Yemen RPCV Lois Richard remembers murdered doctor in Yemen
Read and comment on this story from the Concord Monitor on RPCV Lois Richard who served as a volunteer in Yemen and remembers murdered doctor Martha Myers.
For 25 years, the missionary doctor took no sabbaticals, returning to Alabama only one month a year. When Richard met her, Myers was immersed in Yemeni culture. She covered her hair and spoke Arabic fluently. She told her patients when to take their medications not by a clock, but by the times of the day's prayer calls. At the hospital - with its nearby mosque and its rows of eucalyptus trees - or on the road, Myers was sensitive and unassuming. She drew a following that made Richard dub her the "Pied Piper" of Jibla. Richard relied on Myers when she needed comfort from the pressures of living in a foreign country. Read the story at:
* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.
Friend recalls missionary
Murdered doctor served poor in Yemen
By KRISTIN PROULX Monitor staff
Concord
Wherever Martha Myers went, women and children encircled her. They formed a gentle belt around the doctor who delivered babies and immunizations, who drove miles into the farmland to bring back a sick child or perform a life-saving treatment. Far from Jibla Baptist Hospital, Myers's reputation preceded her. In a country across the world from Alabama, she had found a home.
On Monday, Myers, along with two other American humanitarian workers, was murdered in Yemen, her adopted homeland. She had been a doctor there for 24 years. When her patients and friends heard of her death, they lined the road to the hospital, crowding the streets with their mourning.
Lois Richard mourned at home over photo albums and online newspaper articles. Richard, a Concord resident, spent two years in Jibla as a Peace Corps volunteer 15 years ago, teaching English to young teenage girls in a bare bones school. She knew Myers well and had met William Koehn, the hospital administrator who was killed. But the loss Richard experienced stretched beyond the hospital walls.
Until yesterday, Richard believed Yemen was still a safe place. She believed what she saw in her photographs: that the country was schools, mosques, ancient ruins and terraced farmland. This week's killings introduced a new shock into those images, but they did not manage to ruin Richard's broader impressions of a place she too had called home.
After all, it was in that faraway world that Lois Richard met her husband. In 1988, Tom Richard was a medical lab technician for the Peace Corps. The pair attended conferences and gatherings with other volunteers and began dating, traveling between villages to visit each other. Two years later, they were married in Cypress and returned to America.
Neither has been back to Yemen since those days, though both still drink black Arabic tea spiced with cardamom and cloves. The couple brought their young daughter on a tour of Jordan and Syria in July 2001, a few months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks made travel to the Middle East a more threatening proposition. Even after that, Yemen had seemed safe.
"At the time, there wasn't much of a problem as a volunteer, no real danger," said Tom Richard. "Now I see that has changed."
"Every time Yemen's in the news, it's always sad, because none of it is good news. Tom and I both thought this hospital and Jibla were still safe places," said Richard. "I hate to say I'd never go back, but I have no plans to."
Myers, on the other hand, rarely left Jibla. For 25 years, the missionary doctor took no sabbaticals, returning to Alabama only one month a year. When Richard met her, Myers was immersed in Yemeni culture. She covered her hair and spoke Arabic fluently. She told her patients when to take their medications not by a clock, but by the times of the day's prayer calls. At the hospital - with its nearby mosque and its rows of eucalyptus trees - or on the road, Myers was sensitive and unassuming. She drew a following that made Richard dub her the "Pied Piper" of Jibla. Richard relied on Myers when she needed comfort from the pressures of living in a foreign country.
"Wherever Martha went, it was instant clinic," she said. "She was always focused on the people. I loved to go out on visits with her. She just knew the people and was welcomed wherever. She was the heart of the whole hospital."
During her own two years in Jibla, Richard, now 45, grew accustomed to the culture in her own way. She rented an apartment in a building owned by a family whose members became her close allies and friends. She learned to live with limited clean water and a gas stove with two small burners. As an American woman, she was called an "honorary man" and felt safe enough to hitchhike to her future husband's village when no taxis were available.
Through Ramadan, Richard did not eat or drink in front of her students out of respect for their fasting. A pious Christian, she was permitted to take Sunday mornings off for prayer. After the first year, she did not cover her hair, but wore the wide-legged pants her Yemeni mother stitched for her. Before her wedding, friends decorated her hands and arms with henna tattoos.
Leaving the country was bittersweet, she said.
"I can remember the last moments, sitting in the living room. The women accompanied me to the edge of the house, and we just bawled," she said.
In America, Richard received a letter from the family whose home she had shared. There was no word in Arabic for "miss," they told her.
"They wrote 'We are here lonely for you,' " she said. "People say, 'Why do you like the Middle East?' I say it's more beautiful than people think."
(Kristin Proulx can be reached at 224-5301, ext. 304, or by e-mail at kproulx@cmonitor.com)
Wednesday, January 1, 2003 More about Peace Corps Volunteers in Yemen
Read more about Peace Corps Volunteers in Yemen at:
Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Yemen; Special Interests - Islamic Culture
