Beyond the Storm: Treating the Powerless and the Powerful in Mobutu's Congo/Zaire Book

The colonel's great-aunt sat cross-legged on the carpet with her mouth wide open. With a gnarled finger, she pointed down her throat. A fishbone peeked over the base of her tongue and was easily retrieved. The old woman and the colonel were delighted. The doctor was relieved. This episode was the first of many that led Dr. Bill Close toward becoming the physician and friend to many, including the colonel who became president and then dictator of the Congo.

Beyond the Storm details Dr. Close's extraordinary experiences during the uncontrollable human storms that crashed repeatedly in the Congo after independence. In July of 1960 chaos erupted when Belgium turned over power to Patrice Lumumba, the first elected prime minister, but kept the keys to the nation's prodigious mineral wealth. Two men, Colonel Joseph Désiré Mobutu, the newly appointed army chief of staff, and William T. Close, M.D., volunteer surgeon in the general hospital, met, and their lives became intertwined during the next sixteen years.