Nyla Jo Jones Hubbard, MT, ASCP, joined Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) in Ethiopia in 2001 as a volunteer hospital lab tech. Her challenge: to set up a new TB and malaria testing facility, developing procedures that would work under grueling conditions with limited resources, and to train brand new techs -- sometimes using nothing more than drawings, sign language, and force of personality.

She has traveled widely and her travelogue of the Peruvian Amazon, “Where the Mighty Amazon Rules Life and Land,” was published by the St. Petersburg Times in 1999.

Ms. Hubbard works in the specialties of Hematology, Chemistry and Microbiology at three hospitals and spent eight years as a laboratory supervisor. She has also been involved with various environmental and outdoor organizations and is a past-chair of Hernando Audubon Chapter and a past-chair of Florida Trails, Cracker Chapter. She also has undergone training in sociological subjects and volunteers with groups dealing with women's issues and the homeless.

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     Your Mission

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