Sources
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88

 
TAZARA ... a journey by rail through world-history © KJS / 2009
Nienburg's Albert-Schweitzer-School
CHAPTER 57


… Schweitzer was, as many of his contemporaries, convinced that Europe’s culture was developed on a higher grade. His relation to colonialism was discrepant. On the one hand, he criticised its inhuman actions of which he distanced himself with the term „brotherliness“. On the other hand, he had introverted its ideology so that he considered black people as primitive human children, who — of course —should never be exterminated but should be guided orderly, based on Christian principles.
The primitive conditions of living in Lambaréné reflected this image of primitive people and was even enforced by the public in Europe and in America that honoured Schweitzer’s tutelage with contributions needed for his work. He adapted his activities to these expectations because the more his activities corresponded to such expectations the higher were the contributions. He used them to expand the „village de lumiere“ thereby targeting the expectations of the participating public.

ALBERT SCHWEITZER IN HIS OWN WORDS:

11 Solidarity has tight limits for the primitive. It involves only the blood relation, that means members of the clan, which is representing his idea of a family. I am talking from experience. I have such primitives in my hospital. If I ask a patient of this group who is not bed-ridden to do small tasks for a bed-ridden patient he will do it only if this one does belong to his clan. If this is not the case, he will answer rather simple-minded: „This one is not a brother of mine“. He cannot be moved to do a service for this foreigner, neither through reward nor through threat.

12 The black will work very well under certain circumstances, but he will work only that much as the circumstances request from him. He is always only a casual worker.

African writer Chinua Achebe has quoted Schweitzer as saying: „The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother,“ which Achebe criticized him for, though Achebe seems to acknowledge that Schweitzer’s use of the word „brother“ at all was, for a European of the early 20th century, an unusual expression of human solidarity between whites and blacks. Later in his life, Schweitzer was quoted as saying: „The time for speaking of older and younger brothers has passed.“ It is also more likely that Schweitzer was speaking in terms of modern civilization than of class relationship of man; this would be consistent with his later statement that „the time for speaking of older and younger brothers is over“, and his discussion of the modernization of „primeval“ societies. Later in life, he became more convinced that „modern civilization“ was actually inferior or the same in morality than previous cultures.

PUPIL 3:
We do not want to overlook anymore that the core business of Albert Schweitzer, his work in the jungle-hospital of Lambaréné, is marked by some major contradictions.

The journalist James Cameron visited Lambaréné in 1953 — when Schweitzer was 78 — and found significant flaws in the practices and attitudes of Schweitzer and his staff. The hospital suffered from squalor and was without modern amenities, and Schweitzer had little contact with the local people. Cameron did not make public what he had seen at the time: according to a recent BBC dramatisation, he made the unusual journalistic decision to withhold the story, and resisted the expressed wish of his employers to publish an exposé aimed at debunking Schweitzer.

American journalist John Gunther also visited Lambaréné in the 1950s and reported Schweitzer’s patronizing attitude towards Africans. He also noted the lack of Africans trained to be skilled workers. After three decades in Africa, Schweitzer still depended on Europe for nurses. By comparison, his contemporary Sir Albert Cook in Uganda had been training nurses and midwives since the 1910s and had published a manual of midwifery in the local language of Luganda.

PUPIL 1:
Albert Schweitzer is — according to „School Web“ — names giver for, in the meantime, more than fifty schools in German speaking countries …
We in Nienburg have been the first one who did bear his name and we are the first one to try to find out how the consciousness of our names patron developed, and out of what matter it came into being …

„Hold on for that matter!“ …

Who are you? And what book is it that you wave with?

45 „The personality structure of the black African is to a large extent formed by cultural and social living conditions as well. For this reason it differs from that of the European or North American. At the same time it does not sufficiently match the conditions that must be met to successfully cope with the European/technical civilization, although it is this civilization that the black African insists on adopting. For this reason substantial incompatibilities exist which become apparent when cooperating with black Africans, for example in the field of development cooperation. How this differing personality structure has been formed, what characteristics must particularly be taken into account, and how the resulting difficulties can be dealt with are problems examined in this book.“

You wrote it?

45 „Yes, I am Dr. Christoph Staewen, born in 1926, a German medical doctor, specialist of psychiatry, neurology and psychotherapy. In 1963 I began to study in Western Nigeria, amongst the people of Yoruba, the conditions of uprooting of these Africans caused by the increasing confrontation with the technical civilisation of the White Man, and provoking more and more reactions of anxiety and deformations of behaviour. In Nigeria I received texts of the famous, secret Ifa-oracle. Later I worked for more than six years as all-round-doctor for Africans in Niger, Congo-Brazzaville and Chad, where I continued my research on African psychology.
One of the most important findings: each African is born into a clan. A clan is to its members not only sort of an institution providing social security and protection, but it is above all a kind of a powerful and shelter providing SECOND SOUL for every single one — only that there does not exist really somebody as a single one but only as a part of the whole organism that is called clan. This ,second soul for all‘ arranges for each of its parts the sense of life, its whole joy of life, its steadiness and its orientation on its path of life.
How much the existence of a clan can ease the life for the single African, will even make it bearable for him, is to be observed in medical projects. These facts I have learned, besides a couple of others, from Albert Schweitzer in his jungle-hospital in Lamabaréné!
To me it is inconceivable how it was possible that he, despite his almost superhuman efforts, was brought into discredit especially within the younger generation as a patriarch who allegedly would not take advice or as a supporter of colonial attitudes.
In reality — and I know this from conversations with him — he knew, long before us, more about Africans than all his critics. He was humble enough to treat his African patients according to conditions that were important to them in order to become healthy again. When the local people arrived in their dug-out canoes they brought with them even their chicken or a goat which, otherwise, may have fallen prey to a leopard at home. Albert Schweitzer allowed them to recreate their way of family life around their patient. Dirt was simply moved away. Each family felt responsible to cook for its patient. The hospital did offer, for free, what was needed to prepare food for everybody, the healthy ones included. For this service Albert Schweitzer expected assistance by healthy and strong clan-members: women would wash for the patient and for the hospital, men helped to set up more and more outbuildings for patients, made of timber and stilted to protect against river-floods and snakes.
Construction continued even beyond the death of Albert Schweitzer because the queues of patients grew from year to year although beyond the other bank of the river in the little town of Lamabaréné, a cute European hospital had been established. But, it offered only fixed and limited time for visitors. Thus, mainly inhabitants of the town used it; all Gabonese who arrived with their families from far away preferred the hospital-village of Albert Schweitzer. Work provided by relatives of patients was never compulsory labour but modest reciprocal service for the cost-free treatment of the patient and the free provision of food. Over the years, such work provided immeasurable help to thousands of Africans. And this was understood by Africans themselves.“

SPUPIL 1:
And it is understood by us as well, thank you, Herr Staewen! …

„Did you really understand? Or is it only an attempt to react like adults do, especially those who engage themselves with Africans in development-work? Before I leave, I would like to tell you something that I learned about children in Africa.
45 We had found a place to set up tent for the night. It was at he bottom of a valley surrounded by slopes full of rubble. Not too far away, beyond one of these slopes, we saw as silhouettes against the darkening sky the roofs of a Kirdi-village. The Kirdi were seen, at that time, by almost everyone with contempt since they are walking around naked. They are considered “primitive” only to be of use for example in the town of Oudjidji, when those seemingly endless herds of tourists are carried along to watch half-naked girls moving in a spiritless sort of dance to be repeated time and again. But we were in another part of the region and there were only a couple of cheerful boys rushing down, carefully navigating the rubble. They settled themselves quite politely some five metres away to watch with awe all these curious things taken by us from our Landrover. Among the boys were two or three with small tropical abscesses on their legs which we treated and dressed properly. Before night fell, the children rushed to get home. No African likes to move at night because he believes there are too many ghosts rampant who could be dangerous. During the sixties it was in Africa — differently from, say, Italy — quite safe for campers to sleep in a tent; no one would creep close to cut the lower edge of the tent with a razor in order to steal the baggage. This time, however, there was a curious tapping noise approaching the tent in the middle of the night. You don’t feel good abut something like this; I, therefore, rushed out of the tent … and there was in the light of my torch the stumbling feature of a boy, perhaps ten years old, on his back a girl of perhaps eight, perhaps his sister, which he carried, panting and gasping, through the rubble towards our tent. At her lower leg, the girl had a huge and deep tropical abscess; she was not able to walk. In the early hours, we could treat her and we took her back home where we left dressing-material and sulphonamide powder.
Why did I tell you about this experience: Because of this little boy, an alleged “primitive”, who had realized that — not to miss these Whites at the bottom of the valley, so that they could treat the girl as well before they would disappear — he had to overcome his fear of nightly ghosts, he had to make a tremendous effort to carry the girl at night on a dangerous climb downwards through the rubble of the slope.
Who of us, in the same position and of the same age as this boy, would have acted similarly? This is Africa too, this is how a clan can empower each of its members: For the sake of someone else to walk through a night filled with fear. …

I am sure, you are going to understand as I had too in my later years, although in a real environment. Please, continue in this virtual one.“


PUPIL 2:

Our „Working Group Journalism“ meets, in the real world, every Wednesday in room 112 with nothing else on our mind than to write … Everyone can join to find out how texts are made, texts for newspapers, texts for radio, texts for imagined travels …

For our guests from the African TAZARA-Express we accepted to get involved in such an imagined travel, and we found out that Albert Schweitzer was forty-four years of age when his nationality was decided upon in a railway-wagon …

CONTROL! REPLAY, PLEASE!

… A forest, trees without leaves. Rail-tracks are leading towards the centre of the picture. In the background, two trains are meeting. We see the tail of the left one, obviously parked in a long left bend; of the right train, we see the head with its steam engine. It must have stopped shortly before the points, which lead to the main track.
What we really see is the switching of points of world history … We watch the frame in which on 11th November 1918, in the forest of Compičgne, an armistice was signed which ended World War I. …


PUPIL 1:
… Born in Kaysersberg, Schweitzer spent his childhood in the village of Gunsbach, Alsace (German: Günsbach). Long disputed, the predominantly German-speaking region of Alsace or Elsaß was annexed by Germany in 1871; after World War I, it was reintegrated into France. Thus, Schweitzer received the French citizenship, however he liked to call himself Alsatian — Elsässer — and Cosmopolite; and he was fluent in German and in French.
The dispute about the philosophy of Existentialism, just becoming popular in France, occupied him in the late years of his life, possibly partly because he was personally connected with Jean-Paul Sartre who was a son of his cousin Anne-Marie ...

Stop! This one we met somehow in passing! …
Where is comrade Trotsky? Did he remain on the train?
And didn’t he get sort of an advice from this French philosopher?



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