Real-Life Decision Making -- Solution
You insist the boy be taken to a hospital.
This is the real-life decision made by John Barker. "It was
a hard decision," he says. "Coming from a privileged country, sometimes it
was hard to figure out my role."
Barker hired a boat and used his position as a senior man to tell one of
the natives that he must take the boy to the hospital.
Unfortunately, the story does not have a happy ending. There was some brain
damage and the boy eventually died. However, Barker feels that he made the
right decision. "I felt I had to do something," he says.
For a while, he was worried about the impact of the tragedy on the community.
"It could have had bad results," he says. "It might have confirmed [to the
natives] that you should never take kids to the hospital."
Fortunately, that didn't happen. And when Barker returned to the village
last year, he was relieved when the people welcomed him with open arms.
"I thought I might have done myself irreparable damage, but they were quite
happy to see me," he says.