My Dad and Africa

I want to pause for a moment and tell you about my Dad, John. You see, in many ways, my Dad is an inspiration for my interest in Malawi. You see my Dad had a Ph.D. in microbiology. I had just turned seven years old when he earned his Ph.D. Around this time; he was offered a post–doctoral fellowship in what was known then as the Congo in Africa. It is possible that my mother mentioned the possibility of living in Africa to my younger sister and I. It seemed so exotic. At the time, the only thing I knew about Africa was that the lions, monkeys and elephants that I saw in cages at the zoo lived wild. I dreamt of seeing African tribesman and wild lions, elephants, and monkeys. A short time later, my mother told us how disappointed she was that Daddy was not going to accept the fellowship. Several years later I recall hearing about some sort of violence and unrest in the Congo. I understood why he didn’t accept the fellowship.

After he earned his Ph.D., he stayed at his university, teaching biochemistry in the med school and doing research. It may have been during this time that he started to shift his research focus to immunology. Later, he ran an immunology lab in a chief medical examiner’s office of another large east coast city before moving to a small city in upstate New York where he ran a clinical immunology lab in one of the local hospitals. My Mom passed in the mid–eighties, my Dad followed a little less than eight year later.

It never occurred to me to ask him about his dissertation research or why he was offered the fellowship in the Congo. After he passed, I found his masters and Ph.D. dissertation in an antique secretary I inherited. I knew that he had left his dissertations in this secretary, when I was ready, I looked to see what he had done his dissertation research on. I don’t know what I never asked him about his dissertation work, perhaps because his life’s work took a very different direction. After he died, I got curious. All I had to do was look in the secretary and read the abstract.

Now, I am not a microbiologist, nor have I taken a microbiology course. But, I knew enough to know that his work was related to Dysentery. The Shigella Flexneri bacterium that was the focus of his research is one of the organisms causing one of the diarrheal diseases sometimes referred to as Dysentery. It wasn’t until over ten years had passed since Dad’s death and I was working on an article on the efforts to supply a safe and clean water supply to a small village in southern Malawi that I made the connection to my Dad’s dissertation work and the fellowship in the Congo that he turned down.

It was when I was reading about water borne diseases that I made the connection about my Dad’s dissertation work. I felt like it was not a coincidence that fate had led me to my interest in southern Malawi. In some ways, I feel like I am finishing the work that my Dad started in the 1950s.

I know that he would be thrilled to know of my interest in working for a safe and clean water supply in Africa and globally. I do believe in angels. he is hovering around me, smilling, as I write this.