ISTOCKPHOTO.COM, DAN VOJTECH
In August 1960, Norwegian physician Lorents Gran traveled to the Republic of Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) to join doctors and nurses from about 50 countries in a Red Cross mission to provide medical services to Africans in the months following the nation’s independence from Belgium. Secessionist riots had broken out in the streets, scores of soldier mutinied, battles raged among local tribes, and European doctors and nurses fled in droves. “The country had not yet any indigenous doctors or medical personnel to run their clinics,” Gran recalls. “It was chaos all through the country.”
Gran was sent to a hospital in Luluabourg (now Kananga) to tend to casualties of a war between two related tribes—the Lulua, traditional settlers of the town, and ...
