This book describes the function of a Doctors Without Borders program at the ground level, at the TB mission they established in eastern Ethiopia during 2001. The culture of the Afar people is part of the story as well as the physical surroundings...

This book describes the function of a Doctors Without Borders program at the ground level, at the TB mission they established in eastern Ethiopia during 2001. The culture of the Afar people is part of the story as well as the physical surroundings of the mission including the birds and animals of the desert setting. It is also a story about relationships and how like a family a vastly different group of people from all over the world can become when they all share a life of physical hardship but enormous reward.Setting up a hospital and lab in the desert, and battling daily on behalf of people ill with TB, malaria and other tropical diseases, the invaluable organization of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) succeeds against enormous odds. Their success proves what a collection of individuals can do with the skills at hand to make the world a better place - and enjoy the process. The team concept, so vital to the mission concept, comes alive in the author's depiction of the scene at Gahla. The culture of the migratory Afar people, with their fierce reputation and teeth filed to points, and the city lifestyle in Ethiopia's capital Addis are explored. As an avid birder, the author also includes descriptions of the exotic birds, animals and insects of this part of the Rift Valley with its searing heat and volcanic vents. Geologists suggest that one day the entire Afar Triangle may give way in a tectonic shift to become the new Afar Sea. Until then, it is home to a wide range of wonderfully resourceful people and colorful fauna that enliven this 'impossibly'� hot, dry land. The World Trade Center disaster took place one week after the author's return from a Muslim part of the world and the outpouring of compassionate correspondence she received from the people whom she had just left tells volumes about why we must not tar all Muslims with the brush of terrorism.

Preface: Signing Up for a Life Without Borders Chapter 1. Ethiopia and Doctors Without Borders  Getting into Africa  Nutrition  A Gahla Welcome  

Preface: Signing Up for a Life Without Borders

Chapter 1. Ethiopia and Doctors Without Borders

 Getting into Africa

 Nutrition

 A Gahla Welcome

 Your Mission Should you Choose to Accept It

 Lab Report

Chapter 2. Laying Foundations for a Functioning Laboratory

 No Free Lunch

 Sign Language and Key Words

 Beasts of Burden

 Goats

 Luxury Items

 Children with TB

 Funding Better Solutions

 Improving the Lab

Chapter 3. Team Life: Flies, Heat, and Bacteria without Borders

 Aides, AIDS and Aid

 Night Life

 What the Locals Do

 Expanding Our Scope

 Life in Mission

Chapter 4. It's the Simple Tools that Work

 Let There be Light

 Only the Interest Payments Are Ongoing

 Laboratory Experiments in the Kitchen

 Alas for Ali

Chapter 5. Birds and Beasts

Chapter 6. Addis; Getting the Big Picture

 Cash Only and the Price is Always Questioned

 Aid for Whom?

Chapter 7. The Lab Burgeons

 Friends, With and Without Feathers

 The Afar had Their Own Heroes

 Weapons Sales ' A Far Cry from Aid

 Parasites and Playacting

Chapter 8. Further Into the Inferno: A Geological Laboratory

 Blissfully Ignorant

Chapter 9. The Afar

 Afar Origin and Practice

 A Tribe Still in Battle

Chapter 10. A Question of Food

 How to Feed the Multitudes

Chapter 11. Christmas

 Broadening Our Scope

 Small Victories

 Moments to Remember

Chapter 12. Home, to a Changing World

 Debriefing

 Oblivious No More ?