African doctor helps quake-hit village

Chen Degang, a villager living in the mountain town of Luozehe, the area most devastated by a 5.7-magnitude earthquake that struck on Sept. 7, was watching TV on the second floor of his tile-roofed house when the earthquake that claimed 81 lives hit.

The house collapsed just after the 39-year-old man jumped to the ground.

As the county seat is a two-hour drive from his village and lots of aftershocks continued to jolt the town, his injured left foot could not be treated immediately.

But some people told Chen that an African volunteer who studied traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) could treat his injury.

Diarra Boubacar, 48, who got his medical doctor degree from Chengdu University of TCM in 1997, diagnosed Chen with a heel tendon contusion. Boubacar wrapped Chen's left heel with bandages after applying some medicine, then he gave Chen a bottle of safflower oil and told him to stay off his feet.

Chen struggled to stand up and insisted that his wife bring a basin of water so Boubacar could wash his hands.

On Friday afternoon, Li Dehua, a 72-year-old veteran, was picking through the debris of his collapsed house to check if there was anything useful left. Boubacar removed Li's worn-out shoes and helped him put on a new pair of white shoes that were donated by a volunteer.

Although the shoes were a little too big, Li burst into grateful, but sorrowful tears. He lost everything in the quake but his 70-year-old wife and a 40-year-old mentally-ill daughter.

Together with staff from several charity organizations, Boubacar distributed 1,000 bags of rice, 1,000 buckets of cooking oil and tents to local villagers on Friday afternoon.

Before Boubacar left the village, an elderly woman presented him with a bag of freshly boiled eggs. While those affected by the quake are subsisting on potatoes and corn in their temporary shelters, eggs were the best gifts they could offer to a respected guest.

A group of women from the Miao ethnic group donned traditional dress and sang folk songs to bid farewell to Boubacar and the other rescuers.

A medical graduate from a university in Mali, Boubacar came to China to continue his studies in 1984. He changed his major from surgery to TCM after a one-year Chinese-language study program. Since earning his medical doctor degree in 1997, Boubacar has devoted much of his time to China's public welfare.

Boubacar has worked as a project manager for several international non-governmental organizations (NGO), including Doctors Without Borders and Project Grace. He came to Yunnan Province in 1999 and moved his family to the provincial capital of Kunming in 2001. Boubacar currently works as an expert with the China Primary Health Care Foundation and a member of Yixing Group, a local disaster-relief NGO based in Kunming.

Still, this is not his first time in Yiliang County. He first came to the county to provide emergency medical care and carry out disaster relief work after a massive landslide hit the impoverished mountainous county in 2000.

Throughout his time in China, he has been seen at various sites of major disasters in the country, including the Yangtze River flood in 1998 and snow disaster in Tibet in 2000. In the massive Wenchuan earthquake that claimed nearly 70,000 lives four years ago, he used his acupuncture expertise to help quake victims at a major settlement in Mianyang, Sichuan Province.

Boubacar had been distributing materials at a village in Kunming when the earthquake hit Yiliang County. He arrived in Yiliang the following day and, for the first time, celebrated his birthday in a disaster-hit region at a settlement in Minzu Middle School.

Boubacar is committed to working for public welfare in China.

"I already consider myself Chinese and part of society," he said. "I do what I can do."