In this
Land of Eve
(Dr. Dibble's Home Web Site)
This book is a warm and human
story about the day-by-day experiences of Dr. Birney Dibble at the Kiomboi
mission hospital in north-central Tanzania. The narrative is a personal
one but it carries the universal appeal of humanity portrayed realistically.
The title is taken from a long narrative poem that Dr. Dibble wrote and which contains this stanza:
For we were adrift on seas of bush and thorn
In this Land of Eve where man
was born.
Or at least we're told that here men bred
from a race of pre-men long since dead.
For out on this long green-yellow plain
Is the spot where Abel was slain by
Cain.
Though not a diary in the strict sense of the word, four chapters do detail the hour by hour work of a missionary surgeon in a 20th century mission hospital. Other chapters describe the relatively advanced Iramba tribe in whose lands the hospital is situated, the vast bush country -- the savannah -- around the hospital, a big game hunt which was frequently necessary to provide meat for the mission staff, superstitions and acceptance of modern medicine, two primitive tribes (one a tribe of Bushmen, the other closely related to the Maasai), and two short stories based on facts but excogitated to flesh out those facts.
Dr. Dibble's keen sense of observation and obvious love-at-first-sight for East Africa result in description so vivid and real you feel you are looking over his shoulder. His highly descriptive and sometimes unusual writing makes his stories of the people, their customs, and their superstitions amazingly real. You complete the book with a vital sense of the deep need of these people.
Here are one man's intimate experiences and observations. They range over a wide area -- the people, medical cases, life of the hospital, the political situation, customs and superstitions, big-game hunting, the bush country and very primitive tribal life -- and are recorded in a highly readable and diversified literary style that puts this book in a class by itself.
Autographed paper back copy available for $15 plus $2.50 S & H from the author at
W 4290 Jene Road
e-mail: dibble@discover-net.net
Eau Claire, WI, 54701
Un-autographed copies might also be available at:
Note from the author: I would be happy to correspond by e-mail or snail-mail but I do not have the capability to take a credit card. Therefore all payments must be by check or money order.