Crossing the Cultural Chasm

A colleague requested that I provide general medical care for a friend of his, a French citizen. The patient wanted a physician who would provide medical care in her language. My Francophone credentials derive from my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer some 20 years previously, when I did community development work in the former French colony of Mali in West Africa. Fresh out of college with a major in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, I had not contemplated a career in medicine. Yet, it was there that I had my first clinical encounter—in French.

It happened a few days after my arrival, during the orientation period at the Hôtel de l'Amitié in the Malian capital, Bamako. We were playing soccer on a packed dirt yard next to the hotel, and several Malian men joined in after shedding their sandals to play—in typical fashion—barefoot. One of the Malians gouged his big toe and opened a jagged laceration that, in retrospect, might have triggered a specialist consultation in our country. My fellow Peace Corps trainees deputized me to minister to his wound. My qualifications were a combination of extroversion and a facility with French gained 2 years earlier as a student in France. In addition to the wound, the injured footballer was physically remarkable for his albinism. I patched him up from a standard issue Peace …