Our great life experience started with an e-mail from my daughter, Dr. Elise DeVore. She was in Mali West Africa on a grant to bring medical services to an undeserved part of the world. She would write telling me of the wonderful people she had met and their desperate struggle for daily survival.

“Dad, can you bring some medicine? The people don't have much money and can't afford medical care, and don't get any. It is really very sad. There is no public assistance for medical care or anything for that matter. The family I am living with is quite the exception. Most everyone else is quite poor.”

Can you Imagine sending children home to die because the family can't afford to pay the hospital bill. Vaccinations not given because they cost 20 cents.

On March 11th 2000, my wife, Jill, my son, Jay, and I, boarded an airplane for Mali to deliver emergency medical care to the people. Three airplanes and 28 hours later we arrived in Bamako, the capital of Mali in Northwest Africa at the edge of the Sahara.

The trip was the result of loving donations from the people of the United States. We were able to deliver 420 pounds of precious medicine to the pediatric intensive care unit, to my daughter's village, and the S.O.S. orphanage outside of Bamako. The lives that we have touched are uncountable. My patients and friends ask me about the trip. Was it fun? No! Did you eat well? No! Were you comfortable? No! The voyage was a trip of discomfort that mentally and physically drained myself and my family. It was a trip directed and sponsored by God and it gave my life a much deeper purpose.

Even the people I lodge with in the village can't afford to get their daughter vaccinated for the price of 150 CFA's which is about 20 cents. It has raised a lot of questions about privilege, technology, the wealth of America etc. I just don't feel I have any good satisfying answers.

Our mornings began at sunrise with the clanging of water buckets as mothers lined up at the solar water pump to get their daily water. Crowds of children would follow me around out of curiosity and to see some small magic tricks I brought. They laughed and smiled, but their bellies told a story of malnutrition. As the day progressed , the temperature rose to 110 degrees without a cloud in the sky. Afternoon was a time to sleep. This world has no air conditioning. The village would reanimate in the evening and everyone would gather around the only light in town (an 18 watt fluorescent) to listen to the tom-toms play.

These people work hard, especially the women, but they have so little. The land is barren, and the men work very hard to cultivate potatoes, peanuts, and tobacco. It is very laborious.

After the presentation of the medicine to the village and treating many patients, a great gift of a chicken was given to me and we enjoyed it under a Baobob tree with a full moon. The days passed and time went slowly. It was a teary experience when we left Elise's village.At the pediatric hospital in Bamako, my neonatologist friend, Dr. Tatiana Keita, pleaded with me to return with a ventilator.

"...to save the babies."

I told her, we would. With God's graces I obtained two pulse oximeters and two Sechrist pediatric ventilators.