Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

He thought that people in the US, particularly “white liberals,” needed to recognize that big change couldn’t happen without some sacrifice on their part. For the rest of the year, he worked at his hospital in rural Haiti.įarmer was frustrated by how many diseases around the world would be preventable if people were only given the appropriate treatment. Farmer was 35 years old and worked part of the year at a hospital in Boston. Kidder and Farmer happened to be taking the same flight on the way back to the states, and Kidder used the opportunity to learn about Farmer’s life. Farmer tried to show the officials that the locals weren’t happy with the US Army, a potentially huge problem-the Army had just 9 soldiers working to control 150,000 locals. He considered the US partially responsible for the military junta-one of the junta’s leaders had trained in the US Army’s School of the Americas-and thought that the US cared more about its business interests than helping the Haitian people, the vast majority of whom were very poor. Meeting Doctor Paul Farmerįarmer, who operated a hospital in Haiti, came to express his grievances to the US Army officials about their plans.

Kidder was embedded with US Army officials who were attempting to restore a democratic leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in Haiti, which had been ruled by a military junta for the previous three years. Kidder first met Farmer in 1994 during a political intervention in Haiti. In Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder tells the true story of Paul Farmer, a doctor and anthropologist committed to both serving the poor and demonstrating that the health of a nation’s people is the product of its culture and political history.

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Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder