There are scenes in this film that have really stayed with me. As has been noted elsewhere, the flying doctors are almost a sideshow, what Herzog is really interested in is the different ways of seeing and understanding the world which are revealed by the doctors' experiences.
The most vivid example is that of the eye. The doctors tried to use a poster campaign to educate their patients about a fly which carries a parasite that can cause blindness. The message was to keep the flies away from your eyes, however the posters were ineffective because they used a disembodied picture of an eye and the Masai did not understand what the picture was supposed to represent. Asked to point at a picture of an eye they ignore the huge eye on the poster and point at the eye on a picture of a whole person next to it. As Herzog points out, it is we who have lessons to learn from this - about our unthinking arrogance in assuming our own understanding of the world is the only possible one.
This focus ties the film in with much of Herzog's other work, for example "Land of Silence and Darkness" and "Kaspar Hauser". A minor work overall but as a precursor to his later films it's fascinating.
The most vivid example is that of the eye. The doctors tried to use a poster campaign to educate their patients about a fly which carries a parasite that can cause blindness. The message was to keep the flies away from your eyes, however the posters were ineffective because they used a disembodied picture of an eye and the Masai did not understand what the picture was supposed to represent. Asked to point at a picture of an eye they ignore the huge eye on the poster and point at the eye on a picture of a whole person next to it. As Herzog points out, it is we who have lessons to learn from this - about our unthinking arrogance in assuming our own understanding of the world is the only possible one.
This focus ties the film in with much of Herzog's other work, for example "Land of Silence and Darkness" and "Kaspar Hauser". A minor work overall but as a precursor to his later films it's fascinating.