"... though actions speak louder than words, words in the right place speak louder than bombs ..."

This week, I "lived out a scene from a movie," or so the friend I told this story to said.

In Epidemiology, we were discussing an article by a well-known public health expert about the world AIDS pandemic.  While normally I keep my mouth shut in class for fear of offending not only my classmates but also my teacher with a showy display of my global health knowledge, this time I spit out the gag and let loose the words I'd been choking on.  After politely raising my hand several times for tame, brief comments but never gaining the floor, while several students were given the chance to repeatedly utter ignorant comments (such as, "Why worry about those dying of AIDS in Africa?  They would starve if they survived anyway," and, "I don't know why the world thinks we need to help cure AIDS.  Abstinence isn't that tough to figure out"), I lowered my hand in defeat and decided I would swallow my pride and die to myself once again.

But, as the professor was bringing the discussion to a close, we met eyes and she said, "Oh, did your points get covered or was there still something you wanted to add?"

I grinned slyly and shrugged my shoulders.

"Oh, don't want to share with us anymore, huh?" she asked, only half-jokingly.

I smiled again, my heart began to race, and as my lips parted, no one, myself included, had any idea about what was about to happen.

"It isn't that I don't want to share, but at this point, I don't know where to begin.  My previous degree is in international relations and business, and I wrote a thesis about sustainable advancement in the developing world, which came to center around the current health problems there.  Health care isn't one of the problems there, it is THE problem.  'What about, lack of education?  Political corruption?  Poor economies?  Food shortages?  Civil wars?' you ask.  I can tell you why these are all just symptoms.  You can continue to poor aid money down the drain in the form of programs claiming to fix these ailments, but it is about as helpful as putting a band-aid over rotting flesh."

I followed with a ten-minute briefing on how the tragic state of health in most of the vast and diverse continent of Africa leads to the aforementioned blights, before closing with a final grin.  "That was a greatly oversimplified summary of the situation, but yeah, that is what I was going to say, more or less..."

Silence.  Crickets chirping.

Then, applause.  Seriously.

"Well, I should probably have you teach today's lecture.  Um, wow."  She sincerely thanked me for sharing my "expertise" with the class and then struggled to regroup.

My friend turned to me, grinning from ear to ear, and said, "No better way than that to prove it's the brilliant ones who keep quiet.  We don't need to listen to ourselves talk in attempt to convince ourselves of our intelligence."

After class, I handed in my quiz and was leaving when my teacher grabbed me, asked if she could read my thesis, and encouraged me to submit it for publication.  

I headed to the med school library to do some work on my current research project.  As I settled into my spot, I heard someone approaching from behind.

"Maren?  I turned; it was a classmate I respect but don't know very well.  She is from California, married to a return-missionary who speaks Arabic, hopes to relocate and start a family in the Middle East when she finishes school.  "I just want to thank you for your talk in class today.  It was so nice to hear an educated view on the issue, and I hope it challenged some people to question their beliefs.  Really, I want you to know that we really appreciated it.  It was a breath of fresh air in classroom discussion."

"Thank you.  That means a lot."

What do the children in the above photo have in common?  

They're beautiful?  Absolutely.  

Full of hope and life?  Definitely.  

But they are also HIV-positive angels, orphaned by AIDS.

"This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.  It is a revolutionary world we live in, ... and thus you, and your young compatriots everywhere, have had thrust upon you a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived."