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HISTORY

SAGE OF LAMBERENE

At a graceful bend in the Ogowe River, French Equatorial Africa, sat Lamberéné, the hospital compound of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the greatest humanitarian of our time. Among its rusty roofs and moldering bungalows he worked miracles, healing not only the bodies of his patients, but also the souls of millions who witnessed his labors from afar.

Schweitzer loved the Ogowe. The encroaching forest and silver current. The quietude broken by screeches of distant birds. The rowers singing in rythim to their strokes. He once wrote that he could not travel the river without feeling a renewed sence of reverence for life.

Every evening after dinner, he would announce the hymn to be sung. Then Dr. Schweitzer, one of the world´s foremost interpreters of Bach, a master of the organ who could fill any concert hall on earth, would place his hands on the dilapidated keyboard of his old piano and play. Norman Mailer wrote that "the piano seemed to lose its poverty in his hands".

Word that Schweitzer was leaving Europe for Africa sent gasps through the cultural centers of the West. Besides his accomplishments as a musian, Schweitzer was renowned as a theologian, philosopher, historian, teacher, and author. Inspired by the parable of Lazarus and Dives, however, he took up medicine and left with his wife for Lamberéné, where he remained for the last fifty years of his life.

Before his death in 1965, Schweitzer became an acclaimed authority on tropical diseases. It was the complete integrity of his sacrifice, however, that most inspired the world at large. Lamberéné was a beacon for humanity at precisely the time when global hostilities were at their peak. World leaders sought his advice. Ordinary people wrote with their everyday concerns. When he received the Nobel Peace Prize, he was presented as the world´s wiset man its best. As one journalist wrote, "He makes us all live better by simply being here". Ofana naje, there is no one like him.