Off the beaten path… PNG

I’ll be an expat soon. Expat is MSF lingo for all “foreigners” that work for the organization in the mission country. An expat can be a nurse or doctor, a log (logistitian), a medco (medical coordinator), a PC (project coordinator), a finco (financial coordinator). The lingo has only started making sense to me, after this past week of 12-14 hour training days.

12 hour days. Here are some seconds from it…

We are filled with silence. No one fidgets. I stare at the ground. Andreas turns off the projector, glances at the room, and then leaves. I am relieved that he does not break the moment. But then someone next to me moves, and it sends ripples across the room. And the moment is gone. 30 seconds. 30 seconds of contemplation after watching a short docu-movie on the sexual violence in the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) against women. Horrendous. Too horrendous to tell you what it revealed.

I walk out of the midst of one of our training sessions to go to the washroom. I walk past one of the MSF expats. My pace slows to a halt. He is standing outside, inhaling a cigarette, pacing back and forth in staccato movements. His forehead muscles are scrunched up, betraying internal dialogue. Is his preoccupation transitory? Or is he dancing to the drumbeat of his internal turmoil? 30 seconds.

I realize, the last day of the training, that Marion speaks Spanish. Ordinarily that would not mean much, however since her English is unintelligible to me because of her thick French accent, the fact that she speaks Spanish makes her accessible to me. We talk. Music is blaring in the background. She opens up to me about being attacked in Darfur while on a humanitarian mission. I give her a hug. 30 seconds.

These were some snippets that stick out in my head. Not quite sure how some images stick and others don’t. But these have. I could also tell you about how each night I’d climb into my bunk-bed serenaded by the snores of one of my roommates. Or about hearing footsteps that never existed while hiding with my team members from “rebels” in the bushes. I could also tell you about buying beer at the gas station while our taxi driver calls our hostel to ask for directions because none of us remembered the name or location of our hostel. Or the green-table parties. Most importantly the laughter.

These seconds over the last week have been amazing. I have crossed paths with like-minded people from all over the world. They have been surprising and inspiring. Some are taking off, as I am, at the end of this week of training. Sri Lanka. Ivory Coast. Chad. Somalia. Ethiopia. Others don’t know where they will be posted. Some have given up their careers and jobs, together with the security that it provides, to ensue a career in humanitarianism. That takes balls.

Prost.

I am taking a detour to Berlin tomorrow before I end up in Amsterdam for my pre-departure briefing.

“My dad died on Sunday”…

…a friend’s cyber message to me from Toronto. Simple. Painful. Abrupt, as abrupt as it must have felt to her. Surreal, until the reality of the situation seeps into our daily routine.

I was taken over by two urges. One, to call her. The other to go to my parent’s bedroom, wake them up and hug my dad.

I called her.

I have seen many mothers and fathers die in the emergency department. It comes in different forms, suddenly, inevitably. I bear witness to those last minutes that children spend with their parents. It is usually, despite the grieving, calm. The handholding, the gentle caress, the kiss on the cheek are all homage to a parent whose mistakes and accomplishments shape us.

Sometimes we don’t get to say goodbye.

The funeral is today. I can’t be there. I am on the train, glancing at the foggy scenery on my way to Bonn. I wish I could be there for a friend whom I value dearly. I’d go for a walk with her. We’d find a crimson autumnal tree and sit under it in silence. No sense in talking. I’d know what’s on her mind.

Sometimes we should say what’s on our mind.

Dad…
…thank you for the serenity of your soul, for the kindness in your touch, for your dedication to all of us, for your unwavering love, for the inspiration to be a good human being. Merci babi.

I am sitting in Zurich’s airport. It’s a typical airport, with bright-lit passages lined by TV screens that blast news in a foreign language. Men, mostly men, dot the seats; laptops sprout from their thighs as modern extensions of our human form. Behind me is the ubiquitous coffee franchise. The plane to Madrid is delayed. Again.

Sara accompanied me to the airport. She stands with me in the check-in line. We are silent. It’s a comfortable silence. Our eyes drift around the room and, independently, land on a threesome with eighties outfits: the punk, fake blond hair, the fash-illegal multi-colored leather jacket, the tapered pants, the enormous chain and studded belt. We giggle. “When will the eighties die?”

Really, when will it die?

Is temporal-cross-dressing a new phenomenon? Did women in the 70’s dress in the flapper style of the 20’s? Did the men from the 30’s dress in the quixotic attire of the late 1800’s? Do you know? (These important fashion questions only apply to the trends in the Western world; I have no clue what the trends were in India, Iran or China. No clue. I suffer from Western hemisphere bias). If they did not, if they strictly adhered to the attire of their time, what does that say about our times? That we are tolerant…that anything goes? Or that we lack a true identity so we borrow from previous generations?

Boarding pass in hand, we walk away from the check-in counter. “Bueno Sara.” I turn to look at her, my eyes glistening, to meet her teary eyes. We laugh. “Me paso la vida diciendo adios”…I spend most of my life saying goodbye.

But that’s not fully true. In a few hours I’ll be hugging my mom and dad. I’ll get reacquainted with Matin and Elika…it’ll take a few tickles, a few swings in the air, a few “run, run, I am coming to get you” before I stop being a stranger to them, and I’ll be Nana again. My sister will be relieved that I am playing with them; she’ll sink into a chair grateful for a few seconds of peace. My parents will be happy that we are all under the same roof.

I woke up today thinking about what’s to come in PNG. I do that often these days. I have no idea. So I drift back to sleep. What I do know, is this mission with MSF has set off a chain reaction amongst my family and circle of friends. Afrothite’s dad looked up PNG on the Internet. My parent’s friends in Madrid ask about its whereabouts. Lauren circled it on a Bon Voyage card, and I’d show it to anyone at the bar who’d ask me…“Where is that?”

That’s partly what we do. MSF, you and I. We set off chain reactions by our actions that increase our awareness of the world. With awareness comes change. It makes goodbyes tolerable.

During all these years I have thought of my inclination to do humanitarian work. Am I looking for an adrenaline rush? Travel or adventure? New experiences? Is it so I can test my inner strength? Or is it a quest for social justice that compels me? Do I want to be a witness? Do I want to make a sand-grain contribution towards collective wellbeing? Do I want to rattle my complacency by knowing what it is like to live in a place where your morning doesn’t start with a latte and end with a martini?

It was during my interview with MSF, back in April, when the answer to my self-interrogation crystallized. I had recently finished reading Bury the Chains where Adam Hoschild recollects the half a century struggle by British abolitionists to ban slavery. I was astonished by the revelation that human rights, as we know it today, was born in the eighteenth century. A mere two hundred years ago, not even a blip when we consider our evolutionary journey. Too often, bombarded by news of senseless violence and poverty fuelled by corruption, greed, and ignorance, one hears the tired axiom “Nothing you can do about it, that’s the way it is”. But we have done something about it. We abolished slavery in its most brutal form. We have created welfare. We have given women the right to choose. We have increased our tolerance to our differences. Now I know what you are thinking…slavery still exists in covert ways; not all women can choose; not all differences are tolerated; and welfare is a luxury that exists in only a few parts of our world. But when one considers that “human rights” isn’t even potty-trained, what we have accomplished is not so dismal.

We are psychologically evolving, or at least making choices about our future. Slavery was engrained in the economic and social psyche of our ancestors; today’s readers cannot read about it without being astonished at its brutality and senselessness. Today, the “inevitability” of violence and poverty are engrained is us. Tomorrow’s readers will be aghast at its brutality and senselessness.

Apart from being shamelessly hopeful, but not naïve about the centuries of work that lie ahead, I have also made a choice. Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist, descendant of a Yugoslav couple that suffered the Jewish Holocaust, recounts her mother’s journey on the Nazi train to a concentration camp; her mother, witnessing those around her succumb to sickness and fatigue, saw German women just looking on at the prisoners. Her mother’s observation of the inaction of German women changed Amira. She, a Jew from Israel, has chosen to report the suffering and destitution of the Palestinian people to a world that has done much to ignore it.

Knowing what I know about our world, I do not want to find myself “looking from the side”. That’s my choice, even if it only pans out for the next six months.

I leave Toronto tomorrow. The first stop is Zurich to see Sara. The second is Madrid to visit my family. Then Bonn, where I will be “trained” by MSF, followed by Amsterdam for a briefing. In a couple of weeks…PNG.

I’m off to have a latte. Later, a martini with some of my closest friends that I will miss, miss, miss, miss so much.

“Where is that?” is invariably the reaction I get when I mention my destination. Bono hasn’t made it his wish to eradicate its poverty. Matt Damon hasn’t run its sahara. Clinton has not embarked on building it’s healthcare system after finishing a presidency term that failed to save its people from genocide. I have not once heard it mentioned on CBC, CNN, or BBC. No surprise about CNN.

I went to Papua New Guinea (PNG) about ten years ago, as a medical student, on a whim almost. I never thought I would end up there again. My memories, oneiric by now…the wild orchids; the boy chained into a ball by his burn scars; the threat of violence; the morning veil of fog; the children battling mumps, TB and meningitis; the hike from Mount Wilhelm to Madang cut short by rhabdomyolysis; the paucity of old men and women; the jagged rocks on the road ready to catapult you, together with twenty men sitting in the back of a pick-up truck, over the cliffs of PNG mountains.

It is an intriguing place…an island north of Australia, sharing a border with Indonesia. A border that is a straight line, whimsical like many other borders are. It houses 860 tribes and their corresponding languages, an incredible occurrence considering it is such a small island. The culprit is the terrain, mountainous and harsh, isolating the tribes from each other and the outside world until very recently.

With all its raw beauty, it is a place where poverty, poor healthcare, and violence victimize children and women. Sadly it’s a recurring theme. MSF has carried out a situation analysis in PNG, and considers the violence pandemic. A team, my team, a team I have not met yet, will be heading there to start a program to rein in the situation. I am not sure how we will go about that; I’ll let you know as we figure it out.

I decided early on that I would keep a blog. Every couple of years I find myself face to face with a palm reader or a psychic. I am not sure if I am a believer. I find it a source of entertainment…like going to the cinema and watching a preview movie of your life. On one occasion, I find myself sitting opposite a palm reader, the smoke of her cigarette creating a silver screen that quickly fades with her hacking cough. She grabs my hands, “I see a writer’s fork. One day you will just start writing. No matter what you do.” Power of suggestion or not, I am inflicted by a desire to write. Now you might think, that armed with a “writer’s fork”, you are in for a treat. But she never did say I would write well. She just said I would write. Maybe I would have been better off with a writer’s spoon.

I write this blog to force myself to contemplate what I am about to experience. Most importantly I want to create a venue where my family and friends can stay close to me. Too often personal experiences get lost in translation, distorted into a nondescript haze by time and space. I am told that this experience will change me. If I am to change, I want my “confederate” to experience the metamorphosis with me. If along the way I create awareness about the issues that inflict our world, if I propagate what MSF stands for, and if you log on back to this blog, I will be grateful.

Dr. Nazanin Meshkat is an emergency doctor based in Toronto. Her field placement in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is her first field assignment with Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders.