Diversity

Recently my neurosurgery colleague Brian Ragel and I went to India on behalf of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons to teach some surgical courses to Indian neurosurgical trainees.  On our way to the city where the courses were held, we stopped at a tea plantation in the mountains of southern India where I snapped this picture.  While this picture of Dr. Ragel against one of the many mountains where tea bushes have been planted for centuries may look like a typical “let me show you where I went on vacation” photo, the story contained within its four corners is quite interesting.  Three thousand years ago, people in China started drinking tea, a step that coincided with drinking boiled water that, coincidentally, killed disease-bearing microorganisms.  Tea bushes grow best at high altitude in a warm, wet climate.  Since the mountains of southern India are close to the equator, it is an ideal place for growing tea making India one of the largest tea producers in the world.  However, tea is not native to India.  According to our tour guide, tea seeds were originally brought to India by prisoners of war from China.  While the tea thrived most of the time, some years the climate was too wet and the tea bushes suffered.  To solve that problem, Australian eucalyptus trees were planted because their deep roots soaked up excess water.  Of course none of this mattered until there was a large market to sell the tea which happened when the British invaded India, loved the tea and began vigorous cultivation and exportation of cargo ships full of tea to millions of caffeine starved Europeans.  Thus in the picture you see Dr. Ragel, a man of European descent, at an Indian tea plantation, enjoying the harvest of a Chinese plant whose growth is enabled by Australian trees.  Makes the world seem quite small doesn’t it?

As I was looking at this picture I began thinking about how diverse and connected life in Springfield, Missouri is with the rest of the world.  Within my own group of eight neurosurgeons, we have individuals that are one generation or less removed from Iran, Korea, Pakistan and Nigeria.  On the small cul-de-sac where I live we have many of the world’s great religions represented – Protestants, Catholics, Hindus, Muslims, and Mormons - all within throwing distance of each other.  Even a simple can of Coca-Cola that you may have on your shelf at home in southwest Missouri is contained in an aluminum can from Western Australia, filled with syrup based on a recipe from Atlanta, Georgia that calls for Mexican vanilla, cinnamon from the inner bark of a Sri Lankan tree, coca leaf from South America (processed in a plant in New Jersey to remove the cocaine), and combined with red kola nut from the African rain forest.

Each of us has these stories that connect us to others.  We need them.  The diversity of opinion, background and perspective opens our minds, stimulates new ideas, makes for more innovation, and powers our growth. I’ve shared some of my own stories of diversity, I am interested in yours.  How do you find yourself connected to the rest of the world?  Email me at alan.scarrow@mercy.net or follow me on Twitter: @DrScarrow.