Across the Footsteps of Africa: The Experiences of an Ecuadorian Doctor in Malawi and Mozambique [Paperback]

Benjamin Puertas Donoso (Author), Benjamin Puertas-Donoso (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

This is a fascinating account of an Ecuadorian physician working as a health coordinator in refugee camps among the Chewa and Yao people in two countries challenged by important political and historical transformations: Malawi and Mozambique.

While working with the French organization Medecins Sans Frontieres, the author witnessed the horror of the long civil war in Mozambique, becoming one of the first health professionals to access a guerilla training camp for child soldiers.

Stories of cruelty and sacrifice, international health and technical cooperation, traditional medicine, the daily struggle against malaria and AIDS, the refugee drama, and the social and political changes of the region, are vividly described throughout the book from the perspective of a Latin American professional.

This is a book of interest for the general public, people in the health profession, and for students interested in community and international issues who wish to understand the evolving African reality. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 265 pages
• Publisher: Africa World Press; Africa World Press ed edition (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865436401
• ISBN-13: 978-0865436404
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #787,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Eloquent Book, November 29, 1999

By 

Frances Marie Scura - See all my reviews

This review is from: Across the Footsteps of Africa: The Experiences of an Ecuadorian Doctor in Malawi and Mozambique (Hardcover)

An Eloquent Book by a Doctor in the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize Winning Organization, Les Medicines Sans Frontieres

Across the Footsteps of Africa by Dr. Benjamin Puertas-Donoso

Les Medicines Sans Frontieres have won the prestigious and much deserved Nobel Peace Prize for 1999. I would like to congratulate them and praise their dedicated doctors. I was especially touched by this eloquent and beautiful memoir of an Ecuadorian doctor who worked with the American Refugee Committee in Malawi and with Les Medicines Sans Frontieres in Mozambique near the end of their long, brutal civil war in 1993 and 1994.

Dr. Puertas is a gifted writer. The refugee camps where Dr. Puerts worked were not pretty places. But Dr. Puertas took the inconveniences, risks and deprevations of the work in stride. His warm personality bursting with optimism, energy and humility, not only charmed his refugees and coworkers, but captivates his readers as well. However, of course, his success in taking on the gargantuan task of saving lives in wretched conditions was not due to charm alone. In fact he has a genius for organization and administration.

Dr. Puertas does not focus the book on his own accomplishments or dwell on the dirt on the floor in the hospitals. His book is very intelligent and shares with the reader a little of the history of the countries he worked in, their governments and politics and he gives the reader a respectful and balanced idea of what the people, the food and the native cultures are really like. He was very impressed with the good natured people and their incredible strength to endure each day. He traveled quite a bit in the region, met a lot of interesting people, and is a good travel guide for the reader sitting comfortably in his armchair.

Years ago I too lived and worked in Africa. I served as a Peace Corps teacher in Ethiopia. I was teaching English to children who were starving, with many unnamable and unreatable diseases and living without adequate shelter. I can vouch that every word in Dr. Puertas' book resonated true to my experiences in Africa. Africans take their hard life pretty much in stride, but it is indeed very hard. It is organizations like Medicines Sans Frontieres that bring the doctors with skills and abilities to make things happen to improve their lives. Dr. Puertas is to be commended for giving his time and gifts to humanitarian efforts and also for writing such an inspiring and exceptional account of it. It is Dr. Puertas' great gift as a writer to make this story, necessarily suffused with so much human pain and suffering, a great triumph to the human spirit and a romantic adventure. Dr. Puertas is so likeable, his narrative creates suspense because the reader really cares about what happens to him. This book would make a great movie!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The reality of the african health system, June 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Across the Footsteps of Africa: The Experiences of an Ecuadorian Doctor in Malawi and Mozambique (Hardcover)

This book's first edition in spanish showed me the crude reality of the african health system. This delightful narrative experience of Dr. Puertas' incredible adventure in Africa is very well written. It's contents may prove useful to anybody in the medicine, public health, and medical anthropology fields, especially if related to third world countries.

great book

JLBE

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beutifully written, detailed, April 5, 2000

By 

Kurt E. Johnson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Across the Footsteps of Africa: The Experiences of an Ecuadorian Doctor in Malawi and Mozambique (Paperback)

Dr. Donoso has written a wonderful account of his medical experiences in refuge camps in Malawi. His writing style is engaging for both the medical professional and the layman. He has enough detail (and footnotes if you really want them) so that you can look critically at his efforts. In addition, at times, his writing is fluid and even poetic. I gave the book only 4 stars because at times the translation was a little rough. I'll bet that this book is really beautiful in the original version. Anyway, if you are interested in the details of delivery of healthcare under trying circumstances, get this book and read it.