousands. About the Author Bee Bloeser has lived and worked in Africa the Middle East and Native American nations and has supported her husband's public health work around the world. She lives in California.
language: English
title: Vaccines and Bayonets: Fighting Smallpox in Africa amid Tribalism, Terror and the Cold War
publisher: None