VOLUME III / ISSUE VII / JULY 2019
MELINDA GATES
COMPASSION GOES A LONG WAY
If Bill Gates’ superpower is speaking truth to the mighty, Melinda’s may well be hearing the truth of the unmighty, internalizing and then sharing that secret; often in the form of a brutally repressed wisdom. For a generally soft-toned speaker, her voice has the command of a church bell, but those who know her say her truly uncanny talent is simply the ability to listen. On one trip with Melinda to India, meeting with a group that was particularly hardhit by HIV; women in the commercial sex industry. Melinda—as was often the page 72
case—sat on the floor with the women and listened. In Mozambique, it was the same. The Gateses traveled to a remote rural area, talking with women about their desires for their children, and their fears that they wouldn’t be able to provide for or care for them. Melinda sat on the ground, talking woman to woman about the things that mothers care about. In Bangladesh, the government pulled out all the stops in welcoming the famous couple to Dhaka, putting their giant faces
on billboards lining the highway from the airport. The Gateses, however, just wanted to visit the famous International Center on Diarrheal Disease Research—or, as everyone called it, the “Cholera Hospital.” The hospital had long been a pinnacle of research on ways to help children with diarrhea survive. At the time, there was a cholera outbreak, and every cholera cot(a raised cot with a hole in the middle)had a child on it and a mother next to it. The mothers sat next to their kids and constantly
gave them a combination of oral rehydration, salts mixed with purified water and electrolytes. That ORS, as it’s called, keeps the child from dehydrating and dying during the non-stop diarrheal episode. Melinda sat down beside one mother and began helping to spoon-feed her child, as the two women—one born in Dhaka; the other, in a middle-class home in Dallas—talked through a translator about what they ate for dinner. She just has the ability to connect with people in a very special way.
