Mama Daktari
By: Anne Spoerry
$15.00 - paperback
Dr. Spoerry shares her remarkable story: her life during the second world war; her journeys in the Middle East in the 1940s; how she came to live in and fall in love with Africa; and her commitment to the people she serves. Soerry’s tales read like the best of adventure novels and travel writing. Evocative and moving, They Call Me Mama Daktari is a testimonial about a life spent in the service of the humanitarian ideal.
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About the Author
Born on May 13, 1918 in Cannes, Dr. Anne Spoerry, or Mama Daktari as she is fondly remembered, lived a life only a script writer with a vivid imagination could dream up. Anne spent two years at school in England and later decided to go on to study medicine. In 1939, Anne was in her second year at the Hospital de la Salpetriere, Paris, which specialised in the care of the destitute and chronically sick.
When the war broke out, Anne Spoerry and her brother, Francois, joined the French Resistance. Both were captured and imprisoned – Anne in the notorious concentration camp for women, Ravensbruck, where she spent the last two years of the war.
Immediately after her release, Anne gained her Diploma in Tropical Medicine in Basle, Switzerland. In 1948 she sailed for Aden. After working there for the Ministry of Health, she visited Ethiopia and then Kenya. She fell in love with Kenya, and in 1950 decided to stay there and began working as a bush doctor.
It was here that she learned to fly, and these two paths, aviation and medicine, were to become intertwined during the course of her career.
By the 1960's there was one doctor to every 30,000 people in East Africa. Even so, Anne’s biggest struggle when she first moved to Kenya was fighting the negativity of being a female doctor. However, she managed to locate a community of farmers in Ol Kalou, Rift Valley who so desperately needed a doctor that her gender posed no problems.
Anne bought Lokolwa farm at Ol Kalou, which she sold soon after Kenya attained her independence. She never lost her love for farming and acquired another farm in Subukia, thirty miles North of Ol Kalou.
Having initially worked with AMREF as a volunteer, in 1964 she became a member of staff. As well as using her flying skills with taking medicine to the North of Kenya, she was in charge of the Mobile Medical Unit that was working in Kajiado district. There were many airstrips, which were cut and cleared by the communities she served. Very soon she had set up a caseload of almost 30,000 patients.
One of the projects in the early 1960's that Anne was involved in was a cardiac research project with the Maasai. Mama Daktari carried out the Medicine by Air programme in three specific areas of Kenya: the North, Lamu District and Maasailand. Her main focus in latter years was Mother and Child care, especially through immunisation coverage.
As a rule, Anne preferred to examine patients on the airstrip, in the shelter and shade of her plane. As well as treating their ailments, Anne did much to educate her patients. She stressed the importance of cleanliness as a way of avoiding illness. She persuaded parents to get their children immunised against polio, smallpox and other serious diseases. She also taught women methods of birth control so that they could limit the size of their families.
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