Mountains Beyond Mountains Chs 25-Afterword Reflection by Rachel Chisausky

As I reread these chapters, I was struck by the theme of finding spots of joy in even the darkest situations. Serena sums it up pretty well when she says “you gotta rejoice a little along the way,” even while they were trying to fix the broken down ambulance. Farmer too finds joy in the little things—his fish pond, the walk and visit with Alcante— in the midst of working in an unjustly deprived and dismal environment. He says that he learned to stop getting angry when he transitioned from the US—a world where a major problem is having excess—to poor and needy Haiti; he learned to change the anger into a sense of hope for a dream of equality. I think this is a good lesson for all of us. When we get angry or despairing about the place we are in, be it stressful classes or the MCAT, or a broader sense of anger about the injustices and waste in our world, we too need to find the little things that bring us joy. Though by comparison to those living in Haiti, we have life pretty good, there are still things that can get us down. The best thing we can do is focus on the things that lift us up, and channel that energy  into fixing whatever it is that makes us upset or angry. I was also struck by Farmer’s comments regarding the cost of the Medevac flight; when talking about other ways the $20,000 could have been spent, he points out that even a young doctor often makes about 5 times what the flight cost was—why not talk about other ways that money could be spent? Farmer has a very acute awareness of the disparity in the world, and it seems that he looks at everything through that lens. That raises several questions for us, now and in our futures. When living in a place like Notre Dame, where poverty is not a sight that many of us see every day, I hope that we keep the stories from Mountains Beyond Mountains in the back of our minds; when we appreciate the nice things around us, I hope that we also recognize what that money could have done. (For instance, I hope that the sight of a sprinkler system calls to mind those can’t even afford clean drinking water.) I hope that we carry this awareness into our futures too; With several of us probably planning on going into the medical field, and all of us coming out of a good school, there’s a good chance some of us will be making a substantial salary. If we find ourselves in that position, I hope that we all remember those struggling simply to survive, and find a balance with our lives. Although it is important to live a life that will make you happy, I hope that we all work in our own ways to promote the cause of global health, and the greater cause of social justice—be it like Farmer working in the field, Tom White financing, or Kidder raising awareness of the disparity and potential for change in the world. I think Kidder’s final quote, the comparison of the sound of drums to the sound of ‘so many heart beating through a single stethoscope,’ accurately sums up the philosophy that ‘the only real nation is humanity,’ and I hope we carry that philosophy with us forever.