The Barefoot Surgeon

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The Barefoot Surgeon Page 8

by Ali Gripper


  while the iron was hot. He’d previously been offered a

  position in the ophthalmology department at the Academic

  Medical Center, a large university hospital in Amster-

  dam, which at the time, had become a world leader in eye

  surgery. Nanda quickly arranged to work there, too, in the

  corneal surgery department. They were going to elope to

  the Netherlands.

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  They held a simple ceremony in Ruit’s apartment on

  26 January 1987. They exchanged rings and vows in front

  of eight friends, then all crammed into his friend Shushil

  Panta’s Volkswagon Beetle and celebrated over lunch at the

  Shangri- La Hotel. At the time, Ruit had about 7000 rupees

  or about $50 to his name. The wedding cost half of that.

  Ruit wore a suit and Nanda wore a maroon sari with a white

  cardigan. Her hair was swept up off her face in a chignon,

  showing off pretty earrings.

  They flew out of Kathmandu the next week, and were

  installed in a small rented apartment in Haarlem, a gabled

  town not far from Amsterdam, surrounded by tulip farms.

  Ruit was 33, and Nanda was 25. They hardly had any money

  at all between them, but at long last, they were together. They strolled through the cobblestone streets, and over the canals and bridges, and visited the cathedrals and museums.

  It was bitterly cold, and as well as the thrill of finally being together, the young couple both suffered from culture shock.

  Their senses were overwhelmed by the machinery of Western

  life. Trams. Lifts. Washing machines. The electronic key of

  their apartment on the 23rd floor. ‘Everything was strange to us. Living in a high rise, electronic doors, and the way people rushed about all the time. We were used to hot dal and rice for lunch, and instead we learnt to go to the shops and buy

  cold sandwiches and apples or peaches,’ Ruit says.

  One of Ruit’s ophthalmologist friends, Jan Kok, took the

  couple under his wing, taking them out to lunch or dinner

  almost every day, and quietly explained the cultural subtle-

  ties. Those months in Amsterdam were the happiest in their

  lives. Their work at the hospital was completely absorbing.

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  Dutch eye doctors such as Jan Worst and Cornelius D Bink-

  horst were making great strides in revolutionary cataract

  surgery. Up-

  and-

  coming surgeons were flying in from

  around the globe to make unofficial pilgrimages to see their

  work. Ruit revelled in the sophisticated equipment, and

  took notes on the finely- honed way the Dutch examined

  their patients.

  As the time drew nearer for them to return to Kath-

  mandu, Nanda and Ruit grew anxious. There had been no

  contact at all with their families; no letters or phone calls home because they knew their families would be furious with

  them when they found out they had eloped. Nanda knew her

  brothers had contacted the embassies in both Nepal and the

  Netherlands, trying to find out where they were and whether

  they’d got married.

  As they strolled along the canals, they tried to work out

  the next step. They had to think of a way they could stay

  together, away from the judgment of Nepalese society.

  ~

  Ruit’s mind turned to Professor Fred Hollows, a brilliant,

  unorthodox Australian eye doctor he’d befriended two years

  previously, in 1985, when Hollows was on a six- week sabbat-

  ical, researching the prevalence of trachoma in Nepal for the World Health Organization.

  As a junior doctor at the Nepal Eye Hospital, Ruit had

  been sent to collect the professor from Kathmandu’s airport.

  Ruit was expecting to meet a typical Western eye doctor who,

  like so many others, wanted a taste of Third World work

  before a holiday trek in the mountains.

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  Many Western doctors adopted a patronising air when

  they flew in, conveying the sense, if subtly, to the Nepalese surgeons, that they were lucky to have someone of such

  calibre at their hospital. It was expected that the Nepalese

  surgeons would carry their luggage for them at the airport.

  Local surgeons would humbly ask the visiting Western

  doctors to finish their operation for them.

  But Hollows smashed right through that mould as soon as

  he landed at Kathmandu airport. It took Ruit a long time to

  find the Australian because he expected an officious- looking man in a tie and suit. Eventually, a long- haired bloke in an untucked shirt, with a pipe hanging out of the side of his

  mouth, wandered up to the luggage carousel and said, ‘You

  must be looking for me, are you, mate?’

  The pair hit it off from the start. Fred Hollows had made

  a name for himself as a champion of Australia’s Indige-

  nous population. He was horrified when he discovered that

  the Aboriginal people in remote areas were living in miser-

  able conditions, plagued, among many other diseases, by

  trachoma, an agonisingly painful infection in the eye that

  leads to blindness.

  Even though the disease had been stamped out in most

  Western nations more than a century ago, it remained in

  epidemic proportions in these outback communities, mainly

  because of overcrowding and lack of clean water. So, Hollows

  had set off on a gruelling, two- year crusade, belting across the deserts with a small team, treating the local Aborigines

  and recording the data. The outraged press conferences he

  held afterwards, highlighting their plight, shamed the government into action. Hollows’ was a logistical feat that has not 67

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  since been repeated and it blazed the trail for making Aboriginal health a priority. Australians loved him for it, and he

  was later awarded the nation’s highest order, the Order of

  Australia.

  Yet, here he was, with no airs or graces whatsoever.

  Hollows swung his backpack over his own shoulder, reached

  out to shake hands with Ruit and walked along beside him as

  if they were equals.

  Hollows watched Ruit hard at work at the Nepal Eye

  Hospital, admiring his extraordinary speed and precision,

  and began wondering how he could support the brilliant

  young surgeon. Hollows was eager to join him on the hospi-

  tal’s outreach camps to get a feel for the scope of blindness in rural Nepal. They travelled to remote villages in a jeep, with Ruit at the wheel, and Hollows quickly became as enthralled

  by the energy and spirit of the cataract camps as Ruit. They

  dossed down at night in cow sheds, shepherd’s huts or tents.

  Hollows had no problem with instant noodles for dinner as

  long as it was washed down with gallons of rum and whisky.

  Ruit recalls that they had to keep sending for alcohol supplies when Hollows came to the camps.

  It was at one of these remote camps, near Mount Everest,
<
br />   that the two bonded, and became, as Fred puts it, ‘soul

  mates’. A dwarf had come into the clinic, blind in both eyes

  from severe cataracts. In Nepal’s caste system, a dwarf was

  untouchable, which means technically he was also untreat-

  able. But Hollows was used to defying convention. He

  immediately said he’d like to try removing the man’s cata-

  racts in the hospital in Kathmandu. Ruit was at first shocked.

  Then delighted. He gave the man 60 rupees for the bus fare to 68

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  Kathmandu and then said: ‘Let’s stuff it up the noses of those bloody Brahmins [the highest caste, often the doctors] in the eye hospital.’

  ‘I felt like I’d found a brother in ophthalmology,’ Ruit

  says. ‘We seemed to understand each other so well. Fred used

  to hold up his hand and say, “Why are these five fingers so

  different [in] length, Sanduk? And why are some countries

  so poor?” I loved every word of our conversations.’ Hollows

  was as brash and outspoken as Ruit was polite and reserved,

  but they were both obsessively driven about high- quality eye care being the birthright of everyone.

  Hollows was as appalled as Ruit by the prevalence of

  old- style surgeries still being performed in the Nepal Eye

  Hospital, when, at the same time in the West, intraocular lens transplantation—light years ahead when it came to restoring

  vision—had become mainstream practice.

  Hollows was so smitten by Nepal and his young colleague’s

  vision, he asked his wife Gabi, an orthoptist, to come from

  Australia to Nepal with their two young children. So, with

  four- year- old Cam and 27- month- old Emma, whom Gabi was

  still breastfeeding, the group travelled through the country-

  side, visiting Ruit’s parents in Hille, as well as eye camps.

  ‘Gabi was extremely supportive of my dreams right from

  the start, sometimes even more so than Fred,’ Ruit recalls.

  ‘She was fascinated by it all, and knew the technical details of what we were talking about, which was wonderful.’

  Fred and Gabi were deeply impressed by how driven Ruit

  was and how organised the Nepalese were. They’d done all the

  research; counting and measuring how many people needed

  help. It was obvious that Ruit was determined to work out a

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  way to reach the blind. In Gabi’s words, ‘It was more a matter of working out a way that we could help him.’

  Ruit idolised Fred Hollows, not just because he was from

  the West. He admired the way he treated everyone the same

  way, whether ‘they were a peasant or a king’.

  He also admired him because he had no fear. Ruit was

  trained to be courteous, even when angered. But Hollows

  just didn’t seem to care what anyone thought about him. He

  would tell government officials, ministers, anyone who was

  annoying him, to ‘Just bugger off’.

  During their six weeks together, Hollows had invited Ruit

  several times to come and visit him in Sydney and learn the

  latest tricks in the rapidly changing field of cataract surgery.

  He wanted to show him how things were done at the Prince

  of Wales Hospital near his home in Randwick, Sydney, where

  he ran the ophthalmology department.

  Now, looking for a safe haven where he and Nanda could

  begin their married life, he decided to take up Hollows’ offer.

  Ruit rang him from a payphone at the end of the street in

  Amsterdam. Before the era of Skype and Facetime, such calls

  were expensive, so he got straight to the point. He suggested it might be the right time to come and visit. He also told

  Hollows rather sheepishly that he was married.

  ‘His response was just so typically laid- back,’ Ruit recalls.

  ‘After a bit of a pause, he just said, “All right, Sanduk! I’d better book two bloody tickets for you then!”’

  For the young couple, the offer seemed like manna from

  heaven. They knew they would face the disapproval of their

  families once they returned to Nepal, because they had eloped and were of different castes. Within a few days, they had

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  arranged for Australian visas in The Hague and waited for

  Hollows to send tickets. Instead of flying eastwards back

  home to Kathmandu, they were going to veer south over the

  Middle East and boom out over the Indian Ocean, then down

  to the Great Southern Land.

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  7

  Travelling light

  Ruit was fascinated by his first views out of the plane window as they banked over the Pacific Ocean and flew up the glittering coastline toward Sydney. There just seemed to be so much

  sea and sky. The blue and green seemed to go on forever. Gabi met them at the airport and drove them back to Farnham

  House, the rambling sandstone mansion in the leafy eastern

  suburbs that the Hollows family called home.

  It was late summer in Sydney, and the air was heady with

  the scent of jasmine. The light was so bright it seemed to hurt their eyes. Gabi, as usual, chattered on, hardly pausing for

  breath. She and Nanda quickly became friends. ‘They suited

  each other perfectly because Gabi talked, and Nanda listened.

  Gabi always said Nanda made her feel calm,’ says Ruit.

  The young couple did not know what to make of things

  when they first arrived at Farnham House. Hollows had bought

  the 19th- century former convent in the 1970s, and had reno-

  vated the dilapidated, eleven- bedroom, tin- roofed building into a home of great warmth and charm. He and Gabi decided they

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  wanted a house that was open to the world as well as a family home, and it quickly came to host an ebb and flow of visitors and long- term house guests. There were seven doors to Farnham House and they were always open to the ocean breeze and a

  constant stream of visitors. Poets, writers, mountain climbers, Eritrean and Vietnamese surgeons, politicians and filmmakers, as well as Fred and Gabi’s seemingly endless extended network of family and friends, all made their way through the doors, day and night.

  ‘Nanda and I thought it was like living at New Delhi

  railway station,’ recalls Ruit. ‘After waiting for someone to make us a cup of tea for about three days, we realised it was the fashion to do it yourself.’

  They eventually got the hang of it, dangling a tea bag in a

  mug and getting bread out of the freezer to make their own

  sandwiches or toast.

  Nanda couldn’t believe the way there were always empty

  cups of tea all over the kitchen table, or the kaleidoscope of people who swirled through the dining room and kitchen.

  One time there were two parties going on simultaneously—

  one in the back garden, and the other on the front lawn,

  overlooking the ocean.

  But what Farnham House lacked in conventionality was


  more than compensated for by the way the honeymooners

  were made to feel welcome. Nanda and Gabi would sit around

  the open fireplace at night, knitting baby clothes with the other house guests. Fred used to call it the ‘Knitting Circle’.

  Fred and Gabi’s children Cam and Emma would zoom

  about the verandas on their tricycles while Gabi was nursing

  their newborn, Anna- Louise, who became Ruit and Nanda’s

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  goddaughter. The Hollows family would set a place at the

  table every night for a ‘mystery guest’—anyone they knew

  who wanted to stay for a while and enjoy the meal and some

  conversation. It was always filled.

  Ruit went to the Prince of Wales Hospital, fifteen minutes’

  walk up the hill from Farnham House, and practised intra-

  ocular lens surgery every day with state- of- the- art equipment.

  Hollows looked over Ruit’s shoulder as he effortlessly sur-

  passed him in technical skill and speed. It was obvious to

  Fred and Gabi that Ruit was remarkably talented. They had

  a star in the making. They called him ‘Golden Hands’.

  Nanda melted into family life with the Hollows. She would

  walk up to the Prince of Wales Hospital and join Ruit for

  lunch several times a week. She helped Gabi take Cam to

  school. She’d hold Emma’s hand while Gabi pushed Anna-

  Louise in her pram through the parks or down the hill toward

  Coogee Bay, trying to cajole her baby to sleep.

  Gabi correctly assumed that the young couple didn’t have

  much money. ‘We didn’t tell her, but we actually had almost

  nothing at all,’ Ruit says. ‘She knew we were too shy to ask, so she would just quietly tuck money into our pockets.’

  They went to nearby Bronte Beach, sat on the grass over-

  looking the ocean, enjoyed barbecues in the park, dreamed,

  and talked about the future. They went bushwalking in the

  Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney, and were embraced by

  the fifteen or so other Nepalese living in Sydney at the time, such as Indra Ban, who later formed the Nepalese Australian

  Association.

  The Nepalese would gather in each other’s homes, speak

  their mother tongue and cook Nepalese food. Ban’s heart went

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