The Doctor or the Priest

By William M. Balsamo

I had not felt well all day. It was a feeling of weakness and fatigue brought on by pushing myself beyond the limits of endurance. I had a schedule to keep and was determined to follow it regardless of how tired I was.

I was passing through a small Ethiopian village in the highlands not far from the foot of the Semian Mountains. A small village made more inaccessible with a name almost impossible to pronounce was my refuge for the night. No traveler stops here except in dire need. It is just a place to pass through on one’s journey to further destinations of greater interest. But I was tired and my fatigue gave way to fever and chills. I knew I would not be able to continue unless I rested to revive my strength.

“Perhaps in the morning I’ll feel better and can continue my journey,” I said to myself.

I found a small guesthouse which was located near the main road. The owners of the guesthouse were an elderly couple who spoke no English but conveyed their hospitality by showing me to a small room off the main entrance.

The couple had a younger grandson, Zelalem, living with them who spoke English fairly well and his services were used to establish understanding with me.

“I’m quite tired and I need to rest. How much does it cost to stay here?”

The cost of the room was nominal and the furnishings rather simple. A small light hung over the bed and the toilet off to the side was large enough to serve its purposes. A little past midnight I woke up to pass water only to find that I was passing blood. It was bright red blood as though it were coming from a cut vein. It was the color of blood that flows from an opened would, a slit throat, a severed limb. Yet, I felt no pain. The blood mixed with the water in the bowl and in its dilation it became pink and swirled in a circle when flushed.

I panicked and sense the worst case scenario of being taken in the middle of the night to an emergency room and undergoing tests to determine the source of the bleeding.

Then it occurred to me that I was in Ethiopia in a small isolated hamlet where homes were thatched and roads became washed out with every torrential rainfall. I remained calm and decided to rest. Tomorrow was another day. Perhaps with rest the condition will go away. I slept well that night and no pain assaulted me during the hours from dusk to dawn. But, in the morning the flow of blood continued. Later in the day it became coffee-colored rather that red, but I knew it was a bad omen when a discharge came out so dark.

I was very nervous that whole day trying to figure out the best way to get to the capital where a credible doctor could be found at one of the major hospitals.

On the third day of bleeding I concluded that I must seek professional help whatever the consequences. I went to Zelalem.

He was only a college student and keen on study, laboring over a dictionary to decode the meaning of a translation. He was initially shy but also alert and was the only person I had met in the town who could manage a decent conversation in English.

“Zelalem, may I speak with you,” I asked hesitantly.

He noted the urgency in my voice and dropped what he was doing.

“Yes, is there a problem?”

“In fact, yes, there is. I need to consult with you. I need a doctor…immediately.”

“Why?..What has happened?”

“I am bleeding internally. I need to go to a hospital.”

Zelelem looked very concerned and his eyebrows knitted into a worried frown.

“We do not have a hospital here, only a clinic. If you are really sick then I will take you to the Church. The priest will pray over you and you will be cured.”

“No, no, not a priest,” I protested. “I need a doctor immediately.”

It was then that I realized that in this isolated village that had no name, the odds of finding a qualified trained physician were one in a thousand if not more.

“Please,” I said with growing anxiety, “take me to a doctor.”

He looked confused and I imagined that he was disappointed that I lacked sufficient faith in the healing powers of the clergy.

“O.k.” he agreed, “I will take you to our doctor.”

From this statement I guessed that there was only one doctor in the whole village and I later learned that was indeed the case. We walked in the twilight to the doctor’s hut which was also the clinic. It was about five hundred meters from where my guesthouse was located. The road was dark and lit only by the fading light of a half-moon in the cloudy night sky. The road leading to the doctor’s hut was muddy from an afternoon rain and a small cluster of patients were already gathered outside wrapping themselves in tunics and togas using part of the garment as a hood.

Zelalem entered the doctor’s hut and I obediently followed. The doctor lived in a thatched circular hut made of reeds and branches. Zelalem approached an old man with wrinkled lizard-like skin and teeth stained by decades of tobacco and caffeine abuse. The old man’s hands shook and trembled as if struck with palsy. I guessed him to be one of the patients with a greater illness that I could ever suffer.

Zelelem spoke to him and said, “Doctor, I have a foreign guest here who would like your medical advice about….”

I stopped him from completing his sentence.

“Um..Zelelem, I think it is better to take me to a priest.”

“But, you said…..”

“Forget what I said. I think maybe just a single blessing will..,” I paused in disbelief. “I think maybe a single blessing will cure me.”

I wasn’t sure what would help but I did know I didn’t want to stay much longer in this hut. There was the smell of impending death, staleness, decay and odor.

Outside the hut there were lepers who gazed with silent starved stares and people battered by marginal lives.

“Zelalem, I think you were right. Take me to Church and ask the priest to give me a blessing.”

Zelalem smiled and simply said, “Follow me.”

We walked back into town and crossed a main road traveled on by a lone journeyman riding a donkey. There were no cars, only a deep silence pierced by the rhythmic sound of the donkey’s hooves walking along the path.

Not far away on the other side of the road was a stone church. It stood there dark and grim and carved out of one piece of stone, a masterpiece of art created by many labored hands of antiquity long since gone to an eternal rest.

Passing through the entrance I see a monk lost in meditation and sitting before a candle’s flame with a prayer book resting in his hands. Zelelem went up to the monk and spoke with him in a language unknown to me. The nature of their spoken dialog displayed Zelalem’s deep respect for the man. I was instructed to come forth from the darkness of the shadows and to make myself visible in the light.

The man closed the book he was reading and spoke to me. “I hear that you are ill. Do you have pain?”

“No, I don’t. But, I am bleeding internally and I need to see a doctor.”

The man stood up and approached me. “I am not a doctor. I am a priest. All I can give you is a blessing and prayer for your recovery.”

So simple. His voice was soft and calm, secure and unwavering; a voice of confidence in the healing powers of prayer. My faith was of the academic kind rooted more in pragmatism than belief. I believed in the laws of nature rather than divine interference. I believed in tomorrows and acceptance of that which could not be changed. Yet, inspired by the situation I gave the priest a biblical response. “What is it that I should do?”

“Nothing. Just lie down on the ground.”

The ground was an earthen floor made hard and solid by the naked feet of the faithful worshippers. The priest (whose name I never learned) was richly robed in aged, ecclesiastical garments. They smelled of incense, of fragrant spices and exotic aromas. He sprinkled straw on the floor to serve as a blanket and placed the brownish skin of a furred animal over the straw and asked me to lie on it. I wasn’t sure what animal hide I was resting on or why I obediently consented to partake of this ecclesiastical magic but I followed his instruction because he spoke with authority.

What followed could have best been described as magic. I was sprinkled with holy water and blessed from head to toe. A chanting of ancient prayers accompanied by muffled drums and cymbals invoked the power of the gods and I silently relaxed and rested in the lull of the chanting. I offered no resistance. Perhaps this was the true meaning of faith – the lack of resistance to that which one hopes to obtain.

The priest went behind a door and came back with a large metal cross magnificently decorated and began to touch the cross to parts of my body, first my head then my chest, my heart, abdomen and groin. He closed his eyes and I stared in wonder. When the ritual was complete the chanting stopped and a silence came over the room. No one spoke. It was a profound silence; perhaps not unlike the one that which preceded the “Big Bang” of creation.

“You may arise now,” said the priest. “Go back to your room and rest. There is nothing to worry about.”

I did not know what to say. Even a simple “thank you” sounded trite. “Should I pay him?” I whispered to Zelelem.

“No need” was all he said.

On my way back to the guest house I felt a strange awe and my feet barely touched the ground. The next morning the bleeding had stopped.

(The above incident is a true story which happened to the author while traveling through Ethiopia. Upon returning to his country, the bleeding resumed. The results of a CT scan indicated that the bleeding was caused by a small kidney stone.)