I am sitting in Khartoum’s airport. For the moment, everything is life size. The crying kid next to me, the men walking to the airport mosque with prayer mats, the man smoking under the no smoking sign. Soon, the hatch on the KLM flight will close, the announcements will begin overhead, and the telescope will start to swivel. By the time I arrive to Europe, it will have turned completely and everything in Sudan will seem miniature, far away.
I tried to have a simple conversation with the driver on the ride here, but I couldn’t manage. Every thought was short circuited before it verbalized, my neurons a crossed jumble of sparking wires. It was then I realized that my brain had already left, maybe even the day before. Right now it is floating in an ice cream pail on some customs officer’s desk in Amsterdam. Every now and again he adds another warm mugful of vegetable stock and St. John’s Wort, and keeps an eye out for the zombified expat walking around the terminal bumping into pillars while looking at all of the lights.
I will catch up with it. For the time being… bzzzz… bzzzz… crossed, sparking wires.
It took me 48 hours to leave the field. It was a rush to the finish as I received my travel permit just as the plane was arriving, then flew off to the southern town of Rumbek to wait for a connection the next day. Rumbek is Abyei in twenty years. Wide streets with mature trees, green, calm, a large colorful market. I was enamored. This is the Africa I remembered, or at least imagined. People waving hello, children walking to schools in uniformed rows, smiling. This was life as I knew it.
I went for a run in the morning, and waved hello to chidren, even raced one on his bike. It was idyllic. I was about half way through, running on a beaten trail that flanked the side of a road. I made room for a bicycle to pass me from behind, and for a man approaching from the opposite direction. The bicycle wobbled past. As the man passed opposite, he drew his hand back, as if to strike me. In it he held a sapling, as thick as my finger and three feet long. We stood there, him poised, me nervous, waiting. A full moment passed. He laughed, and kept walking.
The spell was broken. I did not fit in. It was an illusion. No matter how well integrated I thought myself, this was not my place either.
I am wondering where that place is now. Yesterday I received an email from a friend who did his first mission last year, and he said that sine his return, he feels uneasy. He is waiting to go away again.
So much left unwritten. There are a million things. I wanted to write about the Casio F91-W, how it is the watch for all developing world traveling needs, reliable and unglamorous. I wanted to tell you about my grandfather, how he used to skate on the thin fall ice, often breaking through, and track diving muskrats to stun them with a quick blow of an ax handle on the frozen surface of the lake, then sell their fur for pocket change. I wanted to tell you about the food in our mission, how we would not call it by its name but by it’s color:
“What’s for dinner?”
“Guess.”
“Umm….yellow.”
“Nope.”
“Ummm…red and brown?”
“Nope…black and brown.”
“Shit. I hate black and brown.”
“Yup.”
I wanted to tell you how some of the women in the hospital, the mothers of the children in the TFC, wrote and sang us a song one day, wishing us strength. I wanted to describe better the team, Franck the logistician who I would trust with my life, Maurizio and his calm, wise ways. All these things, untold. And many more. Alas.
I am leaving with some misgivings. Most importantly, the visa has been slow in coming for my replacement, so she is delayed for a couple of weeks. I am to start work in August and cannot stay. I would have liked it so much more if I could walk through the Abyei hospital with the cavalry, and leave the keys to it in her capable hands.
Second, in some cruel, twist of fate, I already miss Abyei. How can that be? There were weeks that I longed for a reality that was anything but the one that hit me when I opened my eyes. Now it is strange to feel so untethered, to not have the responsibility and privilege to constantly improve something so worthwhile.
I will write some more posts, perhaps with a different frequency, as I see how well the next places fit.
I suspect more thank you’s will follow as this winds down, but my gratitude for those of you who have been there throughout this blog, to encourage, to learn, to bear witness, is so profound that even the best words cannot capture them. There were days where I bent down to enter the logistic tukul and sat at the communications computer still bent from all the weight of the world outside of it, and I would receive an email that contained comments from so many of you. When I left the tukul, it was on a thousand tiny clouds. A source of strength and inspiration when it was wanting the most. Thank you.
Oh, the flight boards. I just looked back over the post, and I capitalized everything for the first time. Huh. Imagine that. Will send word once I meet my brain again.
Soon, suddenly, not Sudan.
thank you,
whow, six months come and gone. Much has happened for you, and for me through your words. I thank you for that.
I lookforward to seeing your warm smile, and hearing about your journey. I relize how much about life there is to learn. Really at the end of the day it is all about learning “what is normal for me might not be for the next.”
However I stll maintain ….. “Nature rules, and we are but a guest in this Kingdom” Ahmen…. brother
Good night, see you soon
Mary P
Who’s blog am I going to read if you go away? I don’t want to read any other blog. Who else writes so thoughtfully, seriously, eloquently, movingly (Is that a word?), humorously?
Thank you for your amazing posts… I just discovered your blog a few weeks ago, and have since read through nearly all of your entries… your writing is refreshingly real, and inspiring. I’m a 4th year (senior) medical student in NYC, currently taking a year off to work abroad in India and South Africa; after residency in emergency medicine, I also plan on volunteering with MSF. To tell you the truth, it was reading about MSF, years ago, that inspired me to become a physician… reading about your experiences now strenghtens that, and, in so many ways, brings peace. Good luck with settling back in… or perhaps with always being a little unsettled. Zina, NYC
Hello
Welcome back! I just came back from liberia and it was also an excredible experience. Your blog is very moving. Hope we’ll meet on the field some day.
Clio, MSF-Belgium
Dr. James,
When I was teaching English in Peru, I had a great desire to help my students, but I felt like what I was doing wasn’t enough. I was miserable a lot because I was frequently sick. The idea of home was one I clung to. I thought returning to the English-speaking world would immediately feel right, that I’d fit back into my country like a missing puzzle piece. But it felt foreign. I had changed, and so had home. I missed Peru–not the sickness or lack of integration, but being comfortable with it. I missed the people and the culture and the language. I have an idea of where you’re coming from. It gets easier. You find ways to truly make the experience a part of who you’ve become, to reconcile it with your present. Having this blog to look back on will help.
Thank you for sharing this part of your journey. I’ll certainly be looking out for any further writing endeavours.
You are indeed a wealth of knowledge Dr J!! I have been looking for the ideal dressed down field watch to replace my Suunto Vector, with its inbuilt compass and “Mug Me” stylings. It seems that this is indeed a versatile watch…Wikipedia has this to say: “This model of watch is notable because United States intelligence officials have identified it as the watch that terrorists use when constructing time bombs”. Hmm…Any suggestions on sun glasses yet?
I think that this kind of blogging is so incredibly good for returning aidworkers as well as their readers. I recently read “Hope in Hell – Inside the world of Doctors Without Borders” by Dan Bortolotti which talks about the New Fridge Syndrome, where people ask about your trip, then glaze over at being told about horrible things outside their world, and change the subject to the new fridge they just bought. As a budding MSF Loggie I would love to hear all about Franck and how that shipping container got there, let alone where he got all those bricks from. Remember that you have a whole host of people right here who would love to hear more.
P.S. Nice touch with the minimalist Techno in the video.
Dear Jim, I am looking forward to hearing that you have arrived home safely, but I will so dearly miss reading your blog!! Your personality and heart are so present in your writing, I will miss my weekly Jim fix!! Hopefully we can get together in Toronto in September, Jeff will be challenging the EM exam…. Safe travels!!
Thank you for sharing your experience, thoughts, and photos. You are an inspiration. I’ve just finished my first 2 days as a family doctor…suddenly my burden doesn’t seem so great…tiny town Ontario is a little easier to deal with than Sudan! One day maybe I’ll be ready for an international challenge…
Hi, Dr. Maskalyk.
I want to thank you for writing in this blog, and sharing your story with me and the rest of your readers. I’m a freshman in college–I’m planning on majoring in bioengineering, going to med school, working in the Peace Corps (since MSF apparently requires previous experience) and then at MSF afterwards. It has always been my favorite NGO.
I’ve had your blog as my homepage for quite a while now, and I appreciate your raw accounts of life in abyei. They’re quite different from the romanticized stories that one reads about the trials that “heroic” relief workers face abroad; your blog was honest, and I also found your style of writing very artistic.
If you have any suggestions on how I can contribute to Doctors without Borders as a college student, or classes that would be useful to take before going into relief work I would be very grateful. I suppose the way I can contribute before going to medical school is through research in bioengineering, and using technology to improve access to globla healthcare.
Nevertheless, until I do my MPH/MD (which I hope to do at the University of Washington as well; not only is it an incredible program, but they have a track in which you can join the Peace Corps while studying!) I will continue reading these blogs on MSF, and waiting for my own journey to begin.
Thanks again,
Revathi Murthy