Johanna Decker

Johanna Decker (19 June 1918 - 9 August 1977) was a Roman Catholic missionary doctor from West Germany who was murdered by "drunken terrorists" / "nationalist guerrillas" (sources differ) in Southern Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was identified in British government sources of the time), during the so-called Rhodesian Bush War.

Life

Provenance and early years

Johanna Maria Katharina "Hanna" Decker was born in Nuremberg where Ignaz Decker (1876–1947), her father, worked as a tax and customs official. Her mother, born Maria-Anna Jäger, came originally from Tirschenreuth in the extreme east of Bavaria. In 1922 Ignaz Decker was transferred to nearby Amberg. It was here that Johanna attended the junior school and the Lyceum of the Poor School Sisters ("Lyzeum der Armen Schulschwestern ") between 1928 and 1934. The school has subsequently been renamed to celebrate its notable former pupil as the "Dr. Johanna Decker School". She was an exceptionally capable student, good at drawing and able to play the piano. It was still unusual for girls to attend a university, but after a further three years at the "Oberrealschule" (senior school) in Amberg she passed her Abitur (school final exams) in 1937, which opened the way to university-level education. She embarked on her medical studies at Munich in October 1937.

Career choice and training

Decker engaged actively in the church's youth work, and by 1939 the idea of joining the missionary medical service had matured in her mind. It was in 1939 that she signed up with the Missionary Medical Institute ("Missionsärztliches Institut Würzburg") in Würzburg, while continuing to pursue her medical studies at Munich. After her father's retirement the family moved to Heimstetten on the edge of Munich. As a student, for financial reasons, Hanna Decker continued to live with her parents. In 1942, at the height of the war, she passed her national medical exams and received her doctorate. She was then conscripted for work in a succession of hospitals and clinics, not necessarily working in her chosen disciplines. There was a year working in Obstetrics at a midwife training institution. In 1944 she moved to the main municipal hospital Mainz where initially she was assigned to the department for internal medicine. She was then transferred to a little 35 bed psychiatric section, set up with support from then local university, which in 1946 became a fully fledged Psychiatric Clinic. In 1948 Decker qualified in Neuromedicine. (Neurology and Psychiatry were not, at that time, treated as separate disciplines.) In 1949 she set herself up as a psychiatric practitioner in Mainz (Stephanstraße 1).

There are indications that on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1946 Hanna Decker gave a solemn vow that once her medical studies were completed she would dedicate at least ten years to missionary work. In 1950 she was sent by the Missionary Medical Institute to Bulawayo, then part of the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. After arranging for a successor at her little surgery in the Stephanstraße, she left Mainz on 15 August. She stayed a couple of weeks in Würzburg and then took the train from Munich to Rome on 1 September 1950. With 24 other missionaries, on the morning of 6 September 1950 she enjoyed a private group audience with the pope. That afternoon she set off in a plane chartered by the missionary service. Stops along the way included (but were not limited to) Malta, Khartoum, Entebbe, Ndola and Johannesburg. They arrived in Bulawayo on 15 September 1950. Decker immediately joined the recently established (1948) Fatima Mission Hospital in northern Matabeleland, to the north of the city of Bulawayo. This is where her work was based till 1958/60.

Matabeleland

Throughout her time in Africa she provided reports in letters to the Missionary Medical Institute in Würzburg about her activities and experiences. In her very first letter (which is undated) she reports that the most frequently encountered diseases are "Tropical Malaria", Biharzia, (unspecified) venereal diseases and deep Muscle abscesses ("tiefe Muskelabszesse"). There are case descriptions and glimpses of patients' attitudes. "Natives" did not appreciate the true worth of free drug/medicine-based treatment. Friends and relatives accompanying patients would sometimes report that a patient "spoke a different language" in cases of "exogenous psychosis" (possibly intoxication through Pneumonia/Sepsis). Fromthe outset she reported good cooperation with the Mariannhill Missionaries from South Africa, and this was a recurring theme throughout her time at the Fatima Mission Hospital. Early on there are references to tensions with Roman Catholic Missionaries from Spain operating in the area, however.

Decker herself divides her twenty-eight years as a missionary doctor into two phases. The first consists of building up the medical provision, involving pioneering work and plenty of "start-up difficulties": that is followed by a second phase of operating under the "more or less normal circumstances of a rural hospital". (She would never need to concern herself with a third phase of letting go after a lifetime's commitment.)

The pioneering build-up phase started with getting to know the local population, challenges of mutual understanding, the need for constant improvisation with regard to diagnoses and treatments, and above all shortages Addressing the shortages would involve adventurous and exhausting bus trips lasting several days, clutching the vital "medicines box", and often leaving her with the feeling of being "not so much a doctor as a salesman or woman, hawking goods and services from door to door".