Michael was one of those rare men who lived the dreams of his
youth. His mother had a great ideal of service to the community
and this was transferred to all her children.
After his marriage to Susan, who already had strong connections
with Africa, the direction of Michael’s life also took
the direction of Africa. And the dreams of his early years were
amply fulfi lled in the twenty-nine years during which he was
Director General of AMREF.
He continued his surgical air safaris well into his sixties, and
when he was sixty-seven, at the end of 1985, he retired from
AMREF. He did not retire from active life altogether, for he was
determined to do the same thing for agriculture that he had done
for medicine. He stated that during the next twenty years, food
would be more important in Africa than medicine, and this statement
was founded on his belief that African peasants could feed
Africa if helped into the modern world.
To this end Michael began to set up an organisation which
became FARM Africa. He began collecting money for it in
Canada and the United States and registered it in England where
he also appealed for funds.
It was typical that the fi rst project to be launched by FARM
was a mobile workshop following the nomadic tribes in the
northern desert of Kenya. This mobile workshop, led by
Dr Chris Field, taught camel management. It brought a new
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NO TURNING BACK
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liveliness into those communities who for the fi rst time felt that
they were part of modern Kenya that had threatened to pass them
by. For thirteen years it has been a most successful project which
is now being carried on by a local NGO. Although Michael
died long before FARM Africa could realise its potential, it has
continued to expand and now has projects in Ethiopia, Kenya,
Tanzania, South Africa and has plans for many more.
Michael was awarded the CBE by the Queen and later again
he was created Knight Batcheleor—a knighthood that gave him
the title Sir Michael Wood. He was also awarded the Bronze
Medal for Africa by the Royal Africa Society, but the honour
he valued most was the Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award.
This had been given previously to Mother Teresa, and to him it
was the most valued award, recognising, as it did, the service to
humanity on which he had based his life.
Michael is remembered to this day for his human touch. In
these stories it can be noted that he always studied the patient’s
face for signs of pain or distress, before making that fi nal decision
from which he neither could nor would turn back.
In 1986, as he worked to establish FARM, he began to sicken,
but making light of it, he carried on. The last fl ight he made was
to Lokichoggio where he deposited a refrigerator for AMREF
and visited his old friends who worked in that far-off place on
hydatid disease. He was too ill to fl y directly back to Nairobi and
stopped off for a cup of tea at Baringo. When he reached home
he went to bed and did not get up again. He died of cancer in
May 1987, aged sixty-eight.