Dr. Beat

That night, on Bechet's recommendation, we went to see one Dr.Beat perform on the cello at a local children's hospital. He opened with an intensely moving and flawlessly executed piece before taking up the mic and informing the entire audience of the dire state of Cambodia. The figures he rattled out were alarming: 40 000 children under the age of 5 dying each year from curable infections, over 80% of the population rural and poor, and an average household income of around 50 cents per day, to list a few. Even more alarming was the Cambodian government's utter lack of funding and support for its own hospitals, paying a paltry 2% of the facilities operating costs, while Switzerland picks up 10%, the remainder being supplied entirely through donations.

For the past 30+ years, Dr. Beat has been building hospitals, saving sick children and their mothers lives, and constantly drumming up donations by playing his cello, meeting world leaders, and speaking at every possible opportunity. We were shown a short video about the history of the hospitals, but it also included footage of a much younger Dr. Beat answering a reporters questions while tending to patients, all the while gunfire and explosions could be heard going off in the background. It is no exaggeration to say that he rebuilt a vital portion of a shattered country's medical system from scratch (during its reign, the Khmer Rouge exterminated almost every doctor and medical professional in Cambodia) and is responsible--through his hospitals, inoculations, and educational programs--for saving hundreds of thousands of lives. After an hour, it was clear that this was a man that fought an endless uphill battle, and one who was intimately aware of the damage a heartless government could inflict on its people, by simply failing to act.

He finished by imploring the audience to give blood if they were young, money if they were old, and if they were somewhere in between, give both. This time, we settled for giving money, but with Dr. Beat's words ringing in our ears, we'd be back.