My wife, Irene and I (and two young children) returned to Canada in 1960, having lived and worked in India for five years. Not the mystic land of Rimski-Korsakoff's "Song of India" but village India, hot, dry, just one monsoon failure away from famine. The barren hills on the north side of the Narboda river are the home of tribesmen known as Bhils: Rudyard Kipling knew them as wild and independent people of the forest. They were our neighbours, our seat mates at church, our nursing and technical staff and our patients.
On market day they would come with their goods to sell goats, berries, grindstones and hand-woven baskets, all loaded into ox-carts. In cotton turban, vest and loin cloth and usually barefooted the men drove the oxen with their wives and children huddled in the cart.
Once a week, then, two or three of these ox-carts surrounded our out-patient department. Inside the men would be hunkered down on the benches and in the carts we would find a woman in prolonged labour, a sick and dehydrated child hidden in his mother's cotton sari or a man emaciated from tuberculosis. It was a busy medical practice.
The hospital, known then as the Canadian Presbyterian Mission Hospital and, at this date, simply the Mission Hospital, has won the trust of the Bhil community. Thirty years of service, expanding from a dispensary to 60 beds, a surgical suite and an obstetrical ward has established the hospital's reputation.
Dr. Robert McLure (distinguished physician and, in retirement, moderator of the United Church) ran a modern hospital in Ratlam, only a day's travel away from us. Thanks to him, I learned how to come to grips with my responsibilities as physician-in-charge of our hospital. Indeed, so rich and challenging was the medical work that a cynic might accuse me of exaggeration. This certainly was not the case and my experiences of awesome successes or heart-breaking failures were not so striking and mysterious as the story of how I became a missionary doctor.
I was the intern on call for the private patient's pavillion of the Toronto Western Hospital, the night nurse on the seventh floor wanted an IV restarted.
At the desk, she whispered, "Dr. Laird operated on this woman this morning; she's full of cancer. We have been giving her morphine and the doctor wants the drip to run. She's pretty drowsy. The tray is at the bedside." Terse. Very professional and very sad. Nobody was optimistic about this woman's future.
By the light of the bedside lamp, I laid out the tray and turned to the woman who was obviously jaundiced, lying on her side with her eyes closed, barely awake. "I am Dr. Cunningham. Dr. Laird wants the IV restarted," I said.
Still lying on her side, she opened her eyes, and said, "And so you're going to India."
I am sure I stammered my reply, "Well, not India, but I am looking overseas for a job. I gave up on India years ago. But of all the interns in the hospital, how could you know that I was even looking overseas for work?" She replied in a weak whisper, "Some people say I am psychic that way." And she drifted off into a kind of sleep. I set up the IV, fastened a support to her arm and left, feeling really shaken.
I told my roommate and I told Irene about this episode and how it had disconcerted me. I told no one else. Eerie tales, I found, raised questions about my credibility and sanity.
And yet, at that time I was in conversation with the Quakers about their work overseas. Their quiet accounts of adventures and good works in Europe and Asia thrilled me. Despite their need for a physician in war-torn Seoul, they knew, I am sure, as I had begun to feel, that a part-time Presbyterian wouldn't quite fit in.
Presbyterian, yes! I remembered and phoned to inquire what work the church supported. On a Monday afternoon I shook hands with Rev. Jim Monro, who greeted me by saying, "So glad to meet you, Dr. Cunningham. Why just yesterday we had a day of prayer for a doctor for our hospital in India." Wow, two shots over my bow! Too many coincidences, and coming fast! I wanted to run but I stayed and warmed to the possibilities and took comfort and reassurance from meeting people whom I came to respect.
So that's how I became a missionary doctor. My church friends see my experience as the working of the Holy Spirit by means of an episode of prescience and exercise of prayer.
However, it seems to me that there were causes more in need of divine intervention than a small mission hospital and my career. Still, why me?
And, at this time in my life, I am no longer a part-time Presbyterian. Being in church I continue to explore the mysteries of God, working in our lives.
