Last week-near the summit of Mount Everest
David Sharp lay dying at nearly 29,000 feet. His oxygen had run out. He was frozen. Only the movement of his eyes told fellow climbers that he hadn't died yet. They saw him and they passed him, one after another, forty people in all.
"Where were the good Samaritans?" the media cried. "How could they just walk past knowing he would die?" Even Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to scale mighty Everest, wondered at inhmanity of putting a goal before a soul.
"It's different up there," other climbers insisted. "There was no way we could help him. And to rescue him was to put ourselves at risk."
Where were the good Samaritans indeed? It's so easy to judge with our feet firmly planted on solid ground. But in strange environments, when you're out of your element, things become much more complex.
1999, Somewhere in Africa
She lay in the ditch next to where we parked our car. I shielded the children's eyes and skirted past her. Flies hovered around her eyes and mouth. Bones protruded through paper thin skin. How long had she suffered? Where was her family? Edwin and I looked at each other then back at her. How could she die like that beside the road within yards of the nicest restaurant in town? How many had walked by without stopping to help? And if they had stopped, really, what could they do?
We found a police officer and pointed to the body. "A woman died over there," we said. I don't remember his words, but his attitude said, What am I supposed to do about it?
I wonder, if she was alive, what we would have done. We were in a foreign country. We didn't know the language or the culture. We didn't know where to go for help. If a policeman won't help, who will? If a missionary won't help, who will? If a Christian won't help, who will?
3 comments:
okay, Patty, that hits a little too close to home. I was amazed (I think outraged is too strong a word -- I felt pretty strongly) at the Everest story.
and an incident just like that happened to us at Frankie's in Accra, only the woman wasn't dead yet. We just didn't know what to do, and we were "on vacation." Isn't that horrible? It still haunts us to this day.
Thanks for the reality check, and the vision check -- I now see the plank in my eye.
I'm sure by now everyone has heard that a group of 13 climbers returned and rescued the man. He is down, alive, and probably somewhat incompacitated but time will tell.
mom
From childhood, hearing of the mighty feats about the conquerors of the world's tallest mountains, I have been captivated by the struggle and sheer difficulty of high altitude assents. There were only an handful of men then and those gentlemen were not only heroic in their achievements but they were noble in putting the sanctity of life before their personal goals.
The story last week of a man abandoned and ignored by other climbers while in mortal distress on the high portion of Mt Everest has me angry at modern me-first mountain ethics.
News from that part of the world travels slowly and is easily garbled, but there is now a more recent story on CNN (search the word Everest) about others on the mountain who did rescued a climber since David Sharp died, and for that we can be thankful.
Maybe a few gentlemen of yesteryear's caliber are still in the mountains .
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