Do you ever wish you could go back in time; just an hour, or a day…to undo a mistake or make up for a missed opportunity?I did this past week...wishing I could step back in time to minister to a young man who I met briefly by the side of road in the interior of Congo…and then was gone.

The day after Christmas I was traveling by jeep to one of our health zones in Western Congo where there has been an epidemic of river blindness (Onchocercosis).The trip would involve four days of driving through difficult terrain; traversing the muddy and eroded roads of Congo's only route heading east from the capital.Just outside the city limits, the country's only asphalt road abruptly turns to dirt…actually mud and lakes of water during this current rainy season.Only the most rugged 4-WD vehicles can make the trip, averaging less than 25 miles per hour.As the road deteriorates many vehicles simply make their own trails skirting pools of mud and water.If one were looking at the road from the air, you might see half a dozen vehicles in a 25-mile area each plotting their own course, half of which at any time are broken down or simply stuck in the mud.The most precarious part is when the various paths merge into a single lane at a ravine or valley allowing only one vehicle to pass at a time.If a truck breaks down at such a point, traffic can be backed up for days…waiting for that single vehicle to get unstuck…on Congo's national highway number one.

We had left Kinshasa at dawn and had made good time averting the more treacherous pools of mud and water from the previous day's downpour. We were three hours out of town when we came to the first ravine…and alas fell in behind a line of a dozen trucks, which had been waiting to pass for nearly 22 hours!A lone truck had broken down the day before in the single path going through a ravine.As I walked out in mud up to my bootlaces, I saw 20-30 persons (each truck typically carries 20 or so passengers on top of the freight) digging and pulling and pushing the truck, which blocked the path.Another 200 - 300 sat by the muddy ravine, in Congo's sweltering heat on the 26th of December waiting for the truck to get free.Many of these were inbound from the interior and had been on the road literally for weeks. They were tired, hungry, and worn. Their hair and clothes had the same color as the rust brown mud.My arrival coming fresh from the city and heading into the interior caused the usual calling: "Hey ‘mundele' (white man), have you got any cigarettes, or food, or aspirin"I'm used to such crowds and have learned to smile and politely go about my business… focusing on the goal of getting to the next point, the next village, and the next stop.I do a lot of traveling in Congo.

Two hours later the truck was finally free…but we had at least an hour's wait while more than a dozen trucks ahead of us plowed through the open path.My eye caught a young man standing in a group of men across the road with an obvious swollen neck. When the others next to him saw my gaze they yelled "hey mundele, do you have any medicine for this fellow?"I got out of my jeep and walked over to the crowd.

He was a young man of about 30 with a large frame, but quite thin. He told me he had been in the neighboring country of Angola for the past couple of years, at work in the diamond mines.He was returning home; traveling to Congo's capital city, Kinshasa, from where I had just come.He had been on the road for 12 days and stuck at this particular spot in the road for the past 14 hours.He stooped down and I stooped down next to him face to face and asked about his neck.A doctor in Angola had told him he had an abscess and from the look of an incision in the middle, had obviously tried to drain it.The young man was on antibiotics; but it wasn't helping him. I touched the black lesions on his shins and arms, felt his thin body and took his pulse. He was weak, thin and pale.He could have AIDs I surmised (it is nearly endemic among the diamond miners in Angola) or perhaps tuberculosis?I palpated his neck and felt the mass in question (nearly the same size as his neck), which was firm and somewhat lumpy; certainly not hot or tender.This is not an abscess I told myself…but more likely a lymphoma (HIV related) or immense lymph node swelling from TB or a parasitic disease.His voice was muffled but he seemed to be breathing without difficulty. He was quite weak and had some difficulty swallowing. He had been on the road, in this condition, for over a week.Whatever this was; it was slowly constricting his airway…he needed to be seen at a hospital.Antibiotics would not do anything for this young man.He wondered what he should do and asked if he should come with us to a hospital in the interior. I have money to pay, he said, lots of it. (It is not unusual for young Congolese men to squander a diamond or two during a 3 to 4 year period working the mines by hand).I wouldn't advise that I said.The closest hospital in the direction I am going is at least a day's drive away…and would be rudimentary at best.I encouraged him to continue towards the city which was only three hours away and visit one of the larger city hospitals.I had nothing on my possession to treat his ailment (I was traveling without my medical bag) or to make an accurate diagnosis …though I feared his prognosis was not good.

During our brief conversation, a large crowd had gathered around us to see what I was doing. The sun was beating at my back; the trucks had just started to move out of the ravine and were passing within arms length, spewing more dust and diesel fumes on us."I guess you're right" he said, "I'm only a few hours away." We both stood up; he walked towards his truck which was headed into the city (mine was still in line heading the opposite way)…I walked back down the ravine to gauge how long it would be for our side to start moving. My last glimpse of the young man was him picking up his 5 liter water jug and walking towards the truck in his khaki shorts and dusty tee shirt.

The line was clearing and our jeep would soon be allowed to pass …I joined my team and proceeded through the mud and over the plateau for another 6-8 hours in the sun, mud and toil.I learned at our next stop from others who had come that way that the young man had died; in fact not too long after our brief encounter. I was shocked and dismayed. "Dead; I just saw him; he was walking to a truck, carrying his belongings. How could that be?"Perhaps the motion of him raising his arms to pull himself on top of the truck cut off the remnant of circulation in his neck…or he had sudden bleeding of the mass…or circulatory collapse.I'll never know…but I was devastated.Not only had I misjudged the possibility of him not making the rest of the trip (I suspected his long term prognosis was not good…but that he would surely make it to Kinshasa), but also I had failed to pray for him or offer him hope.Albeit the setting was not the optimum place for prayer or witness on the side of the road, in the midst of a growing crowd, trucks within the reach of my ear, the heat, the noise, etc. It was in retrospect, the only time. Worse, my attitude I am afraid was not the best; I was inpatient to move on, dirty and covered with sweat.I don't know which shade of grey my attitude was…but I am sure it was not a positive one.

Now I was the one grieving, driving away towards the interior, and pushing tears back from my eyes. "How could I have missed such an opportunity to witness…why didn't I pray with him…a man I was facing eye to eye an hour ago; and now dead…and all I could offer him was advice on which direction to go."My mood deteriorated as I proceeded on my journey, and continues to this day.Of all the patients I have prayed with ….how did I miss this single opportunity?

My agenda was full over the next week. I spent a total of three days on that road, visited the coordination site of our river blindness program and assessed needs, visited numerous hospitals and health centers along the way, consulted patients, conferred with hospital staff, listened to worker disputes and pleas from administrators for more medicine and supplies and placed more orders.Two of those nights we set up a film projector in an open field from the back of our jeep to show"The Jesus Film" to crowds of several hundred people each time…(many whom had never seen a movie before) and presented our testimonies…a busy and productive week in many ways.However, I can't help but wonder if the only agenda item the Lord wanted me to pursue on that trip was this young man and chance encounter on the side of the road.

The experience reminds me of Paul's admonishment to the Galatians.If we keep the whole law, but stumble at one point…we are guilty of violating the whole law.Despite all the potential good I may have done during that week after Christmas my shortcoming, my sin, was not loving that brother by the road…as much as myself.

I was raised a Roman Catholic and as a young boy in Catechism was taught that our destiny depends in part on the balance of our good deeds and bad deeds. It is as if, at the end of our lives, our acts are put on a balance to see where we stand.An overwhelming good life will land us in heaven, a bad life in hell…and a life somewhere in the middle in a place called purgatory.If someone weighed the scales of my deeds that day, I would have surely come up far short.

As believers we know that we are under grace and not under the law…and that our salvation has nothing to do with what we have done…but what God has done for us through the offering of His own Son for our sins. This is the message that freed me from the law as a young man and motivated me to pursue a lifetime of service and ministry.This is the message that I desperately wish I could go back in time and share with a young man by the road…

Father forgive me for putting my agenda ahead of yours….for focusing on the work ahead and not the person at hand…..for missing an opportunity to tell one about you…an opportunity lost for an eternity.

From Congo,

William Clemmer, MD
American Baptist Missionary
January 2003