FIRST DRAFT OF YET TO BE NAMED TRUE STORY, compiled from medical journal testimonies of some surgeons (Theodore Zeldin and Rosemary Hickman. December 3, 1967, when Christiaan Bernard performed the World first heart transplant. It was a medical revolution and a new chapter in the medical history. With the new technique millions of people could benefit and saved. What was impossible has become a possible. Chris Bernard name become a legend and his name went in the medical and scientific history. The acclaim was mentioned in many articles in the magazines (Scope, personality, Times). All the major and influential newspapers covered this medical achievement. This achievement put on the map not only the doctor performer on the map but also put the city and the country on the map. It was the proud of every South African and many Africans at the same time. Africa was not only a land of misery or poverty or ignorance anymore, wars, there was something good and big that come from this continent at least. For many growing young people, they all dreams of becoming recognized surgeons and follow the foot steps of their heroes. One of them was Theodore Zeldin marveled and looks at upon his idols. This major accomplishment in the medical history didn�t mention the names of all the contributors. But was in fact a history of ordinaries people: cleaners, seamstresses, intellectuals, garage owners and doctors among many others. For Theodore Zeldin this led to a question: �Does anyone, no matter how great, achieve anything in life alone?� Theodore Zeldin followed his dream of becoming a respected surgeons. One or two days of his arrival at the Department of surgery which professor John Terblanche was a chair, he was sent to the J. S. Marais Laboratory to speak about his project. When he entered, he met this African gentleman looking upon him: �yes, my boy, what can I do for you?� This man was in the middle of an operation, and the other side of the table, stood a surgeon. In Theodore�s naivety he automatically concluded that the gentleman was just an assistant. But he was amazed to hear him telling the surgeon �Not there, put the clamp here�. This was his introduction to Hamilton Naki a remarkable human being. In the bright theatre shone on Hamilton�s broad forehead and with a serious expression he bent towards the abdomen that lay exposed under blue drapes. Without the slightest pause he started with his scalpel from below the chest towards the abdomen until he had made a deep cut almost 30 centimeters long. His enormous hands gently moved the bowel out of the way so that the abdominal cavity lay open in front of him. He started cutting through the tissue around the liver and his long, strong fingers danced over the veins and arteries that had been cut loose, clamping and tying them. When at last only the main blood vessels connecting the liver were still intact, he replaced the bowel and covered the incision with a sterile drape. �The pig liver is ready for transplant Mama� He told Professor Rosemary Hickman. �Mama� is an expression of great respect for African and Xhosa. They called for respect women, Mama and men Baba, regardless their age. In tradition Mama meant mother and Baba means father. But the Africans for respect may call even someone much younger to be their own daughter or son by the respectable expression of Mama and Baba. Africans were used to call anybody with a respectable term. They were not used to call anyone by their names. They prefer to use all terms possible to give any name it value. Sometime they may call you aunt, uncle, grand father, grand mother� For Africans not only a family related man or woman deserves respect but everybody. Hamilton Naki had no medical training but has become a key member of a pioneering surgical team. Hamilton had never been to any medical school. He had only completed eight years of the most basic schooling. Born in 1926, in Eastern Cape. He grew up wearing goatskins and running barefoot over the rolling green hills, herding cattle and goats. His family was so poor that he had no choice but drop out of the school when he was 16 to find a job to support his family. He hitchhiked more than 9000 kilometers to Cape Town and finds the job at the University as a labourer. For the next few years his job was to roll the grass tennis courts. The court happened to be on the campus of the fledging medical school. One day professor, Robert Goetz, was about to open up a dead giraffe to find out why the animal with the longest neck, Giraffe didn�t faint when he bent his long neck to drink water. He needed a pair of strong arms to help, walked outside and called the young gardener into the lab. Robert Goetz post mortem revealed that giraffes had one way valves in their veins that stopped all the blood from rushing to head when they bent down. Hamilton Naki become Goetz�s right hand in the lab. He absorbed knowledge to anaesthetize animals, different ways of cutting and stitching and how to set up drips. Then in 1958, Hamilton get another break. Doctor Christiaan Barnard who has to become for transplanting the first human heart, came to the research lab. This research has to become a lasting legacy and millions of people has to be saved. A few photographs of Hamilton and Barnard were published but it was Barnard who won world attention and acclaim. Nobody knew who Hamilton Naki was. At Groote Schuur hospital December 3, 1967 as the apartheid government could not allow a black man to be seen working on the body of the white person, his identity had to be concealed. Hamilton Naki who was listed as a cleaner or gardener but was the key of a key importance in that operation. Hamilton Naki removed the heart from the donor, wipe every blood from it, replace it with the recipient�s blood and get it pumping again before passing it to the other side of a screen to Barnard who then placed into the recipient�s body. Naki continued to assist with heart, liver, kidney and other transplant in J.S. Marais Laboratory. Generation of surgeons spent time in the laboratory doing researches and obtaining higher research degrees. These surgeons were to become academics in this country, continent and abroad. Hamilton taught surgery over a dozen individuals who were to become professors of surgery, top surgeons, and head of department in places as far afield as Tokyo and Nashville. Over the years this man would teach the generations of surgeons surgical skill in the only way possible. Many brash know it alls swaggered into the lab, but everytime they fell silent, sensing that they were watching a master at work. He had the ability to do many things at the time. He could assist surgeons, watch monitor, keep an ear out for the unaesthetic� For many surgeons he played an important role in they life and taught them: humility, patience, modesty, grace and diligence� Hamilton despite not going to medical school was not intimidated by anyone. Like people often says: �God never been to school to learn how to create, rocks, sky, animals, humans, plants�� Once Doctor Brian (Benzy) Cohen who went on to run the national fertility center in Texas was performing an intricate operation on a pig main vein. As he completed the procedure ha was about to put in another stitch. Hamilton who had done this operation many times said: �Benzy, that�s enough. Tie it now� Believing that an extra suture would stop any bleeding, Cohen proceeded and the operation was a failure. Hamilton made use of all the opportunities he had and never failed to share what he learned. One academic said to him: �Who teach you the craft of the surgery�?� He responded: �by stealing with my own eyes� Then the next time Cohen recalls: �when Hamilton said, �Benzy tied it off� my immediate reply was �Yes Hamilton� and I tied it off. I learnt immediately that here was a man who understood vascular surgical technique better than anyone else� When there was a quit time in the lab, he could read the Bible or be down in the cemetery where vagrants met. He used to sit often on the bench, trying to influence them, sometimes successfully. In the pick of the apartheid regime Hamilton didn�t see himself as a victim of anything. Hamilton never focused on his personal struggles to survive and had a sense of humour, sometimes even laughing at the system. In the 30 years he worked at the lab at the university he almost never missed any day at work thought the apartheid riots of the 1980s often disrupted the public transport. Sometimes he had to leave before the blockage put up in the townships and be at work by 3 am. Although, he often walk long distances, he arrived at work everyday at 6 am. In 2003, the University of Cape Town made an extraordinary announcement. For the first time in history a man who had never finished school will receive an honourable Master degree of Medicine degree. David Dent, Professor of Surgery read the citation, describing Hamilton Naki as : �An extraordinary teacher and surgical craftsman�. As he read the words: �the university honours a man who taught the craft of surgery to many� The South African president Thabo Mbeki awarded him the Order of Mapungubwe in bronze, for the service to the nation. He died in June 2005 at the age of 78. Anwar Suleman Mall, an associate professor of surgical sciences, captured the essence of how he fell: �Hamilton Naki was a giant. When I grew up, Chris Barnard was my hero. But as I become older, I realized that people like Hamilton were the real heroes� Hamilton Naki story made people realized that the most important measure of our lives is not a public recognition, but a legacy we leave behind, the people we�ve touched and the way in which we did it. Chris Barnard before few years before his death in 2001 said in the documentary: Hamilton probably had more technical skill than I had. If he had the opportunity, he might have become a great surgeon� Before the first human�s transplants they did the heart transplant on 48 dogs. The story of Hamilton Naki was similar to Vivien Thomas story in USA. In the 1930s in Nashville Tennessee Blalock was approached by a young African American named Vivien Thomas who longed to the study medicine but did not have the means. He joined Blalock in the laboratory. Blalock was appointed to the Chair of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University and Vivien Thomas and his family joined him. While Blalock lived comfortably, Vivien Thomas and his family lived in ghetto. When Helen Taussing approached Blalock about operating a blue baby, Blalock was able to use much of the expertise that Vivien Thomas has developed. Indeed, on one occasion upon feeling an anastomosis that Vivien Thomas had made almost sight unseen. Blalock said: �Did you do this?...Feels like something the Lord made� There was an outcry among the observers at the first heart operation when Blalock insisted that Vivien Thomas be allowed to be at his right shoulder to guide him through certain parts of the procedures. Yet later, Blalock received all the accolades, while Vivien Thomas was allowed to be present at the back of the dinning hall in the capacity of a waiter. But Vivien Thomas was benefited when these racial restrictions were reduced and eventually Vivien Thomas becomes Director of the Surgical Laboratory. Much later when Blalock had died, Vivien Thomas was awarded an Honorary Medical Doctorate by Johns Hopkins University. Hamilton Naki and Vivien Thomas all had one thing in common, they may not received all the praises and accolades but have set a legacy that millions of lives will benefit with their contribution in the modern medicine.