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By Matt Liberman
Hometown Weekly Intern
It’s easier for Joel Montague to list the countries that he hasn’t visited rather than the ones that he has. He wrote a book on postcards in French Colonial Cambodia and has a collection of antique health posters from France.
While many people his age are golfing, or fishing, or spending time with their grandchildren, Montague joked, he is sleeping in huts in the forests of Cambodia, working with rural villagers to eliminate malaria.
“I’m following a desire to work with people in other countries to help them better their lives,” Montague said.
Montague has spent his entire life working in public health, specifically working to progress public health in rural, underdeveloped communities around the globe. He was a founding member of Partners for Development (PfD), an international non-governmental organization (NGO) that partners with community organizations to improve those local communities around the world. After years of serving on the board of directors and as board chairman, he now works on the advisory board of PfD, and at 86, he has no thoughts of slowing down. And he knows he can’t there are more problems across the globe that have to be solved.
Montague is a Renaissance man, said Nancy Harris, a friend of Montague’s and a member of the PfD board of directors. Walking inside Montague’s home in Wellesley, it appears that almost anything you see came from a different country. He is fluent in English, French and Arabic, and has spent time in what he thinks is at least 55 countries - but the number could be higher, he said.
Yet, Montague seldom wants to talk about himself. Instead he focuses on problems around the globe and routes to find the solutions.
Earlier this year, Montague spent time in Cambodia, conducting research on the country’s history. In his later years, he has developed a love for writing about the cultural histories of the places that he has worked.
But while he was there, he stopped in some rural villages that he has worked with in the past to check in on their progress of their fight against malaria.
Malaria has long been a problem in Cambodia, as has overall public health. The country was devastated by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. Every person who was educated in the minds of the Khmer Rouge was murdered, PfD executive director Jack Marrkand said. Following that, there was simply a lack of educated Cambodians that had knowledge of public health.
Thus, Cambodia became the site of one of PfD’s first major tests. Cambodia became one of the most popular sites of NGOs in the world following the fall of the Khmer Rouge, but most NGOs flocked to the big cities to work on policy, Harris said. Very few focused on the small villages that were the most afflicted. PfD went straight for the rural areas, Harris said. That was where the need was.
“PfD is the quintessential small NGO that does the dirty work,” Harris said. “They’re not big and they’re not famous, but the work they do is absolutely incredible.”
PfD has worked in Cambodia now for over two decades, centered in the rural provinces of Koh Kong and Kampong Cham, both of which Montague has worked with. The regions consist of about 700,000 people, Montague explained.
What makes the two provinces such hotbeds is that they are covered in forestry, which mosquitoes thrive in, Montague said. The biggest transmitters of malaria in Cambodia are the people that live in those forests, but most doctors in the country live in urban areas. PfD’s work over the years has been essentially to establish a public health system among the villages.
Partners for Development’s mission is to create networks within these local communities so that they can build sustainable infrastructure and organization for themselves. When PfD first began working in the region in the 1990s, Marrkand said, most of their work was with Americans who lived in Cambodia to help establish these systems. Now, two decades later, these systems are run by local Cambodians, who have been trained by experts such as Montague, and there is now a communicative partnership between the main PfD headquarters in Maryland, and local community branches across the globe. These local volunteers are able to diagnose and treat malaria.
Montague has long worked with these local communities. He was one of the first people to go into the regions in the early 1990s, when the country was in complete disarray, much to the disliking of his family, he said. They didn’t want him “mucking around.”
But that experience in the beginning has made him a valuable leader of the fight against malaria in the region.
“You can help your organization in ways that new people cannot because you were there in the beginning,” Montague said.
Now, when he goes back, as he did earlier this year, locals are eager to work and learn from him, and he strives to do whatever he can to help them. What separates Montague though, from so many other NGO workers, Harris said, is his care and respect for everyone with whom he interacts.
After his trip, Montague filed a report to the PfD board of directors. At the end of his report is a contact list of every single malaria field worker he interacted with during his trip, each with an official title of Mr. or Ms. at the beginning.
“There’s a tendency to underrate or under-respect community health workers,” Harris said. “He treats everyone as if they’re worthy of respect and to be listened to; that’s a very unusual quality.”
But for Montague, it is in his nature. He has been doing this work for over five decades. He knows he is experienced, but he also knows that there is so much to learn from every field worker, and he recognizes what they’re doing is extraordinarily difficult. These malaria field workers are nearly all farmers, Montague said, and now they are working as public health volunteers.
“You have to let them know, ‘you guys are doing a wonderful job,’” Montague said. “‘No one fully appreciates how important it is to be doing this at your level, not getting paid for it. And helping your country, helping your family and helping your village.’ It is really really genuine. It’s not easy.”
Yet, Montague is doing the same. He was not visiting with PfD money or on a PfD trip. He took time out of his own trip, using his frequent flyer miles, to visit an area plagued by a harmful disease.
“Most people who are 86 years old are not going to pick up from Boston and go to Cambodia and rough it,” Marrkand said. “There’s a deep respect for his energy and his perspective and insight. It’s a big morale boost.”
He spent his time interviewing malaria field workers, asking how stock supplies were holding up, how training is progressing for more and more field workers.
And the workers love having Montague around.
One volunteer asked Montague if he could put a shingle on his door that read “malaria field worker.” They take pride in it, Montague said.
And he takes pride in the impact of his work, PfD’s work, and other NGO’s work around the country. Since the 1990s, Cambodia has cut its malaria cases in half. PfD has trained trained 1,345 teachers, benefiting 57,132 primary school students in health education and in the last eight years has provided over 65,000 people with bed nets.
But there are more problems to solve. As the number of cases of malaria have depleted, resistant strains have built up. Cambodia now has the most drug-resistant cases of malaria in the world, and many groups, such as the World Health Organization, are terrified it will spread.
That is why an 86-year-old man flew to Cambodia to “rough it” in a small, rural village - and why he continues to fight to help find solutions for small communities around the world.
“Can someone like me still bring something to the table? Yes,” Montague said. “The attitude is ‘Wow … look at his white hair. He must know a lot.’”
“I love it,” he said. “I really love it.”
