The Backyard Tribe

When Dr. Bud Payne of Mobile, Alabama, donates two weeks of his time to a Kenyan village hospital, it is the beginning of an astonishing adventure for him and his family.
Bud offers to fly a young Maasai girl back to America for life-saving heart surgery. She comes - but not alone: her entire tribe is with her, Maasai warriors carrying spears, mothers in tribal dress carrying babies, even a mysterious medicine man alight from the airplane.
The girl goes to the hospital, but the tribe goes to the Paynes' backyard. Gone are Gail Payne's prized rose beds, gone is the lawn. In their place are the mud huts of the Maasai.
As the suburban neighbors mingle with the tribesmen and the medicine man mingles with the surgeons, hilarious, harrowing, and even enlightening adventures result. The warriors rustle the nearest redneck's prime dairy cow for slaughter, and the Paynes' children swap their school clothes for war paint. Gail nearly loses her mind and Bud nearly loses his medical license.
However, it all leads to a classic happy ending, heightened by a cultural exchange beyond anyone's original dreams.

In this offbeat, zany story, Shulman, a Georgia physician who wrote and produced the film Doc Hollywood , draws on his own experience with Heart to Heart, a program he helped found to provide cardiac surgery in the U.S. for Third-World children. Multicultural understanding doesn't come easy to Bud Payne, an Atlanta doctor, when a Maasai girl from Kenya arrives for emergency heart surgery--accompanied by her entire tribe, who camp out in mud huts in the altruistic doctor's suburban backyard. Shulman's story works best when it plays off the incongruities and misunderstandings resulting from a clash between cultures: in Kenya, TV kiddie-show host Zach Tyler attempts to set up a "global village" but finds that the Maasai are more interested in using the video equipment and satellite hookup to watch Hitchcock's Psycho and broadcast their own slasher film. Once in Atlanta, a Maasai tribal healer puts a sexual hex on a hospital administrator and tribe members rustle a Georgia farmer's dairy cows, since "God gave them all the cows on earth." But then, Westerners "don't have all the answers either," as Dr. Payne ultimately learns in this sporadically moving tale.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Amusing story of a Masai tribe living in an Alabama doctor's backyard. Second-novelist Shulman (What? Dead Again?, 1980) also wrote the script for Doc Hollywood. Here, Shulman weaves two themes into one tale. The first is the spread of electronics even to a remote African village; the second shows the effect of primitive life on civilization when an African tribe moves itself to the States. Dr. Bud Pane and his gardener wife Gail take a vacation in the African bush, where Bud's instantly dragooned by medical nuns and finds himself drowned in work as he sews up a Masai warrior shredded by a lion. Adopted by the tribe, he begs them to allow him to take shining, 11-year-old Hope to Alabama, where surgery can save her rheumatic heart from its failing mitral valve. Bud passes through disgusting ceremonies and now bears his own spear and shield, so the tribe lets Hope go. When he and Gail fly home, he leaves his gold card with a travel agent to cover Hope's flight. Surprise, not only Hope but her medicine man, family, and many tribal members accompany her on the gold card to the doctor's home and set themselves up in his backyard, where they build mud huts in Gail's flower garden. The fun involves the tribal medicine man working in a modern hospital's emergency room and bringing his ancient medical wisdom to bear on the wounded. Also, Masai believe that they own all the cows on earth, and so begin herding local cows into Bud's backyard. The climax brings on Oprah Winfrey and Global News Network broadcasting from Hope's operating room and the Masai village in Africa both at once. Much funnier than it has any right to be, perhaps because Shulman somewhat restrains the ersatz uproar and totally stupid plot, much like those in Max Shulman's witless old squirrel-houses, Barefoot Boy with Cheek and Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Shulman, who helped found Heart-to-Heart, a surgery program for children in Third World countries, has written a novel based on the program. While doing volunteer work in a tribal village in Kenya, Dr. Bud Payne discovers a Masai girl suffering from rheumatic heart disease who could be treated successfully at his home hospital. Launching a campaign to bring the child to the United States for treatment, Bud is surprised when she arrives accompanied by her entire tribe. Setting up a temporary village in the Paynes' backyard, the Masai come face-to-face with cultural differences as warriors terrorize neighbors and slaughter local livestock for food, while the medicine man practices his own version of homegrown healing. Shulman has accomplished his purpose with a tale that could be adapted easily to the docudrama format currently popular on TV. Tribe is in fact being made into a film, ten percent of whose royalties will go to Heart-to-Heart.--Ed.
- Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib, Carbondale
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Shulman, author of Doc Hollywood, writes with familiarity about a doctor who visits an African village to provide health care, in a novel with striking similarities to his previous one. Once again, a medical man, a community in need, and a more than adequate dose of humorous situations carry the plot. Like the author, who cofounded a program assisting Third World children in need of heart surgery, Dr. Bud Payne visits Kenya and offers to sponsor the Masai princess Opana's trip to Alabama to correct a defective heart valve. When the girl's entire tribe of Masai relatives unexpectedly encamps in the Paynes' beautifully landscaped backyard, a once tranquil suburban scene is stirred up in ways that will have an enduring effect. It's a charming tale of cross-cultural misreadings, with all characters ultimately enriched by their shared experiences. Alice Joyce