Jessie's House of Needles Read online

  But the weather deteriorated rapidly and plans changed accordingly. Dr Leng was put on hold and the aircraft flew straight to Ninia to pick up Pat Dale and the children and bring them safely to Karubaga. The revised arrangements meant Dr Leng would then take the return flight to Ninia.

  Things did not happen as planned. As the plane landed at Ninia to pick up Pat and the children there was a great shout from the people. A group of men carrying a stretcher had just come into view.

  Stan was with them, alive and conscious, but suffering numerous arrow wounds that required urgent surgery. So an hour later the plane, carrying Stan, Pat and the children touched down at Karubaga to find a medical team busily preparing for their arrival. Jessie, who had first met Stan when he was a patient at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, was one of them.

  Stan told us his story. He and some Christian Yali men had gone to investigate a report that two Yali evangelists had been ambushed and killed. They (Stan’s small party) were accompanied by an Indonesian policeman. The party walked over the mountains for six hours, arriving at dusk in the Yali village where the murders had occurred. Stan and his party were ambushed. Stan received five arrow wounds and other members of the party were also wounded. The policeman shot off his gun and frightened the hostile villagers away. They then took shelter in a nearby village house that was set aside for visitors. Five arrow wounds would normally result in infection and death. Their situation was serious.

  As the men huddled around inside the little house the Yali helpers told Stan: ‘We must not stay here the night. The attackers will be back in the morning to kill and eat us.’ As soon as the excited village people settled down for the night the group sneaked out of the hut and started off up the mountain. It was raining and the path over the mountain was very steep, narrow and treacherous. Without a light they had to feel their way up and down the mountain paths. After they had been walking several hours Stan told them he couldn’t go any further and lay down on the ground. He told the men to go on and leave him. ‘No,’ they cried, ‘We will not leave you. We will carry you.’ They cut down saplings to make poles and made a stretcher by lashing the bark from some nearby banana trees around these poles. They placed Stan on the poles, tied him down, and continued on the difficult track over the mountains, arriving back at Ninia at 5.30 the next morning, just in time to be taken out by plane.

  Running a hospital in Irian was a little different to running a hospital back home. To start with we had no blood bank and no oxygen. We had to get another doctor from the south coast an hour-and-a-half away. We needed more oxygen and all that was available was the Oxywelding O2 from the MAF. We grabbed people who came in on the planes to check and see if their blood matched with Stan and then sterilised and set up theatre.

  Before we started surgery we began to pray. Jack carefully treated all the different wounds that Stan had sustained from the barbed arrows. He had sustained a puncture wound through the chest cavity which should have caused the lungs to collapse. However, when Stan had pulled out the arrow the barbs had pulled out some muscle to plug the hole. He also had another puncture into his abdominal cavity which caused the bowel to be pierced in several places. Eighteen inches of bowel had to be removed. The other wounds were non-invasive and only needed some suturing.

  As darkness closed in the small hospital generator fired up to provide light for the surgeons.

  It so happened it was one of those nights when the flying ants hatch. Where would they go in their thousands but to the only light in the valley and climb in through the louvre windows? They went straight to the light and then dropped into Stan’s abdomen so I spent a lot of time fishing them out.

  Jessie was on night duty during the weeks Stan Dale lay ill and in danger of dying.

  I would come out of hospital each morning to see the ring of 12 naked men sitting outside. I asked them what they were doing and they said: ‘We do not know Stan, but because he came here to tell us about Jesus he is our brother. We know that only the great God can make him better.’ This was an encouragement to me, a new missionary, to see their faith. Several years before they had been killing each other.

  After six weeks convalescing Stan returned to Ninia and presciently told the villagers: ‘Even if I have to die to give the Yali people the Gospel that is OK with me.’

  It was a stimulating and eye opening initiation for the adventurous young Australian starting her nursing ministry. The attack on Stan Dale and his group would have a tragic sequel two years later, one that would reverberate around the world.

  3. The house of needles

  My clinic now has a new Dani name, the house of needles. Quite appropriate don’t you think?

  Jessie’s letters to family, friends and financial supporters gave regular snapshots of the medical issues that confronted doctors and nurses in Karubaga. It was a big change of pace for anyone new to the mountains, however experienced they may have been in the better resourced hospitals back home.

  We get a lot of babies with deformed feet so yesterday I was shown how to put plasters on these, to correct the deformities and give them at least a chance of being able to walk straight. Guess we will have an influx once the word gets round. We haven’t had plaster to do it with before. Some has just come in so we will be able to do some until it runs out again. (August 1966)

  Medical work has its humorous touches too, as well as its serious ones. One lady came and said that she had been bitten by a pig. Sure enough, her fingers had been bitten off at the first knuckle. Her husband gravely informed me that they had already eaten the pig. Tit for tat! (February 1967)

  Now the whooping cough is with us in full force. We were able to do over 1000 vaccinations early in the year when we first heard the epidemic was heading our way. Now the sick ones are those who didn’t bother to bring their babies in at that time. These little ones die so fast if not started on injections very quickly. We have had two babies die here. In the area where the epidemic started over 300 babies died in a month.

  Just had an interruption – three babies with diarrhoea, one with whooping cough, two with flu. I have lost two already with flu – one day they are O.K. the next they are sick. Deekom (clinic worker) calls the whooping cough the ‘woofing cough’. The closest he could get to it. It sounds funny but I guess a lot of them have real barks anyway. (August 1967)

  Today they brought in a man who was cutting a tree down when it fell on him and fractured his leg. Also a lady whose husband took to her with a piece of firewood that was nicely alight and very hot. So she has an eye injury and a nice big burn down her back and arm which will take a while to heal. (November 1967)

  While it took time to adjust to the rigours of the mountains Jessie was a keen learner and took every chance she could to expand her horizons beyond the small hospital and her medical duties.

  Over the past few months I have been able to get out to some of the closer churches with some of the other missionaries. About one to one-and-a-half hour’s walking. I am certainly getting my ‘mountain legs’, but still have ‘weak legs’ as the Dani people put it. The steep mountains clothed in tall trees, waving grasses and swift roaring rivers are a constant reminder that our Creator has made all this wonderland and beauty…

  It is such a joy at the end of a hot steep climb to find crowds of eager people waiting for us and joyfully welcoming us into their midst. If it happens to be a weekday they all have a ‘stop work meeting’ for the day and stay home instead of going to the gardens, so they will be sure not to miss any of the ‘living words’. These words they hear they store up in their memories and go out to other villages to tell them. The people listen as they gather around their fires in their little huts in the evening. (May 1967)

  Jessie and her colleagues were providing health services to people with little or no understanding of the science that underpinned this new ‘magic’.

  The Dani folk firmly believe that if the doctor ‘cuts them up’ it is the cure for all ills. They see things like a boy’s
hand being made useable again after many years of inactivity due to bad burns as a child. Cutting, suturing and skin grafts and presto four whole fingers again instead of four useless stuck together ones. It takes some explaining why someone with a very large liver and spleen plus ascites cannot be fixed in the same way. (April 1971)

  Sitting in a dark little hut with a group of anxious faces surrounding me I thought what a tremendous contrast this was to a hospital situation at home. Helen Dekker called me to say that one of the Bible School women had haemorrhaged and was unconscious. I grabbed my little blue bag and a bottle of intravenous fluid and ran.

  As we endeavoured to get the intravenous into a vein that had all but collapsed we were conscious of the Lord’s guiding hand. IV in and running well, the patient beginning to come back to life. I glanced round. Husband and relatives all sitting around on the floor, very quiet and serious – the light of the lamp throwing shadows over the faces and the IV quite out of place hanging from the low ceiling by a piece of string. What a joy to be able to help in such a situation. (June 1972)

  Reading through Jessie’s writings you are struck by the sheer scale of the need and the depth of human tragedy as epidemics swept through the highlands. In 1968 Jessie’s account of a flu epidemic graphically brought news of another epidemic to her network and supporters at home.

  ‘Three people in that village have died, two people in that village up there, four in the one across the river and one up on the mountain. That makes this many,’ said Deekom, the head clinic worker as he held up both hands. Hong Kong flu was raging around Karubaga. What could we do? The eight clinic workers were frantically busy treating 400 patients each morning at the two clinics. They were tired after a busy day’s work but their desire to help their friends and relatives was much stronger.

  ‘Yes’ they all said, ‘we will go out to the villages and take medicine to those who cannot come in.’ Often, because everyone was sick, there was no one available in these villages to carry in the very ill for treatment and so they just died.

  The clinic workers came to the hospital at 2 pm to collect their equipment. One bowl to boil up needles and syringes, aspirin, vitamins and penicillin. Two by two they would go in different directions to visit as many villages as possible before dark. Sometimes they stayed out overnight, returning only when their supplies had run out. We had enough medicines on hand to deal with this emergency. Over 50,000 aspirins were used during the epidemic and hundreds of bottles of penicillin. Eighty-three people died around Karubaga. Our stocks are very low now.

  Such tragedies were all too common. Time and again over the years Jessie reported on the ‘dying’ season when epidemics swept the highlands.

  ‘Yetty I have a sore throat, my tongue is sore, my back hurts, my head is hot, I feel sick all over.’ Oh dear! The flu has come to stay. We do praise the Lord for the supply of aspirin that we received last week but our penicillin and sulpha tablets are about non-existent. This flu is turning into pneumonia in the older folk and we are in a very desperate situation. I have had penicillin on order for four months but there is none in Jayapura to be had.

  ‘Yetty can I have some aspirin to go out to some of the far villages where the people are too sick to come in and there is no one to carry them.’ Clinic workers going the second mile in the afternoons after a very busy morning in the clinic to try to help their friends in the outer areas. Both clinics here on the station have been seeing approximately 200 people each morning. There have been five deaths out in the villages of folk who didn’t come in for treatment. This is a hard time for the Dani folk. (March 1974)

  I was called to one of the little round huts late one afternoon by one of the clinic workers who was concerned about a baby whose mother had just brought him in. Wrapped in an old piece of calico that had long since come off a parcel, she showed me the wasted figure of a little two-year-old, a desperately sick little baby. That was all the covering it had. No other clothes or blankets and it was a cold night. The sad mother had walked six hours to bring the little one in, but too late. She wailed and wailed for her baby but to no avail. (1976)

  The tragedies are compounded by our knowledge that so many of these illnesses were curable, treatable or avoidable if the right medicines, vaccinations or treatments were available. Day in, day out, Jessie and her colleagues did what they could to meet the health needs of Karubaga, saddened by the tragedies, but also celebrating their many successes.

  We treat approximately 15,000 people in our small hospital and three clinics in one month. The drugs and money for our work come from interested friends at home. (1975-76)

  A day of great rejoicing next week when a boy we have done five skin grafts on will be ready to go home. His people were sure he would die because he was so badly burnt so we praise the Lord we are able to send him back alive. Do pray for this boy from the Sela Valley as he returns to his people. Most are cannibals but there are Dani evangelists in his area and some of his people are listening to the word of God. (March 1976)

  We performed an emergency operation immediately on a lady sent in from the South Coast. She was very shocked on arrival with hardly any blood pressure or pulse. First we had to find someone with the same blood type in order to give her a blood transfusion before we could start. Our operating theatre although small, is quite adequate, and the operating table of ancient vintage still works well. Three hours later, weary and hot from the afternoon sun streaming in the windows, we put in the last stitches, not for the tubal pregnancy as we had first thought, but from a ruptured spleen. (April 1977)

  A lot of patients flown in from other areas are midwifery problems that missionaries with no medical training are glad to send off to the doctor. Dr Donaldson, our new doctor, said that most of these cases are completely new to him. He had only read about them in books and had never actually seen them in real life. He is surely getting educated quickly….One lady that was flown in had been in labour for seven days. (1976)

  The medical needs were always far greater than the capacity of the health services to meet them. Doctors were precious resources and there were never enough, even in the good times, let alone the bad when personal dramas, ill-health, staff shortages or routine leave and furloughs had an impact.

  Do pray for the medical needs up here at present. Dr Dresser from The Evangelical Alliance Mission hospital has had to go home on account of his son’s serious illness. Dr Wright from the Australian Baptist Mission Society hospital has had his visa cancelled and is now in the process of reapplying. Dr Powell from the Unevangelized Fields Mission Hospital is on restricted activity because of his health. Our doctor is due for furlough in July, which will leave the doctor from the German Mission the only mission doctor available for emergencies for the interior of Irian Jaya. This will be a tremendous load on him and he will need much help and strength from his Lord to cope. (April 1977)

  Despite such setbacks Jessie kept plugging away at the never ending demand for medical care, earning the respect of her colleagues as she did so.

  Kathryn Kline recalls that Jessie had ‘a good level head on her shoulders’ and ‘was a nurse by gift and talent’.

  ‘Jessie was my mentor as a nurse and midwife; she could do all that I wished I could do, and I learned many things about nursing from her. Jessie is very caring, and very capable with patients. I worked with Jessie at the Karubaga clinic and hospital as an assistant. She was well trained and experienced and knew what to do in difficult medical situations.’

  4. Finding God and nursing

  We went to church once a fortnight when there was a minister available. I never dreamt of becoming a missionary. In fact I didn’t know what a missionary did.

  Karubaga and the missionary life was a world apart from Jessie’s roots in a small farming community in Australia. Born into a dairying family on 4 November 1938, Jessie was the ninth of 10 children. She was christened Roseabel Jessie Williamson but always called Jessie because, as sister Thelma explained in Jessie’s eulogy:
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  ‘An enthusiastic father registering his baby daughter forgot the order of the names. As this was then a legal document Jess went through life explaining her first name.’

  The children were raised on a small farm at a place called Greenvale, now a suburb of Melbourne but then quite an isolated little farming community. It was, as Thelma recalls, a frugal, rustic but carefree existence reminiscent of the experiences of other small farm families of the time.

  ‘The last three of our family, Jessie, Pam and myself, were known as ‘the kids’ and we were harum scarum little country kids. We rode the farm horse three or four up at a time. We all had our farm chores. Our parents, Bertha Zerbe of German descent and Hugh with Scottish forebears were wonderful role models of courage and strength in adversity, through drought and financially hard times. We all learned the value of the ‘work ethic’, honesty and integrity. Our Mother took us to the tiny Methodist church whenever there was a visiting pastor. We had no electricity until we were in our teens. We lived with kerosene lanterns; a Tilley lamp sat on our dining room table; we carried candles to move around the house and we had a fuel stove.’

  Jessie’s father never learned to drive a car so the family travelled around the district by horse and jinker. Even today there are local reminders of Jessie’s pioneering forebears with Williamson’s Road and Zerbe Reserve preserving the families’ association with the Doncaster and Templestowe areas. Thelma has a clear if, like many people looking back, somewhat rosy recollection of family life during those austere war years, including one of Jessie’s early dices with danger.

  ‘On New Year’s Day we would travel from Greenvale across to Doncaster to visit relatives who had an orchard. We would receive boxes of summer fruits to take home for our mother to make into preserves and jam. We remember having very stiff little legs from being squeezed into the front of the jinker for hours. Dad did all the farm work with a team of draught horses. At the end of the day we would go down the paddock to meet him as he unharnessed the horses, they would then come up to the stable to be fed, still with the big harness collars around their necks. We loved him to throw us up on the horse’s back behind the harness collar where we would really enjoy the ride home. We would have been four or five years old. I have a vivid memory of one day Jessie’s horse deciding to go for a drink in the dam first. As he went down the steep bank, poor little Jessie slid down his neck with the big collar and was perched precariously behind the horse’s ears, inches from deep water. Dad followed in hot pursuit and all was well, one frightened little girl and a story we have never forgotten.’