ABSTRACT
Two years ago, as I was helping my sister move, I spotted the black bag in the back of her U-Haul truck—she was using it to carry her household tools. A flood of memories rushed through me. This was the bag that my dad, a physician in Paraguay, South America, had used from the 1940s until he retired. He was “el señor doctor” … and the black bag, strapped to the saddle of his horse, was a symbol of the respect he commanded. He and the bag traveled extensively throughout the countryside of Paraguay, seeking out leprosy patients, abandoned by friends and family and in desperate need of medical attention. The bag was his companion, providing the tools he needed, or simply sitting open, near the cot of a sick or dying patient.
