Damien Brown - Band-Aid for a Broken Leg: Being a Doctor with No Borders

Damien Brown is an Australian doctor based in Melbourne. He began writing seriously after his last humanitarian posting, encouraged by readers of a blog he kept while working for Mdecins Sans Frontires in Africa. This is Damiens first book.

BAND-AID FOR A BROKEN LEG

BEING A DOCTOR WITH NO BORDERS

(AND OTHER WAYS TO STAY SINGLE)

DAMIEN BROWN

First published in Australia in 2012

Copyright Damien Brown 2012

Text design by Lisa White

All photographs by Damien Brown

Maps by Brittany Britten

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

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ISBN 978 1 74331 021 2

Typeset in 11.5/16.5pt Minion by Midland Typesetters, Australia Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper in this book is FSC certified. FSC promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the worlds forests.

Dedicated to all those whose stories fill these pages.

Here, it is like this...Dominga, our Angolan cook

All incidents described in this book are true. The names of patients have been changed to protect their confidentiality, but many of the names of staff have been left unaltered. Like Toyota, for example. I couldnt have come up with a name like thatnot for a person.

This book was written in the months after the events took place, and as such all dialogue has been recreated to the best of my memory. Any errors or misquotations that could be attributed to characters in this book are purely mine, and mine alone. I bear full responsibility for any and all inaccuracies. While editorial constraints have meant that some minor scenes have been compressed, or combined, this was never done to alter the integrity of the account as a whole.

At the time of writing, I had no association with Mdecins Sans Frontires, and it had no editorial input. My respect for the organisation remains high, but I hope this book will be seen neither as a specific endorsement of any one organisation, nor as a rebuke, but rather as what it was intended to bea story about people, and of the difficult conditions they happen to live in.

(SELECTED COUNTRIES SHOWN)

THIS MAP WAS CORRECT AT THE TIME THE AUTHOR WAS IN THE REGION. IN JULY 2011, FOLLOWING A REFERENDUM, SOUTH SUDAN WAS GRANTED INDEPENDENCE, DIVIDING SUDAN INTO TWO SEPARATE NATIONS.

I arrived yesterday, dropped off by a little plane that promptly turned and rattled down the dirt runway, taking with it any semblance of a link to the outside world as it left me in this town. If youd call this a town, that is. Seems more like a village to me. A dusty, isolated, mud-hut-filled outpost of a village, hidden in this far corner of Angolaa war-ravaged country in south-west Africa. Its like nothing Ive ever seen, and is my home for the next six months.

But right now Im trying not to think about it. Pretending there are no landmines. No crowded hospital. No ward with malnourished children; poster-kids from a Bob Geldof appeal who sit listlessly, wide-eyed, rubber feeding tubes taped to their cheeks, and for whose medical care Im about to be responsible. Or that Im to be the only doctor, for that matter, left working in the middle of a region once dubbed O Fim do MundoThe Edge of the Worldby the Portuguese colonists. And Im hoping desperately that the immediate task at handchoosing a gift for tonights local wedding, to which the six of us Mdecins Sans Frontires volunteers have been invitedwill provide at least some respite, some fleeting distraction, from the incomprehensible, pitiful, frightening universe that begins just beyond these walls.

Three of us stand in our storage tent. Tim, the Swiss-French coordinator of our MSF project; Toyota, the Angolan logistics operator who supervises this storage site; and mea junior Australian doctor on my first posting.

Well? asks Tim. Any ideas?

Toyota looks up from his stock list. Hes a tall African man with sharp eyes and a broad smile, and hes clearly untroubled by the afternoon heat. Thick blue overalls drape his solid frame and a pair of rubber gumboots is pulled near to his knees even though the dry, dusty savannah of the region suggests it hasnt rained for months.

Oh, yes, he grins. I found a very good gift. Just in here.

Great, says Tim. But in here?

Oh yes. And believe me, you two will love it!

Toyota drops his stock list and walks to the far corner of this space. Its a large enclosurefar larger than any room in the hospital, anyway. Yellowing canvas is hitched tightly over a high, arching metal frame beneath which our mine-proof vehicle is parked, yet theres still ample room for the rows of aid supplies along each wall. At one end, hundreds of plastic buckets form colourful columns that lean towards silver drums of cooking oil, the latter bearing the image of two hands shaking in a gesture of friendship, with the statement: Gift: Not to be sold or exchanged. Towards the other end, blankets, soap, high energy biscuits, and milk formula for the malnourished are piled in discrete mounds, while sacks of maize interlock neatly along both nearer walls. A family of cats, too; theyre squatting somewhere in hereyou can smell it, along with old cardboard, chlorine and diesel.

Tim shrugs. I know, he says. In here, huh? But Toyotas the person to see about such matters. He looks after all the non-medical stock and has contacts all over town, so he can usually find what youre after. If not, hell try to make it for youhes good in that little workshop behind us.

Tim would know. Hes a veteran of several MSF projects in Africa and hes been in this town, Mavinga, for almost two months. Six-foot two and in his early thirties, he appears remarkably unruffled by the context; a man who, in glaring contrast to my current mental state, projects an air of calm authority. So Im sticking closely to him these first days.

Toyota returns.