A Hundred Camels: A Mission Doctor's Sojourn and Murder Trial in Somalia - Softcover

As Jean Janzen observes,"This vivid, compelling story becomes a vehicle of beauty-the kind that wounds as we recognize our own fears and prejudices but also the beauty of a compassion that heals." Here is the account of a Mennonite mission doctor tried for a patient's murder. As this suspenseful, true-life drama unfolds, readers are given access to an ancient, clan-based culture few Americans have experienced in a country recently declared by the United Nations as a humanitarian crisis "worse than Darfur." In her Foreword, Shirley H. Showalters comments that "This book contains an equal measure of travelogue, mystery story, medical diary, and cultural history. Underneath the excitement of the courtroom drama, murder trial, and many escapades in a new culture, lies the story of how one man's spirit grew, first in his own country and his own faith and then in a new country with a different faith."

Here is the account of a Mennonite mission doctor tried for a patient’s murder. As this suspenseful, true-life drama unfolds, readers are given access to an ancient, clan-based culture few Americans have experienced in a country recently declared by the United Nations as a humanitarian crisis "worse than Darfur." When Dr. Gerald L. Miller left his Markle, Indiana, family practice to respond to an urgent need for a doctor at the Jamama Hospital, he faced the challenge of understanding an Islamic culture much different from his own and of dealing with medical situations unlike any he had encountered: village children attacked by a mad dog, a psychotic woman chained to a stake, infants dead from malaria, banana workers bitten by venomous snakes. Not only did Miller respond readily and with compassion, he also acted with ingenuity, discovering, for example, that the malaria organism was crossing the placental barrier. Throughout a year of challenges, Dr. Miller had his Mennonite faith and the abiding support of Somali hospital staff and mission personnel to sustain him. Readers will be moved by the climax of this drama, a surprising outcome involving the actions of a single Somali family.