David Silverstein’s memoir, Heartbeat, An American Cardiologist in Kenya, has just been published. Knowing each other for many years, David (allow me to call my friend that) asked me to contribute a blurb on its back cover, and through reading the book I got to know him so much better — including learning about the many common elements in our histories.
David was born in August 1944, just a few months before me, and he came to Kenya in 1974, three years before I did. He married his second wife Channa 22 years ago, at the age of 56, six years after I married my second wife Evelyn, when I was 50.
David’s Jewish father was born in Poland in 1905, and he moved to America with his parents in 1920. My Jewish father was born in Romania in 1910, leaving in 1941 for Palestine, where he met and married my mother and where I was born before we moved to England in 1948.
David’s father changed his name to Silverstein after arriving in America, following in the footsteps of his cousin and elder siblings. We too changed our name on arriving in Britain, from Einhorn to Eldon, as my father’s elder brother had done when he had come to England in 1939.
David’s relatives chose a Jewish-sounding name, while my uncle selected a short, easy-to-spell English-sounding one.
Like me, David knew little about Kenya or Africa when he first landed at Embakasi Airport, but as he writes in the epilogue to his book, he recognised when a door was opening and stepped through it, never once regretting his choice to make it his home. The same sentiment will feature in my eventual memoir!
The book starts with a foreword by Margaret Njonjo and a prologue by Sally Kosgei, and the first chapter tells us about the 1998 bombing of the American Embassy in Nairobi when David was a doctor at Nairobi Hospital and Channa a nurse with great experience in emergency work – which is how they met and later married.
We are then taken back to David’s childhood in Chicago, following his father becoming a doctor – and an ordained rabbi. After his medical training, David spent time at a hospital in Taiwan during the Vietnam War, despite being very much against the American involvement there.
He enjoyed an assignment in the Cook Islands, and having qualified as a cardiologist he had to decide where to practice. Opportunities were open in Fiji, Israel and Kenya.
Israel was ruled out, leaving Kenya, where he had been promised that a cath lab would be available.
It turned out it wasn’t when he arrived, but eventually, he managed to organise for its importation and installation. We read about a whole fascinating chapter on the 1976 raid on Entebbe, following the hijacking of a plane with many Jewish people on board.
The reason for its inclusion is that having rescued the hostages the Israeli planes needed to land in Kenya to refuel, and David describes how permission was granted through Charles Njonjo, then the Attorney-General.
Njonjo was one of David’s patients, and the Njonjos and the Silversteins became close friends. At David’s wedding to Channa, her father Maurice Commanday commented that as he lived in America he was delighted to see so many wonderful friends who would look out for his daughter in Africa. Njonjo immediately called out, “Don’t worry! I’ll take care of her!”
After that, he always called her Ward. He took his self-appointed role seriously, and from time to time David would be pulled aside by him to ask “Are you treating Ward properly?” I mention this as Njonjo was my wife Evelyn’s uncle, and would also ask me about how I was taking care of Evelyn.
David writes that he had great respect for Charles, and he believed it was reciprocated. “He did me the signal honour of relaxing in my presence and being his true self. We shared the same sense of humour, enjoying banter that bordered on insult.” Again, exactly the same for me.
We learn about David learning to be a pilot as a way of overcoming his fear of flying; finding a wife despite his problems with commitment; and carrying out international evacuations, including one with a patient on a stretcher – as I was last October, all the way to and from London; his work beyond dealing with individual patients to broad public health issues such as Ebola and Marburg, Aids and Corona; his leadership of the Jewish community in Kenya; Lady Delamere and the White Mischief scene; the 1982 coup attempt, with Njonjo portrayed as being behind it by those who wanted him away from Moi; buying his Naivasha land…
I particularly appreciated the honesty with which David tells us about both his professional and personal life. Congratulations to him for having taken the time to reflect on his life, so we can benefit from him having done so.
Appreciation too to Mary Anne Fitzgerald, who as he says “whipped my raggedy and politically incorrect memoir into shape”.
Eldon is chairman of management consultancy The DEPOT, co-founder of the Institute for Responsible Leadership and member of the Kepsa Advisory Council. [email protected]
www.mike-eldon.com
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