Prudence Lenokoumo lay in the hospital room in Cameroon, her fourth child dead in her womb. Her husband Alain turned to my friend and says “Ma femme . . . elle est tous a moi.”
“My wife, she is everything to me.”
When Casey Parks, late of the Jackson Free Press, won a New York Times contest to travel to Africa with Nicholas D. Kristof, I knew I would be reading some great stories. Casey was always one of my favorite writers at the JFP, turning out dozens of features and stories that were always gently balanced between the facts, the context, and Casey’s genuine interest in the subject matter. I’ll never forget how my progressive, indie-rock, publicly out friend was virtually adopted by members of the extreme pro-life community after her extraordinary article “No Apologies.” Even though Casey was on the other side of where they stood, Casey treated the subject and those involved with such an even hand that she gained their respect.
Casey was one of my favorite people because we could talk about Sleater-Kinney records and being a vegetarian in the South and pining over hot indie rock girls in faux-vintage t-shirts.
But the stories she told from Africa, via her Times blog, were more than I hoped for, even if I didn’t want it: I never wanted to learn about the specter of maternal mortality (which I’d never even heard of), I didn’t want to have to ponder the questions of whether journalists were ethically bound to intervene in life-or-death situations, and I didn’t want to care about people thousands of miles away.
I couldn’t help but care after reading about Prudence and Alain. Casey told the harrowing story of Prudence’s medical condition, which got so bad that Nick and Times photographer Naka Nathaniel actually gave blood to steady her. Nick told his side in an op-ed piece lamenting the lack of decent medical care (TimesSelect registration required).
Casey later followed up on Prudence and addressed the lingering problem of America’s concentration on Africa: “why study the poverty over there when there is so much in America?” Her answer is that we do have poverty in America, but in Africa it’s
Not [about] pawnshops or bankruptcy or the embarrassment of having to buy groceries with food stamps. . . . I’ve never seen a doctor leave a woman dying in the next room for four days because she didn’t have the $100 [for an operation] up front.
Nick tells the end of Prudence’s story: “I was there and my blood was in her veins.”
Casey’s back in America now—she was on the Today show this morning and will be on CNN tomorrow—and I’m thankful she’s back, and I’m thankful she went, because otherwise I wouldn’t have known, wouldn’t have cared about, wouldn’t have cried over, Prudence and Alain.
You can watch “Save Our Mothers: The Story of Prudence” here.
i’ve been following casey’s times blog since she started posting and i keep thinking about our conversations before she left. how lighthearted and hopeful she was. i think she’s still hopeful (the tone of her entries conveys that twinkle), but with a heavy heart at the things she has seen.
i’ve been attempting to formulate my own response to her experience and yet i’m still speechless.
oh lord. this is going to be good. i’ve got to set aside a good hour or 2 for this post and all the related links. thanks for putting them all in a neat package.
Here’s Casey on the Today show.