Review: "Noises After Dark" by John Tomlinson

Noises After Dark by John Tomlinson
Published May 2023 via Matador
★★★

In the 80s, not long after qualifying as a doctor, Tomlinson secured himself a spot with Save the Children in Somalia. Along with other local and international staff, he'd be responsible for the medical care for the impoverished population of a town on the border of Ethiopia. The challenges immediately became clear: lack of funding, lack of consistency, tensions spilling over the border and endangering everyone.

This is not a time or a place about which I know much, though I am clearly not the only one:

I went for an initial interview at a large hospital. I sat in front of the panel, answering their questions. One member of the panel lowered his glasses to the end of his nose, and he peered across the table at me. "I see your CV says that you have been working in Somalia. Where in India is that?" (230)

(I'm reminded of a time I gave blood after I had been to Nicaragua, and when I was going over travel history with the nurse she told me that I couldn't give blood if I'd recently been to Africa...)

At any rate, Tomlinson knew very little going in either, though a great deal more when he came out. I appreciate that he talks so extensively and positively about (many) of his local colleagues, acknowledging that they were the core that held the hospital together. He might have had more medical training, but he tells story after story of the locals he worked with closely gently steering him in the right direction when cultural or political clashes seemed likely. The writing doesn't knock my socks off, but it's competent, and I'll take an interesting perspective with respect for local colleagues over Pulitzer writing anyway. One thing that fascinated me was Tomlinson's use of papaya as a dressing (something he learned in Jamaica), partly because it's such a surprising use of fruit and partly because Richard Villar describes using sugar as a dressing in Gaza Medic (that is: less surprising to see a second mention of something like that than a first mention, but odd to see those first and second mentions in books about very different times and places but read around the same time!).


Borama—where Tomlinson was posted—is now one of the biggest cities in Somaliland, though how much it has grown since the 80s I don't know. I imagine he hasn't been back since the 80s (if he has, he doesn't mention it), but I'd be curious how much has changed...and where Tomlinson worked following this experience.