A Doctor for Kenya

Suffering from an infected foot, nine-year-old Mungai Njoroge had his fears calmed and diverted at a Scottish Presbyterian clinic in Kenya by a kindly doctor who showed him test tubes filled with multicolored liquids. Fascinated, Njoroge decided that he wanted to be a physician, a next-to-impossible ambition for a Kikuyu tribesman. But for 24 years Njoroge pursued his dream. Last week, at 33, he was at sea, homeward-bound as Kenya's first U.S.-trained African physician. He will soon start construction of a 50-bed hospital, the first in Kenya to be operated for Africans by Africans.

Njoroge's quest for his M.D. would make the arduous road of the average U.S. medical student look like roses all the way. Son of a Kikuyu Christian who ran a small general store, Njoroge wanted to go to a U.S. college. But Kenya bureaucrats refused him necessary papers, hoping to keep him within the empire for ideological safety. So Njoroge made it the long way around, via Pretoria (B.S. at the University of South Africa) and London, peddling cosmetics and doing odd jobs. In London, broader-minded officials gave him a permit to study in the U.S., but Njoroge had to borrow passage money (he still hopes to pay back the -L-60), arrived in the U.S. in the fall of 1951 with just 3-c-. A fellow passenger lent him taxi money and $1.50 for a Y.M.C.A. room; the Committee on Friendly Relations Among Foreign Students lent him $70 bus fare to get to California. After a succession of odd jobs and premed studies, he finally entered Stanford University School of Medicine, got his M.D. in 1957, interned at Brooklyn's Kings County Hospital.

In medical school Njoroge got the idea for his African hospital, sold it to Medico, a division of the International Rescue Committee, which persuaded U.S. drug manufacturers to donate $100,000 worth of medicines, other U.S. manufacturers to supply $40,000 worth of equipment and surgical instruments. A Stanford classmate agreed to go as resident physician--at $200 a month. By mail, Njoroge organized a committee in Kenya that persuaded tribesmen to donate land, materials and labor for the hospital. The hospital will be built in the village of Chania, 30 miles northeast of Nairobi, will be free for Africans, whose fellow tribesmen may contribute to hospital bills by bartering produce or working in the hospital gardens.

Says Dr. Njoroge: "The important thing in Kenya is to stimulate the people to help themselves. They are eager and active, but they need direction. They have never had a hospital; I hope they will raise it as their own baby."

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