Beyond the Storm: Treating the Powerless and the Powerful in MOBUTU'S Congo/Zaire

Great book. Dr. Close writes about his life as a young adult and eventually leads up to treating a massive amount of patients in what was quickly becoming one of the most troubled and corrupt countries in the world.

William T. Close M.D., Beyond the Storm: Treating the Powerless and the Powerful in Mobutu's Congo/Zaire is the true-life story of William T. Close M.D., the former personal physician of President Mobutu, the former dictator of the Democratic Republic of Congo (called Zaire while under his rule). Close sought to feed the hungry, aid the sick, and improve quality of life for the nation's people, and was personally responsible for maintaining Mobutu's health; his testimony tells of a dictator who governed with a ruthlessness worthy of the tactics described in Machiavelli's classic treatise for autocrats, "The Prince." Yet the slide from hope into despair for the nation under Mobutu's rule was not immediate; it was provoked by a gradual incursion of kleptocracy, corruption, and cronyism. Close was one of few people both willing and able to tell Mobutu the unvarnished truth; as years progressed and the nation's situation worsened, Close finally had to leave, and let history take its course. Enthusiastically recommended as a primary source detailing events great and small throughout Congo's history and the life of its dictator, as seen through a principled, compassionate, yet often exasperated medical doctor in its center.

Dr. Close knows how to write and tell the story. He is to the point, he is honest and very human in revealing himself and his commitment to practice medicine. He takes one on a journey beyond what one thinks about the heart of Africa, about surgery in primitive settings and about tribalism and the deep love of a people and a place. It held my interest because I was one of the doctors who came to Zaire and worked at Mama Yemo Hospital as a surgeon and saw first hand the miracle that was wrought by Dr. Close to bring care to the people of Kinshasa and via the river systems with the short lived hospital boat. You will never look on Africa the same after reading this personal account of courage and commitment against impossible odds of doing anything meaningful. Thank you Dr. Close for giving us a view beyond the storm. Don Wood, MD, FACS

Beyond The Storm by William T. Close,M.D. with Malonga Miatudila, M.D. is an outstanding memoir by Dr. Close, who was invited in 1960 to go to the Congo for six weeks as a medical missionary. Leaving his wife and young children except for intermittent visits, he spent most of the next sixteen years ministring to the tremendous health problems in Congo, which became Zaire. He was for a long time the only doctor in a fifteen hundred bed hospital, with the responsibility to bring it from corruption and tribal medicine into modern medical standards. However, he went to the Congo just before its independence from Belgium, and when Mobutu took over as dictator Close became the medical doctor to the armed forces and then the personal physician of Mobutu, who in the beginning had the interest of the country in mind. The book tells of the extreme corruption Mobutu's power achieved in his personal life and how he became an absolute, uncaring dictator letting the physical and medical needs of his starving countrymen quickly decline to abject poverty and deplorable health epidemics because of the graft within his government and the unbridled money, power, and weapons he obtained from the West. The book is very interesting and just before Mobutu's death, Dr. Close, who had returned to the US to practice medicine in Wyoming, was called back to Zaire to rebuild the hospital and medical system and help overcome the horrible conditions.