The Doctor is Out

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Still others express political motivation. Cathy, a Canadian press officer, joined MSF after one stint with an Antarctic ecotourism company and another on a collective farm in then-Soviet Armenia. When I asked why she cared so much, she shouted, 'Don't! You'll make me cry,' then bolted to another room to sob. 'That was a good question,' she said when she returned.

'That was a good answer,' replied a colleague nearby.

Georg, a Scandinavian physician, talks about the unanticipated consequences of aid agencies' efforts in the Third World. 'In fact, our work here has less practical effect than in Norway,' he says. 'I don't see this work as being more useful, or productive--it's not that.' What matters most to him flows from his profound, contagious spirituality. 'I can take part in a transcultural reaching out of a hand--putting yourself at their disposal as a sign of respect. We don't really know what our impact is, but it's an attitude we want to propagate. We want to break barriers across borders. We are very good at what we're doing, and we are motivated in a way that government agencies will never be because they're paid for it--it's not a commitment to them. That's our real strength.'

'I wanted to come,' says Nancy, a French nurse, sheltered from the heavy rain by a windswept tent in north Rwanda, rivulets of soupy mud swirling at her feet. At first she had mixed feelings about joining MSF: 'I wanted to help, but I didn't know what could be done. I'm a nurse. I can have a job in France, not like the logisticians.' She talks to us as she works, feeling foreheads and bandaging wounds. 'Your energy has more results here than in France--it's multiplied many times. I like my job in France, but it is difficult to top this.

Elliott Leyton is a professor of anthropology at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada. Adapted from Touched by Fire: Doctors Without Borders in a Third World Crisis by Elliott Leyton with photographs by Greg Locke. Published by McClelland

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