During my university years in Christchurch, a man named Edric Baker spoke at my church.

Edric was a kiwi doctor who lived in remote, rural Bangladesh. Over three decades he had lived the simple lifestyle of those around him, and trained local people to provide medical care.

His visit to New Zealand was to raise funds for the healthcare centre he had grown in the remote Kailakuri village, where his team of 90 local people served 28,000 patients per year.

They did so on a shoestring, treating each outpatient for less than two New Zealand dollars and helping diabetics manage their condition for just a few cents per day. The exceptional work had led philanthropist Gareth Morgan to call Edric Baker, ‘New Zealand’s Mother Teresa’.

After the talk I had an unshakeable conviction, which I later recognised as a nudge from God, that I had to interview Edric before he left New Zealand. I did so, and I wrote up that interview for his organisation. Three years later, Edric died. The following year, his organisation asked me if I would write his biography.

I felt God nudge me again, but for months I resisted. Eventually, I said yes.

Edric’s life posed deep questions that I wanted to answer.

What makes a person go ‘all in’ to pursue an ideal? As a young doctor working in Vietnam, Edric had seen people die for lack of basic healthcare. That was an injustice Edric simply could not tolerate, and he spent his life trying to live out an alternative.

The answer Edric brought to fruition in Bangladesh was training local people - many without formal schooling - as paramedics to serve their own community. The model worked, and is still working. I wanted to know, could that model be replicated? And how did Edric sustain himself for so many years despite his failures and flaws?

Edric came to faith in Khandallah Anglican Church in Wellington.

Like many of us, he heard Jesus’ call to follow and he said yes to that adventure.

Edric’s story is action-packed, set amid war, floods, cholera and the bleak backdrop of inequality and indifference to suffering. In those contexts Edric lived incarnationally.

His love in action is a deep challenge to many of us: what if we too refused to accept injustice? Could we go ‘all in’, and sustain it? Edric’s story is also an encouragement that ordinary followers of Jesus all have a part to play in transformation, working with Jesus and the resources in our hands.

Call Me Brother: The Story of a New Zealand Doctor in Bangladesh is available in paperback and e-book at www.kailakuri.com/biography, with all proceeds going to the Kailakuri Healthcare Project.  

'Call me Brother' is available from Aotearoa Books for $39.99

Book launches
Wellington
Saturday 17 June, 2023 3pm
8 Kelburn Parade, Wgtn.

Christchurch 
Saturday 1 July, 2023, 3pm
Holy Trinity Avonside,
168 Stanmore Rd, Chch.