Class of 1967
The following biography was provided by Dr Ailsa Barker and edited by Daniel Beaumont. All images are courtesy of Ailsa Barker.
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Early life
Ailsa Clyne Heath Barker was born in New Plymouth on 9 April 1943. She was the first child of Victor Ernest Barker and Muriel Elisabeth Heath who were married at First Presbyterian Church, Invercargill on 7 October 1939 during a time of austerity following the depression of the 1930s. Ailsa’s mother came from a Southland farming family whose maternal grandparents had come from Caithness in Northern Scotland in 1876 and paternal grandparents from Yorkshire, England in 1880. Ailsa’s father was born in Williamstown, Victoria, Australia when his parents were en route from Herefordshire, England, to New Zealand in 1913. They settled in Whangarei.
Victor had been brought up as a nominal Anglican, then influenced by the story of the founders of Methodism (John and Charles Wesley) and in his late teens became a Baptist. Muriel came from staunch Presbyterian stock. Their faith had a large influence in Ailsa’s life.
Ailsa’s father, after matriculating at Whangarei Boys’ High School at the age of 16, trained as an accountant and joined the Public Trust Office. He worked for a time as an accountant for a saw-milling company in Tapanui where he met Ailsa’s mother at the Presbyterian church.
Ailsa’s mother, whose formal education ended after primary school, was a homemaker, cook and gardener. A housekeeper before marriage she adapted to the various moves during her husband’s working career managing to make a home in each place with a productive vegetable garden and a much-admired flower garden.
Ailsa’s primary schooldays were spent mostly in Invercargill (at Surrey Park School and Tweedsmuir Intermediate School) with the final year at Wakari Primary school, Dunedin. Her five years of high school were spent at the Greymouth Technical High School.
Ailsa was a diligent student. At High School she concentrated on science subjects: Biology, Chemistry and Physics as well as Mathematics and English. She obtained a school prize at the annual prize-giving ceremony every year, mostly as first in class, and finished her schooling with the proxime accessit dux prize. She was a school prefect. On the whole, she enjoyed school, especially the science field trip with the opportunity to learn to tickle trout in the upper sixth form.
Her decision to aim for Medical School was born at a young age. Ailsa recalls at about age 10 being asked the usual aunt-to-niece question, “Ailsa, what are you going to do when you grow up?” asked Aunty Hetty. Should she tell her the truth? She decided to share her heart-felt desire and answered. “A jungle doctor.” The vision had come after winning in a church holiday programme, a book, “Jungle Doctor’s Casebook” by Paul White, an Australian missionary doctor in Africa.
Ailsa developed a commitment to Christianity as a young teenager, which she felt gave her a definite focus. The passion to work as a missionary doctor grew and developed without wavering over subsequent years.
Life at University
And so, at age 17 Ailsa enrolled at Otago University and entered the competitive environment of the “Medical Intermediate” year. Having passed the University Entrance examination in her lower sixth form year and being awarded the Higher Leaving Certificate in her upper sixth year, she qualified to receive free university tuition and a small sum of money towards accommodation and living expenses during university years.
Ailsa’s family were very supportive throughout her university years and contributed the needed finance as necessary. Her mother was grateful that her daughter had an opportunity which she had never had.
Towards the end of February 1961 Ailsa’s father accompanied her on the train journey from Invercargill to Dunedin and then by taxi to St Margaret’s College, the residential college for girls where she stayed for the next two years. She shared a room with Ynes Douglas for the first year and met Jocelyn Williams and other girls also studying for the Medical Intermediate exams. Ailsa also met Marion Dewar (now Marion Carey-Smith), a third-year medical student, whose parents had been friends of Ailsa’s parents in New Plymouth many years before.
Marion was very helpful and acted as a kind of mentor introducing Ailsa to the Evangelical Union (now Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship) which she joined. Marion also gave advice when needed: Curfew was at 10pm. Meals were provided and were generally quite good, apart from the rubbery poached eggs.
Entry to Medical School was a challenge. Ailsa worked hard during that first year and passed all the examinations obtaining grades of B, C and C, but these grades were not enough to gain entry to medical school. Determined to pursue Medicine, she put her Higher School Certificate bursary (worth 180 NZ pounds) on hold and set out to repeat the ‘Medical Intermediate’ the following year, aiming for high marks. This meant that she had to pay tuition fees and all living expenses. With parental help and money from a holiday job this was possible. She again boarded at St Margaret’s and was allocated her chosen room, a single room on the relatively quiet top (third) floor, next door to Marion Dewar, who was then a third-year medical student.
Ailsa worked hard, did extra reading around the subjects and questions asked in old examination papers from the library. By the time the examinations came she was well-prepared and was delighted to gain an ‘A’ grade in all three subjects. With that examination result entry to second year medical classes was assured.
It was an unforgettable day when in 1963 Ailsa entered the Lindo-Ferguson building of the Medical School. She walked into the introductory lecture of second year medical classes, in a tiered lecture theatre with the eyes of over 100 young men on her and heard whispers of ‘three A’s’. These young men, her contemporaries, had suddenly become very well dressed, wearing jackets, shirts and ties with neat trousers, whereas the year before they had been sloppily dressed in jeans and tee-shirts. There was a new dress code in keeping with the new status.
Women students had their own common room at Medical School with a canteen where it was possible to buy a meal of mince, mashed potato, carrots, and peas at a reasonable price, which she did quite frequently for the two years she lived at Huntly House, an old house at the rear of St Margaret’s. It was administered by St Margaret’s, where senior students had bed sitting rooms and shared kitchen and bathroom facilities. The accommodation costs were considerably less than staying at St Margaret’s itself.
After two years there she moved to a flat on Royal Terrace with a young schoolteacher. They had a room each with a small kitchen and shared bathroom facilities with the family who owned the house. Ailsa’s room was large with a bay window giving an inspiring view overlooking the city and harbour towards the peninsula. It was there she had her desk. She enjoyed the exercise walking down the hill to Medical School every morning and up again in the evening.
At the end of Ailsa’s first year at university she obtained a holiday job as a ‘postie’ in Invercargill delivering mail by bicycle. It had good pay but it meant an early start to the day as she had to first sort mail by hand before delivering it in her allotted district in South Invercargill. Working in all weathers she found that occasionally grateful people left a gift (chocolates, a few notes (10 shillings or one pound) in the letterbox at Christmas addressed as ‘Thank you, postie!’
During fourth and fifth-year medical studies Ailsa had the great and invaluable experience of being an acting house-surgeon at Kew Hospital (later Southland Hospital) for the three weeks of the May and August university holidays, and over the longer Christmas vacation of fourth year, with free accommodation at the Nurses’ Home. It was her first experience of being on call. Working under supervision, she learned much, and the pay was good.
The experience of being an acting house surgeon helped Ailsa later in her final professional oral exams and she had no difficulty answering the questions asked by the examiners. The practical experience brought the theory taught in lectures to life in real people.
Ailsa’s last holiday job, at the end of fifth year when all students were employed at one of the various hospitals in New Zealand, was at the Waikato Hospital. Her parents were then living in Hamilton where her father was the Public Trustee, and she was able to live at home and have time with her parents.
Throughout her Medical School years Ailsa’s parents were very supportive, emotionally and spiritually as well as financially. A maternal uncle was also supportive in giving her a paid job as a “land girl” on his farm at Glenure, near Balfour, after finishing High School and again during holidays before the university year began.
Of the 120 students in Ailsa’s class eight were women. Ailsa noted that her male contemporaries did not treat her as being different, but some older women seemed to put women medical students on a pedestal. There was not much socialising between different years. Through the Evangelical Union (EU) and the local church (Hanover Street Baptist) she became friends with students of all faculties and all ages, several of whom became life-long friends.
The EU had weekly meetings, a barbecue at a beach on the peninsula and an annual Easter houseparty held at Pleasant Valley, near Palmerston. The church young people also met weekly and had an annual houseparty at Queen’s birthday weekend held at various locations (Balclutha, and Warrington). With all these activities Ailsa was too busy to feel homesick.
Male medical students were renowned drinkers but smoking did not seem to be a part of student experience as medical students knew that smoking was detrimental to health. Ailsa was a non-smoker and did not drink. Ailsa did not have a boyfriend although on her group’s first visit to the operating theatre at Dunedin Hospital a fellow student got down on his knees and asked her to marry him, saying that their fellow students were witnesses. Ailsa told him not to be silly!
Early Career
Following graduation in 1967 Ailsa worked as a house surgeon at Auckland Hospital, taking up residence in the House Surgeon’s quarters. The room was comfortable, and meals were supplied. The Junior House Surgeon year was divided into four runs of three months each. Ailsa’s first run was on the infectious diseases ward at Auckland Hospital.
Most of her time was occupied with resuscitating dehydrated babies and infants suffering from diarrhoea, sometimes with vomiting. She had to become expert in inserting intravenous lines into the scalp veins of these babies and in calculating their fluid requirements every 24 hours.
On her very first on-duty call she sat in her room at the House Surgeons’ quarters nervously awaiting what might occur, only to realise that there was no need to be nervous; if there was something that she could not cope with, there was always an on-duty registrar. Her registrar was an older woman, who had seemingly tackled a medical degree in older years, only to pass away from cancer a couple of years later.
Ailsa greatly enjoyed walking from the House Surgeons’ quarters along Park Road to the hospital entrance and then to the Infectious Disease wards, a walk with fantastic views of the waters of the Waitemata Harbour sparkling in the early morning sunshine with Devonport and Rangitoto Island in the background.
The surgical run at Auckland Hospital under Mr E.H. Gifford followed. The registrar already held specialist surgical qualifications and was eager to teach his house surgeon. From him Ailsa learned that abdominal pain in women with black underwear – commonly associated at the time with sex work – was more likely to be due to a gynaecological condition than to appendicitis! As there were just two general surgery teams at Auckland Hospital acute patients were admitted to the team every second day and on alternate weekends.
Operating lists had to be prepared for twice a week and Ailsa had to assist one of the two consultant surgeons. Holding a retractor could be tiring work but it was interesting to witness various surgical procedures and after the surgeon had inserted the key closing sutures, she was often left to complete the ‘sewing up.’ Besides general surgical patients, urology patients were under their care. Thus, Ailsa became expert at inserting urinary catheters for elderly men with prostate problems.
Ailsa fell in love with Medicine on her third run. Doctors on the medical run were also on call for any cardiac arrests that might occur. Ailsa learned to move fast and to perform CPR as required. That run was a steep learning curve. It was great, but tiring, experience, and Ailsa loved every minute of it.
During her medical run Ailsa encountered her first case of Anorexia Nervosa in a 16-year-old girl. She searched the recent literature in the medical library in an endeavour to find the best way to treat her and later presented her case at a grand round. The girl’s family must have felt grateful for her care because, following her discharge from hospital, they took her on holiday to the Cook Islands, and brought back a small wooden dish for Ailsa (which she still has).
The last run that first year was a month in the Eye and Ear, Nose and Throat Department at Auckland Hospital under Mr C. Ring, followed by a month of Orthopaedics at Middlemore Hospital. There were five orthopaedic teams and so the work was not as busy as that on previous runs.
Ailsa was attracted to both General Medicine and to Obstetrics and Gynaecology. It was in her second year as a house surgeon when doing the Diploma of Obstetrics at National Women’s Hospital she decided that as most babies seemed to arrive in the night, she would not like spending the rest of her life going to bed as the rest of the world was getting up for the day. She decided to pursue General Medicine. This was confirmed with her experience as registrar for Drs Quinn and Kellaway which she found to be challenging, stimulating and satisfying.
At the end of her second registrar year Ailsa was offered jobs in Rheumatology and Endocrinology, but as her goal was to serve in a developing country, she did not want to become too specialised for conditions there. Having had contact with people who had been to Indonesia, she went to Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, for six months en-route to further training in the UK. This was facilitated by OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship), the missionary organisation to which she had been accepted as a member. Before leaving from her parent’s home in Christchurch she was visited by a Dutch physician who was working at Immanuel Hospital, Bandung, a hospital of the Sundanese Church of West Java. She made this special visit from Auckland and was able to reassure Ailsa’s mother that her daughter would be well looked after. The travel was funded by Ailsa’s savings and by the Postgraduate bursary that was awarded then to medical graduates who had spent four years in NZ hospitals and who went overseas for further study. She also received a grant from the Medical Women’s Association.
Postgraduate study and work in Indonesia
On arrival at the Jakarta airport at the end of February 1972 Ailsa was almost knocked over by the steamy tropical atmosphere that greeted her as she exited the plane and struggled to walk across the tarmac to the terminal. Fortunately, an OMF missionary working in Jakarta and fluent in the Indonesian language was able to greet her at the entrance and escort her through Immigration and Customs. After a weekend in Jakarta Ailsa travelled into the highlands and the city of Bandung which was to be home for the next six months.
Ailsa’s first day at Immanuel Hospital, Bandung, was memorable. Before the ward round on the medical wards began Ailsa’s Indonesian colleague was called to the Emergency Department. There they found a young woman with what appeared to be a terrible haemorrhagic rash covering her chest. Was this a new tropical disease? Ailsa learned that the woman had a fever and had been treated with the common treatment – the rubbing of a coin along the intercostal spaces giving rise to the haemorrhages. It was the reason for all the many propriety remedies of oils and creams which most Indonesians carried on a journey.
Because of her lack of facility in speaking the Indonesian language Ailsa was quickly assigned to teaching medical students attached to the medical team in their clinical years. These students had fairly good English as there were no textbooks in the Indonesian language and so they had to learn English in order to read texts other than the lecturer’s dictations. And so, apart from morning ward rounds with the medical team, Ailsa’s days were spent teaching medical students on the wards. Afternoons were spent in language study, visiting a teacher for two sessions each week. Before the six months had ended Ailsa was able to sit and pass the Grade 1 language exam set by OMF.
From Bandung Ailsa travelled to the UK where she initially lived at William Goodenough House for postgraduate women students in Mecklenburg Square, Bloomsbury, London for ten weeks. From there she travelled daily by underground railway to Hammersmith Hospital in West London for the Postgraduate Course in Medicine at Hammersmith Hospital. When the course finished, she moved in December to the OMF residence at 45 Newington Green, London, travelling by bus to the School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Keppel Street, Bloomsbury. This move was financially economical and also put her in contact with other OMF missionaries, mostly British, who called in or stayed for various lengths of time as they passed through London.
During the time there, Ailsa passed the MRCP (UK) examinations and gained the Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Armed with these postgraduate qualifications, Ailsa was eager to return to Indonesia and Bandung. After two weeks with her family in New Zealand she returned to Asia at the end of August 1973 to attend the Orientation Course for new OMF missionaries held in Singapore.
During the time in Singapore, Ailsa received news from the OMF Office in Indonesia that it would be impossible to obtain a visa for her to work at Immanuel Hospital, Bandung. New regulations from the Indonesian Department of Health meant that no new doctors, including foreign doctors, were being permitted to work in Bandung city. However, OMF was willing to search for a new sponsorship and Ailsa was to return to Bandung for language study.
Thus Christmas 1974 was spent in Jakarta, and in the New Year she travelled to Bandung, initially living with several other lady missionaries, who were also doing language study. In addition to lessons with an Indonesian teacher (a high school teacher) Ailsa was able to live with an Indonesian family for two months. Her fluency in the Indonesian language quickly improved and she was able to pass the next two language exams and was considered to be ready for ministry.
In mid-1974 the Methodist Church of Indonesia, whose headquarters were in Medan, North Sumatra and where they had a university with a medical faculty, secured a sponsorship for Ailsa. Not having a teaching hospital, they had secured government permission to use the General Hospital in Pematang Siantar, an inland town, as their teaching hospital. The 450-bed hospital had formerly been a plantation hospital.
Upon arriving in Pematang Siantar in October 1974, Ailsa met a lecturer from the UK, with whom she was to live. After settling in and reporting to the various authorities (police and the head of the local community association), Ailsa was taken to the government hospital and introduced to the hospital superintendent and medical team.
As 1974 was drawing to a close, it was decided that routine work for her would not commence until after the New Year holidays of January 1975, when the first group of students would be sent from Medan to begin their clinical attachment in the Medical Department. In the meantime, Ailsa was introduced to the Methodist District Superintendent in Pematang Siantar and to the congregation of the Methodist church.
After morning ward rounds and helping in an outpatient clinic Ailsa began preparing seminar material for the medical students. Hospital doctors were all part-time, having private practises which supplemented their small government salary. Most arrived in the hospital at 9am and had left by 1pm. There was a roster for off-duty on-call work.
Ailsa spent six years at that hospital. After 2 years the superintendent had purchased an ECG machine. Mornings began with a seminar for students of the medical school in Medan in groups of six to eight to spend 12 weeks in the medical department before taking an exam and moving on to other departments. Ailsa discovered that the students had had similar experiences to those of the students in Bandung. They had learnt the physical examination of a patient from reading a text, and practising on each other, never having had a demonstration as to how such an examination should be performed.
Once students had learned how to examine a patient, this was followed up with seminars on various conditions and students were introduced to patients who had the condition. The hospital was full of patients with an encyclopaedia of diseases – cardiac, respiratory, hepatic, renal, intestinal, neurological, infectious as well as diabetes and thyrotoxicosis. Diabetes was not diagnosed unless the urine tested positive for sugar. This changed when finger prick testing for blood glucose became available.
Ailsa felt that medicine in Indonesia in the 1970s was about 25 years behind what she had experienced in New Zealand. It was frustrating that many patients felt that they had not been properly treated unless they received at least one injection (usually a vitamin) and a selection of pills. Most tablets were routinely administered as 1 tablet 3 times daily. Unable to measure electrolyte levels in the laboratory, Ailsa advised patients on diuretics to have one banana every day – a healthy and much cheaper alternative to expensive potassium tablets which patients could not afford. During those years cholera, typhoid and bulging hepatic abscesses were common. Tetanus was also common but became less so after horse carts were banned as transport in the city.
Ailsa had always been a reader. In Indonesia, books were scarce (and expensive) and became her most precious possession. She was very grateful to classmates Wendy and Bruce Hadden who sent her a copy of the New Ethicals publication when she was teaching in Siantar. From this material she was able to produce up-to-date information on the treatment of various condition in Indonesian for her students. She produced several manuals which were printed for students: On the Physical Examination of patients, Emergency Medicine and Cardiology. These became reference material for some students for years.
Further training and hospital politics
Dr Gordon Nicholson, gastroenterologist from Auckland Hospital, visited for a week in May 1976 and told Ailsa that she needed to go on holiday to take a break from her enormous contingent of patients. He taught students, held a seminar for the city’s doctors one evening and was taken on a visit to Lake Toba and Samosir Island. He also arranged for Ailsa to have 6 months training and experience as a visiting physician in the Gastroenterology department at Auckland Hospital from December 1977 to May 1978. At Auckland Hospital Ailsa was able to upgrade her skills as she learned to perform gastroscopies with a flexible instrument and to take biopsies as well as doing ward rounds.
On her return to Pematang Siantar at the end of May 1978 the situation in the hospital had changed. The Health Department had appointed a physician to the hospital. The man was very jealous, although Ailsa had no private practice and was involved only in teaching students and in the hospital care of referred patients. He wanted her activities restricted to the laboratory, but she had no training in laboratory medicine and could not teach clinical medicine to students without patient contact. His relationship with other colleagues was not good either.
The hospital superintendent had been very good to Ailsa. He had had two additional outpatient clinic rooms built, one of which was her outpatient clinic; he upgraded a half of one ward to be used as a seminar room for students; he applied to the health department for Ailsa to be given official medical registration (which received no reply) and together with the dean of the medical faculty he produced a signed certificate stating that Ailsa was fluent in the Indonesian language (a requirement for the medical registration of foreign graduates).
Some time in the latter part of 1978 – early 1979 Ailsa received an unexpected visitor. A tall slim Englishman who told her that he was travelling through Sumatra, and on Samosir Island a hotel employee who had discovered that he was a medical doctor had then requested his help with a sibling who had suffered paraplegia after a motor accident. The young man was bed-ridden and the English doctor did not know what he could do. Someone must have mentioned Ailsa’s name as a doctor who could speak English, and he appeared on her doorstep.
Ailsa was uncertain what he thought she might do. Her sponsorship was for teaching medical students in the government hospital. She was not registered as a medical practitioner. She had no private practice. She could prescribe only in the hospital and to hospital patients.
She could do nothing to help.
Ailsa did suggest that if the family were poor, then help was theoretically available from a government hospital if a letter was procured from the village headman stating that the young man was poor. But it also may be that the family were unwilling to finance any further effort and probably had already sought the help of local healers. The English doctor later became an editor for the British Medical Journal. In April 1979 the following was published:
“I had no idea what Indonesia could offer this boy and so, in my confusion, I made a long journey by boat and bus to see a missionary doctor. She was unsympathetic. She implied that I was a fool to become implicated. She told me that it was possible for a poor man, who genuinely had no money, to obtain a letter from the headman of his village which would entitle him to free hospital care. She suspected that for the family to leave the boy in such a state they must be ‘worthless.'” (1)
In 1979 the Indonesian physician at the hospital requested that he be given the position of supervisor of the medical students and this was granted by the new dean of the medical faculty. From August of 1979 Ailsa’s name was no longer on the roster to teach medical students Ailsa visited the new dean of the medical faculty who informed her that the Indonesian physician had been visiting the office of the health Department each week demanding that permission for her to be in the hospital be revoked. She also spoke with the new rector of the university who said he could do nothing. The writing was on the wall.
Movement, marriage, and retirement
Ailsa decided to move to Balige, a town on the shores of Lake Toba which she had visited three years previously. Ailsa knew the German obstetrician in the Batak Lutheran Church Hospital in Balige, and was close friends with an Indonesian doctor, Hardi Wirawan, who had also moved there. Ailsa visited the obstetrician, met the hospital superintendent and was told that if she made an application to work there they would be delighted to receive her. The colleague at the hospital had proposed; they had known each other for 5 years, Ailsa had met his family, they were in love and decided to marry.
Ailsa moved to Balige, an inland rural town, at the end of April and began working in the Batak Lutheran Church hospital, a 350-bed hospital with X-ray, laboratory, USG, endoscopy and ECG facilities. She was provided with a staff house, three-minutes walking distance away. As word spread that Dr Ailsa was now in Balige, patients began to arrive from the four corners of the province and beyond! Work both with inpatients and outpatients became busy. Two rooms in a new wing were designated for Ailsa’s use: one became her outpatient clinic and the other eventually became a room where her daughters were cared for during working hours.
Ailsa and Hardi married on 1 July 1980. Ailsa continued to work during pregnancy, but took the stipulated leave of three months, starting one month before the expected due date and afterwards returned to full-time work. Ailsa was fortunate that the hospital was accommodating, allowing a room with a cot to be used for the baby to sleep and for breast-feeding as required. The two clinic nurses took turns to care for the baby as needed. As the children grew, the room was used as a playroom until they went to kindergarten at the age of 3 years 3 months.
Living in Indonesia meant that “house help” was available which reduced the time Ailsa had to spend doing housework and cooking meals. It also meant that the children were not left alone when she was called back to the hospital if there was an after-hours admission or an emergency. Ailsa and Hardi took a half-hour break at midday, when the house-help would bring their meal to the hospital in a “rantang,” a series of portable containers with rice, meat, chicken or fish, and vegetables, together with fruit.
When the girls were older and at school (7.30 am – 1.15pm) in Medan, Ailsa and Hardi collected them at 1.20pm and took them home for lunch. Ailsa and Hardi would then return for an afternoon clinic from 3-6pm. From that time Ailsa worked just two afternoons a week, using the other afternoons to take the girls to music lessons. She wanted her daughters to realise that they were important and so she spent time with them.
With opportunity for further study and training the family moved to Dunedin at the end of 1987 where Hardi took up a post as Senior Registrar on the Professorial Surgical Team under Prof Andre van Rij whilst Ailsa finished a Bachelor of Theology Hons degree and did part-time locums at the Mosgiel Medical Centre. Their daughters were then both in primary School. After three years they returned to North Sumatra in January 1991. The Balige hospital seemed to not need them and so, at the invitation of a colleague, they opened together a medical clinic in Medan, the capital city of North Sumatra province and remained there until retirement at Easter 2017. The clinic offered an excellent service: patients would arrive from 9:30am, have a history taken, physical examination performed, followed by any needed laboratory examinations, ECG, X-ray and ultrasound examinations. They would return at 4:30pm the same day when results were available to receive any needed medication or referrals for any further procedures or surgeries. From 1999 Ailsa volunteered at a small clinic in a coastal settlement one after- noon each week to help field workers serving a needy community.
It was a challenge to live and work in Indonesia with a different culture and with people of a different world view. This required learning, sensitivity and understanding. Ailsa was often asked by patients if someone (not something) had made them ill. It was common for patients to wear charms to ward off illness and to keep evil spirits away. It was very common for men, especially those in a position of authority and influence, to wear a ring with a large stone in order to keep their position and guard against forces that may wish to remove them.
During over 40 years in Indonesia, Ailsa experienced several disasters: Earthquakes in Sukabumi (1974), in Balige (1985) and in Nias (2005) when over 1000 people were killed, including several of Ailsa’s patients who were killed when their houses collapsed. One patient who survived by standing under a door frame described the severe quake as being “up and down, not sideways”. River floods in Medan city recurred over several years; Riots which began on the edge of Medan city in 1998 and spread to other towns and cities throughout Indonesia resulted in what was called the “Reformation”.
As a result of this “Reformation” a Health Department official came to the clinic in 1999, asking Ailsa to report to his office. He told her to visit a certain official in the chief Health Department Office in Jakarta with her documents and she would be issued with a certificate of medical registration. She followed his instructions, met the official who did not want to see any of her documents or qualifications except the originals of two letters: that of the Head official of the Health Department in Medan, North Sumatra in 1974 placing Ailsa in the Government Hospital in Siantar and that of the Superintendent of the Siantar Hospital stating Ailsa’s job description. Ailsa was able to produce those original documents from 25 years previously and medical registration was finally granted.
Medical legacy
Ailsa feels the main achievements of her career were the training of medical students in clinical medicine, and the treatment of her patients, many of whom would not have survived without her care. Some of her students went on to become specialists, one became Dean of a Medical Faculty, others became lecturers and specialists, several went overseas – to Germany & the US. Some have since written on social media that Ailsa was their “best teacher!”
On three occasions medical students on elective came and were helped by experiencing the great variety of patients with conditions that had been textbook cases for them.
Ailsa’s sponsorship specified involvement in church work. Thus, she was frequently busy speaking at conferences for ministers and for women, leading Bible studies for young people and for women, preaching in church services, speaking at student retreats. In later years she was also involved in pioneering a ministry training young people for work among coastal Malay people.
Ailsa was always a part of the hospital community and the wider medical community. When at the church hospital in Balige there was an association of Christian doctors serving in the wider area around Lake Toba which had occasional meetings. Because Ailsa had learnt to play the piano, she was able to play the pedal organ at church when she was at High School in Grey- mouth, and also later in Pematang Siantar, Indonesia. She taught medical students to play the recorder, purchased recorders for them and a group played during the Christmas service at the Government Hospital in December 1979. For several years Ailsa was involved in leading a monthly Bible study group for women in Siantar, which continued during the 7 years they were in Balige (two hours away), and later a group for women of a church on the other side of Medan (a journey 1½ hours by public transport.
In 1994, Ailsa was granted the Margaret Houghton Bursary, an award granted to medical graduates with an interest in Theology, to study for 6 weeks (Trinity Term), at Regents Park College, University of Oxford, England. As a result of that research on stress and post-traumatic disorders she was able to help several patients who suffered trauma as a result of the looting that occurred after the 1998 riots of the “Reformation” in Indonesia and the Christmas bombings in the 2000s.
When the opportunity arose, in Indonesia, Ailsa was able to study (part-time) for the MA (Missiology) in 1997, the Doctor of Ministry in 2000, and the Doctor of Theology in 2007, all from STTII Yogyakarta (in association with Biola University, California), completing the required thesis and dissertations in Indonesian. These qualifications enabled Ailsa to teach undergraduate and graduate students one day a week, as well as occasional intensive courses, which she did for 20 years.
Theologian Frederick Buechner defined vocation as the place where “your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Ailsa’s calling to become a medical missionary in Indonesia, a country which had (and still has) deep needs, enriched her life, gave her immense satisfaction, fulfilment and profound joy.
- Smith, Richard. “Accidents In The East.” The British Medical Journal 1, no. 6171 (1979): 1132–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25432154.
