The Doctor is Out

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Yet nothing irritates MSFers more than being called heroes. This is no false modesty; their motivations for joining are often quite mundane--unemployment or underemployment at home, rebellion against boredom, a thirst for adventure and meaning. Few seem to miss their other lives, awash in the ennui of dispensing prescriptions, bedpans, and bandages for the largely self-inflicted wounds of an industrial nation's secure, overfed population. Yet there appears to be a private, rarely articulated, satisfaction that engages and sustains them. There must be, since in 1994 alone there were 2,950 MSFers working in 64 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. And they return to their posts again and again, sometimes for years.

'There aren't many naive idealists in MSF,' says Leslie, a 33-year-old Canadian M.D. working in Zaire. 'I can't imagine doing a run-of-the-mill family practice after this. At home, the shooting and shelling sounds horrible, but here you just deal with it. Look, there are a lot of people who do this because they can't get a job at home, or at least they can't get an interesting job at home. Over here, people in their 20s are handed huge responsibilities: a chance to manage huge budgets, big staffs. Nobody comes here to help 'the poor and the suffering' anymore, and I'm tired of people asking me, 'How can you do this?' We like this work. We like the lifestyle. It's a culture of its own.

'I find it difficult with my friends in Canada when I go back because they don't follow what goes on in these places. That's why a lot of people in this business sign on for mission after mission--because they find you just can't go home.'

Charles, an emergency team member, needs the adrenaline high: 'I tried hang gliding, then skydiving. I want to live on the edge! You're at the border with all those people running toward you; you don't stick to your 'job description.' '

British press officer Amanda thinks many join MSF to escape from boredom: 'It's more fun than sitting in an office. After running a hospital and doing surgery, you could never be a nurse in Europe and wear your funny little hat again.' Amanda's 'worst nightmare' is marriage, children, and a mortgage: 'I love Africa. Here, everything is real, not phony; it's life or death.'

Others' tales mix sentiment with a taste for the exotic. A shambling German giant, V?lker, toils as a logistician in bandit-ridden, snake- and scorpion-infested Sudan. Like most MSFers, he smokes constantly; occasionally he sets his mosquito net on fire, shouts his characteristic 'damn shit!' and stuffs a sock or two into the hole. He struggles to explain: 'When I first came, a boy and all his friends they walked by my side and held my hand everywhere--that's what kept me going.'

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