Kofi Annan: Chinese Doctors Meet Kofi Annan During Niger Famine, Caused By Drought In Niger.

As the top officer of the greatest international organisation, the United Nations, Kofi Annan is the one person most people are keen to see, although for most people, that is very difficult.

Quite by chance, on a day in August 2005, I met Kofi Annan when I was working in a small town in Niger, as a member of a Medical Group that included Chinese Doctors. Because of drought and a plague of locusts, Niger, the second poorest country in the world, experienced the most serious famine in its history

Since April 2005, the city in Niger where we worked, was considered to be one of the most serious areas affected by famine. It had a really bad environment making the lives of the people very hard. Disease and cholera being the main causes of people dying. The death rate of newborn babies and children was very high; the families in Niger losing many of the children born to them.

      The eventful day, 23rd August, soon came and our group of six Chinese doctors went to work at the city hospital, as usual at 8 o'clock in the morning. We felt a difference in the atmosphere when we arrived in front of the hospital, for the hospital was surrounded by soldiers carrying weapons, securing the area, for the visit of Kofi Annan. Everyone going into the hospital had to pass through an identity check, except the people in our car.

At 9 o'clock we were given notice to wait under a tree in the hospital grounds, for the arrival of Kofi Annan, and we were joined there by about 300 other members of the hospital staff. An old cleaning worker from the city area, carrying a banderole, also came to join the crowds, and he was very excited. I wondered whether he knew who Kofi Annan really was, or whether he had even heard of the United Nations! The Chinese Doctors were arranged in front of the queue waiting to meet Kofi Annan.

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Everyone carried a camera and asked each other to take a photo of them whenever they were with Kofi Annan. Someone said, ''Try to get more time if you have the chance to shake hands with Annan'' I said jokingly, '' I should smear my hand with super glue, then Annan cannot take his hand from mine.'' Everyone laughed loudly about that!

At 9:30am a few trucks drove into the hospital grounds, and everyone in the crowd assumed that Kofi Annan had arrived. We discovered that the trucks brought in reporters from different companies, as soon as they got off the trucks. There were about 30 to 40 western reporters with lots of different types of communication equipment, and they occupied the best positions for gathering news, as soon as they could. Fifteen minutes later another group of trucks arrived and people from the trucks quickly filled the meeting place.

"Look, that is Annan!'' someone in the doctor group said quietly. From his direction, I finally saw Annan in the crowd.       I had seen Kofi Annan on the French TV-5 channel, when he had attended an important meeting in New York, a few days earlier. He was not tall, as the report had said, 1.76 meters; he wore a blue shirt and a jerkin, and his skin colour was not as dark as it appeared on television. He had curly white hair and a mustache, and looked very relaxed and wise. It was difficult to believe that now he was truly appearing in front of us.

Kofi Annan came with his wife Nane Annan, and was accompanied by the President of Niger, Tandja Mmaduo, and a few UN Officials They followed the local Officer and came over to our group of Chinese Doctors. The atmosphere became mixed up because of the reporters scrambling for their news. We could just hear their voices from the microphones, and the noise from the cameras. We could tell that the local officer Musa was tense when he explained our situation to Annan, in a very low voice
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Annan looked at us very kindly and with a smile. To our surprise he said, ''Hello'' and ''How are you'', in Chinese, when he shook hands with each one of us. When he came to me I replied, ''I am pleased to meet you Mr Secretary General'' in french. He was surprised and spoke to me also in French. We might have been rather tense waiting for Kofi Annan, but when we truly met him face to face, we were no longer strangers; we were happy and contented. I could hear, ''chino,s (french)" from the people around us, speaking to each other in a low voice. At that moment in time, Country and Nation's main points were clear in my mind; every hardship in our work was trivial in comparison.

I had a closer look at Kofi Annan when he and his group were listenning to the local officer explaining the situation of the Aid Post. If we can forget that Annan is the seventh Secretary General of the United Nations, we can see him as just a normal man with a steadfast look, sometimes showing a little of his worry. How much can we understand of the Secretary General's worries, when there are such dangerous factors as terrorism, spread of disease, and natural disasters threatening mankind's security.

Kofi Annan was born and grew up in West Africa, Ghana. I think there would have been all kinds of feelings welling up in his heart when he was at the scene of such a dreadful famine,

when he looked at the leanness of the ground that bred him, and the way that the life of the people living in the villages was so hard and poverty stricken.

When we went to see the children who had been rescued his brows tightened and throughout the process he listened carefully, with only a few words. Annan's wife followed him all the time, and she too listened carefully to the officer. We were all affected by the real emotion of commiseration and concern that poured out from her eyes as she cuddled a dirty child in the sickroom.

At 11:45 am, Kofi Annan and all the visitors left the hospital. They were to visit another area about 100 miles further away. As I looked at the trucks as the Secretary General's group went away under West Africa's strong sunshine, I felt full of admiration for Annan. Perhaps for him it was just a normal workday, but to the victims of the calamity in Niger, they would have seen a sign of hope on that day. A great deal of material would be sent to them from international humanitarian organisations; there was some hope that their nightmare would soon be at an end. For me, the experience of that summer working in West Africa will remain in my memory forever. I was an eyewitness to that section of world history.

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Kofi Annan With Doctor Zhong In Niger Hospital Grounds During Drought In Niger Causing Famine.