A Tragic Lesson

In planning this long overdue blog post, I had been thinking a lot about the process of conducting a large academic project like a dissertation – about setting the parameters of research and forming an academically suitable argument. This was going to be a very academic post. Therefore, as I was driving to the University of Witwatersrand’s Historical Papers Archive on Monday morning I was thinking about what the limits and extent of “context” are; I was constructing the post in my mind.

And then the phone rang.

Against my better judgment (I was driving through Johannesburg in rush hour), I answered the phone. It was one of my dear friends from Bulwer, Esther. As I answered, she said, “Hello dear. Have you heard any news from Bulwer?”

Since I had just spoken with her on Saturday, I replied, “No, nothing new.”

And she said, “Oh, OK. It’s Les.” Les is Dr. Les Pitt, the HIV doctor for the district who has spent a lifetime working with rural Zulu-speaking people.

Esther went on, “There’s been a terrible accident…”

The rest of the ride was a blur. I listened to Esther talk about how deep a loss the passing of Dr. Pitt would be for the communities in the Pholela area and for her personally. But all I could think was, “Not Les. Surely not Les.”

Then, like any good researcher I spent the day at the archives. But, like any normal person, I spent very little time actually working.

The last three days have been a mess of emotion. This tragedy has robbed Pholela of a devoted doctor and a trusted civil servant. In this week alone tens of HIV+ people will go to three different clinics in the district to begin medication or to see the doctor and get his opinion about something related to their health. But there will be no doctor. For them, and for literally thousands of other people in the area, the loss of Dr. Pitt spells immeasurable tragedy.

For me, the loss of Dr. Pitt means the loss of a dear friend and trusted mentor. Much of what I learned in my first six months in South Africa I learned through Dr. Pitt. Obviously he taught me about rural medicine; things like what a tubercular pulmonary effusion looks like on a chest x-ray or why certain people get lactic acidosis, how to recognize it, and why it’s important. Dr. Pitt also taught me more subtle things like how to understand a person’s health as a part of his or her larger life and circumstances and how to treat some of the poorest and sickest people in the world with dignity and respect. We literally spent hours talking about my research and about his experiences and observations over 40 years of practicing medicine in rural South Africa. In many ways, as should be the ideal in academic work, my deepest insights came through conversation with Dr. Pitt.

As a result, on top of mourning this tragic loss for the community, and the loss of a dear, dear friend, I must reconcile a deep loss for my dissertation. And this is where it all gets tricky. I had been (foolishly) thinking that I could keep “my life” here in South Africa different from “my work.” For example, I have a system for taking field notes that is designed to keep parallel notes – one set that is more “objective” and therefore research oriented, and the other, which is more about my experience and impressions. I had thought that by keeping separate notes, I could keep my personal experience out of my research. In fact, even in thinking about how I wanted to portray myself and my research process through this blog, I had decided that I would keep it about my professional experience and not about my personal life.

And then tragedy strikes and I am reminded, rather forcefully, that the separation between the personal and the professional is artificial. Dr. Pitt was an important person to me personally, to my experience and comfort level in rural KZN, and to the ways I think about health and nature. He introduced me to many, many people in the community and he challenged me both subtly and overtly to ensure that my work would matter to the communities in which I conduct my research and not just to the academic world. He was an integral part of both “my life” and “my work.”

Dr. Pitt is an important reminder that life is messy, that the compartments we set out to keep things organized and separate rarely make sense. And indeed, why should they? In order to be good at what we do, we, as academics, must pick topics that we are passionate about, that touch us deeply, that make us more humane; even if that means that some days we can’t keep our focus. If there is anything positive that can come out of a senseless tragedy like this one, it is the reminder that if one truly, deeply cares about their professional pursuits then that line between the personal and the professional must disappear. That if we are to be truly humane scholars and compassionate individuals we must allow ourselves to be, to live, without these boundaries. In many ways it is only fitting that this lesson comes once again from Dr. Pitt.

For both my life and my work he will be sorely missed.