A Chevalier College Lent story, from John Franzmann MSC

We thought many of you may wish to read Fr John Franzmann's homily on Ash Wednesday which focuses on a Chev Past Student's amazing charity work.

I want today to speak of another who spends his life helping the less fortunate. This time he is a Chevalier past student. His name is Dr Andrew Browning. He spoke in Bowral last year, and some of you may have heard him or heard of him.

He went to Bowral Primary, and then came to Chevalier. He was in the year 12 class of 1987. He went on to do a medical degree. He said, “As a Christian I always wanted to be a missionary doctor”. He had heard about the needs of Africa from a returned missionary who spoke to the children at Sunday School at St Jude’s.

Andrew’s father was an obstetrician, but Andrew said “I swore I’d never be an obstetrician - he was always at work, always up at night. In fact the first thing I did as a medical student with him at Bowral was a hysterectomy, and I fainted”

But then he visited Africa. His aunt Valerie, his father’s youngest sister, was a nurse who worked from age 22 in Ethiopia, then in a Sudan refugee camp, and in Eritrea and Somalia. Andrew met her when she visited home when he was 9 or 10. He was very impressed by her. “I used to talk with pride about how my aunt was helping people. She was doing such exciting and worthwhile work.”

Refugee camps in Tanzania

Andrew went to work with her. “I did my medical elective in Tanzania in 1993 working in Rwandan refugee camps, and decided that as a Christian, this was how I should live my life - by bringing some relief to suffering.

Then he was asked to come and work in Africa at a hospital that specialised in the problem of fistula. This is a problem that happens to women when they have difficulty delivering their babies. It can result in death, or in years of great suffering. It is not known in the West, where women have access to good obstetric care, but is a big problem in Africa where care can be very basic or non-existent. For example, in Ethiopia there are about 9000 new cases each year.

Fistula

As Andrew says of our Australian understanding of it, “It’s hidden away, not happening at our front door. Its mostly in rural Africa and South-East Asia. It’s not happening in our face. so we don’t react. It takes a global effort - those countries don’t have resources to tackle it, but we do.”

So Andrew went off and studied obstetrics after all, and came back and worked in Africa.