Captains Without Borders
Page 2
Al Hickey (left) and the MSF team enjoy Christmas dinner 2007, Nigeria.
We had three VSV (Victims of Sexual Violence) cases today. Girls aged 4-11 or so. Not good. MSF is expanding their Outreach to spread the word that we will be offering medical services for these victims. 23 December 2007 – Alan Hickey from Nigeria
Al Hickey first applied to SEA in 1978 as an assistant scientist. Over the next 17 years he served in many roles ending with his appointment to the position of Director of Marine Operations which he held from 2002-2007.
Al reports that he asked his Nigerian administrators what makes Nigerians different from other Africans. They pointed out that one difference is that Nigerians are multilingual due to so many languages among their people. (There are 250 ethnic groups in the country, although most belong to three.) Further, Nigerians are creative, do everything that they do fast, and love people. Al observes that they are also direct, well poised, proud and very much want to learn. “The names of locals cannot be beat. The guard is named Genius and the cleaning woman goes by Thankgod (all one word). Several others have names borrowed from days of the week, like Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, depending on the day of their birth.”
Frequently I see a notice spray-painted on the side of a building or on an outside wall that says, “Buyer Beware, This Property is NOT For Sale.” The reason the owners do this is that sometimes when they are away, some unscrupulous third party comes along and sells the property to somebody else. The owner then returns to find somebody who thinks they now own the property and the thief has disappeared with the dough. And this from the land of credit card schemes, fraudulent online dating and emails asking for lots of money to be deposited in a foreign bank account. Many folks are obviously enterprising.
30 December 2007 – Alan Hickey from Nigeria
The prerequisites for fieldwork with MSF include at least two years of professional experience, and availability for a minimum of 6-12 months for all, except for physicians who may be accepted for shorter assignments. Flexibility and language skills are considered an asset, as is travel or work outside of the United States. Along with a wide range of medical personnel, MSF recruits logisticians, water and sanitation logisticians, and administrators/financial controllers.
Why are SEA captains such a good fit to serve as logisticians for MSF? Steve Tarrant suggests that the skills are transferable, “In addition to having good organizational skills and the ability to communicate, the job requires adaptability. You need to be able to solve problems and be resourceful, like we do solving problems with whatever we have on the boats.”
My first week back at work after my vacation was incredibly busy, solving disputes, deciding how many blankets, pots, pieces of plastic the budget would allow us to purchase this month, ordering rice, Chile, soybeans and dried fish by the ton, counting latrine numbers, helping to improve a drainage ditch running underneath a TB patient’s house (she built the house over the drainage ditch so we had to re-route the drainage), etc., etc. It is still such a challenge to work in so many different languages. One never really knows what understanding is taken away from a conversation or meeting by each of the parties involved. One becomes aware of and learns to accept this. Now, I don’t know what it will be like, when I return home, to be with a group of people who all speak English.
19 November 2006 – Phil Sacks from Thailand
Phil knew that he wanted to return to work in the field on another mission and that he would have a break from teaching at SEA again early in 2008. He admits that he had been lucky, living in comfortable accommodations and enjoying an easy ability to travel throughout Thailand during the first mission. He didn’t know what was ahead.
This time he was assigned to a brand new mission, that of setting up an obstetric ward in an existing hospital near the southern border of the Darfur Provinces in the Sudan. Phil left for a briefing in Paris en route to the Sudan, on January 27, 2008 and will return to the United States in July. Perhaps it is this excerpt (below) from his journal, written near the end of the mission in Thailand, that may give insight into his desire to return.
Ok, time to enjoy the day. Walk up into the hills. I close today with thoughts in my mind of politics and the balance of power, of resources and distribution, and of the people in the camp, the hardships they have faced. Perhaps next time I will write about individuals, like the man we interviewed recently who is in the camp with one of his two wives (the Hmong are sometimes polygamous) and only two of his 17 children. The rest are either dead, in jail, or lost in the jungles of Laos.
But behind it all, to keep me going, I keep the vision of children playing in the camp.
18 November 2006 – Phil Sacks from Thailand