He lived there, and he was their brother...

UNLESS you have been living in a cave the past month or so, you most likely have come across news that Dr. Paul Thistle who through his dedicated service for the past 16 years has endeared himself to the community of Chiweshe in particular, will be leaving Howard Hospital in a few days.

The exact circumstances surrounding his pending departure are unclear, and depending on who you choose to believe, he is either being re-deployed by the Salvation Army, or being transferred against his will to Canada, or as the people of Chiweshe choose to believe he is being kicked out for being such an honest guy trying hard to stop some good-for-nothing church leaders from dipping their filthy hands into the cookie jar (which incidentally he personally begged for from his native Canada).

And as with most things in Zimbabwe, it appears some are viewing this through a political prism with a theory which seems to have gained some traction in some quarters alleging that Vice President Joice Mujuru, who is a senior member of the church and incidentally also wields a lot of power politically, has something against Thistle.

Whether there is any truth to this is anyone's guess, but Mujuru is a senior member of the Salvation Army and she happens to hail from the province in which Howard Hospital is located, the health institution which employed Dr Thistle.

We have seen her parade in the Salvation military uniform on TV for much less causes, and in this instance her silence on an issue so dear to so many in her province lends credence to the speculation that she didn't like Thistle very much and probably couldn't care less if he were to leave.

The Salvation Army, for its part, whatever salvation it represents, in all likelihood does not include the salvation of the people of Chiweshe and thousands of poor Zimbabweans who had come to rely on Thistle for care.

So another white Zimbabwean is being kicked out of the country unceremoniously, why should it be news?

The contribution of Paul Thistle to the nation of Zimbabwe can never be adequately captured in words. For 16 whole years, he served with honour and total dedication at Howard Hospital, providing high quality medical care to the nation's poorest. He left the comfort of Canada where he was assured of a six figure annual salary and all the benefits of a developed society to settle in rural Chiweshe to offer his service to a people who needed it.

For 16 years, he lived among them sharing their pains; when everyone saw desolation, he chose to be a symbol of hope. He married among them; when our store shelves were empty, he got no bread; when bungling NOCZIM made sure the nation had no fuel, he learnt to park his vehicle and hope for better days.

I will mention three instances to illustrate why he was a man apart.

Sometime in 2004, a set of conjoined twins was delivered at Howard Hospital. Their parents named them Tinotenda and Tinashe, names conveying their appreciation and belief in a God who provides ways even where we see none.

Such an occurrence in our public hospitals would attract a flood of visitors to see this rarity but in the end with no expertise for the complex operation needed to separate them, they would be condemned to a sorry death. Not under the watch of Thistle though. He got on the phone, mobilized, begged and badgered until the twins were flown to one of the world's best children's hospitals – Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and ultimately got life-saving surgery. To this day, Tinotenda and Tinashe are alive and will never forget how hard Thistle fought to save their lives.

When Zimbabweans, myself included, decided Chiweshe was too rural, too slow to spend the youthful days of our lives, he lived there, somehow managing to convince hundreds of fellow Canadians to devote months of service there as well. And when the government and the church told him they had no money for supplies, he independently begged for money from all who cared to listen.

Miraculously, even in the darkest of years when even the government could not keep its own hospitals like KuGomo open, Howard remained an oasis of hope. I distinctly remember working as a junior doctor at one of the nation's largest referral hospitals in 2008.

That year, when all that could go wrong did go wrong, we learnt that when we had patients we could not look after we would refer them to Howard and Karanda Mission Hospitals. It sounds unbelievable, but hospitals with hundreds of doctors ended up referring patients to a rural village in Chiweshe. And as patients would report back, it did not matter how far you came, or that they had not a dime to pay, Thistle and his team welcomed you and gave you the best of Howard's renowned hospitality and clinical excellence.

When political violence engulfed our land in 2008, with militias marauding villages wielding pangas and machetes, Thistle would clean the wounds of the victims and nurse them back to health.

Just this past year in 2011, Paul Thistle and his Howard team got a pitiful US$7,000 from government to cater for a community of 270,000. That's right, our government in all its wisdom decided to allocate each of these people THREE cents for health care for the whole year.

They could have easily thrown a tantrum and done nothing like a lot of ministers I will not name, but Thistle being who he is made sure they saw 125,000 people and delivered 3,000 babies. How about that for a miracle? Jesus fed five thousand with two loaves and five fish but after 2000 years of inflation, Thistle fed, housed and offered modern medical care to 125,000 at five cents each!!

Howard was a leader in showing the world that it was possible to provide ARVs to rural villagers and that with dedication, even palliative care could be provided in villages. To this day, thousands still trek from far and wide to receive care at Howard. Hundreds drive from Harare to Howard for care and Thistle has welcomed them and provided them the excellent care Howard has become synonymous with.

The goal of Paul and the other staff at Howard Hospital is that all who desire can access treatment, be restored to full health and be returned to their communities as productive members of society. And he would have gladly continued to offer himself in this service; his wife would have loved to continue teaching midwifery to a generation of cadres who will impact millions until on August 4, for reasons we shall never fully understand, the Salvation Army decided it was time he left.

END PART ONE