Angelettis

I was born in 1938 and I soon learned that the world was not a safe place. At least the part of the world where I was supposed to live. Later, when I was 12 years old, my family emigrated from Italy to Argentina where other relatives had been living for three generations. It has been a tradition for the latter half of the nineteenth century for one reason or another, for each generation to cross the Atlantic, perhaps because we lived near Genoa, which is a very active Mediterranean harbour. I am glad to say that my brother and I were the last to perform such an excursion which is why my Spanish language is so good. I did my secondary school in Argentina and that is also why my Italian grammar is not so good. (By the way, because most people do not understand Italian except Italians, I had to learn several other languages which I speak in a poor grammatical way, but that is another story.)

When I was 17 my family came back from Argentina and I began my medical studies at the university. Guess where? Genoa, of course. After my degree I spent three years at the University Eye Clinic of Basel, Switzerland. After I received my diploma in ophthalmology, I began my private practice in San Remo, a beautiful town on the Italian Riviera. I met Ornella at the University where she was also studying medicine and married her. A son, Michele, and then a daughter, Silvia, were probably our best achievements. From the beginning, Ornella and I both wanted to work overseas but I already begun my private practice in Italy. There was no long-term solution so we decided to take our time and accept short-term assignments, usually no longer than a year instead. You can only imagine what my patients at home thought about that! Nothing good I confess. But because there was no solution, we decided to share our lives among the poor which was in itself a solution.

We started carrying our three month old son in a basket to an Algerian oasis where we lived for nine months. Then we did a year at a time in various parts of Africa and also in the near east with myself serving as the ophthalmologist and Ornella as the optician (which she earned in the early '80s). We went to Senegal, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Burundi, Zaire, Mozambique and also Syria and the Gaza Strip, sometimes serving twice in the same areas, until we discovered CBM or rather, CBM discovered us.

At this point our children were sufficiently grown up and my patients at home were increasingly impatient, so we decided to leave once and for all and do what we had wanted to do from the very beginning which was to work full-time overseas.

That was five years ago and we still are very happy with our choice. The work at Agogo Hospital in Ghana is fulfilling both in terms of humanity and professionality. Relationships with people, staff, partner and CBM co-workers are excellent. For the first time, after so many frustrating African and Asian experiences, we have the realization of building something solid. CBM and Ghana, with the help of God, proved to us that pessimism is not mandatory in Africa and even after 29 years, something good can happen. One has to simply not give up.