“…a distinctly human story, full of hope, richly detailed…” – Globe and Mail

From Saturday’s Books Section

Good medicine

A doctor’s richly detailed account of his time in Sudan gives voice to those trapped in disaster

Former Médecins sans frontières (MSF) doctor James Maskalyk’s memoir, Six Months in Sudan, follows on the heels of several bestselling self-discovery books set in foreign countries ( Eat, Pray, Love; Six Cups of Tea; A Year in Provence). In Maskalyk’s case, the country is Sudan, where, as a young and ambitious Toronto emergency-room physician, he spends six months working in an MSF hospital in the town of Abyei — “a torn, tiny place straddling a contested border.”

Maskalyk is offered, and accepts, this MSF posting in South Sudan — a region that, until 2005, had been at war for almost three decades — after having spent a modest amount of time on relief missions in Chile and Cambodia.

As he describes it, his decision to go to Sudan was as much about discovering how he would be changed by the experience as it was about those on the ground who might be affected by his efforts. But whatever his motive for going — whether introspection or altruism — his decision to chronicle the journey offers a rare insight into the psychology and experience of those who would risk everything to help strangers in a forgotten part of the world.

Maskalyk’s narrative ranges from heartwarming — his affection for an orphaned toddler, Aweil, rescued from the brink of malnutrition — to acerbic, and is interspersed with sections from his online blog (published while he was in the field) that offer readers added humour, reflection and perspective. Generally, books of this type read exactly as you might expect — stories of personal triumph over adversity, a retrospective on human nature and our innate capacity to ignore the suffering of those living with war and poverty — but Maskalyk avoids such clichés with impressive results.

Perhaps one of the greatest successes of Six Months in Sudan is that it does not try to be anything more than it is — a moment in time, a distinctly human story full of laughter and tears, hope and sadness, anger and resiliency. Maskalyk paints a richly detailed picture of what it is like actually to be there, with MSF, straddling two divides — the comfortable home he left behind and the one in Abyei, where temperatures soar to 50 degrees, locusts descend in swarms and babies die of preventable diseases.

Despite my own many field experiences (note: I read Maskalyk’s memoir for The Globe and Mail while in Sudan, which seemed to add to its resonance), I have never worked for MSF, though I have worked alongside many of its doctors in various war zones and count several MSF alumni among my friends. I have spoken to many of them about the impact MSF has had on their lives. Maskalyk captures the essence of the MSF experience perfectly: young (often under 35) international aid workers, sent to an isolated part of the world, armed only with good intentions and medical training that often leaves them ill-equipped to deal with situations where drugs, antibiotics and diagnostic equipment are in short supply. And yet so many of them, as with Maskalyk, defy the odds and persevere despite the tremendous toll these experiences can take on them both physically and emotionally.

What is perhaps most interesting about Six Months in Sudan is that it describes Maskalyk’s first field mission with MSF. There is a level of sincerity and honesty to his reflections — a rawness — that is generally lacking in memoirs written by seasoned aid workers or war correspondents. He never wades too deeply into the geopolitical history of the region and avoids being prescriptive, which gives his book the advantage of never feeling self-righteous or tedious. Six Months in Sudan can be read and enjoyed by those who are interested in the humanitarian movement and in global issues, as well as by those who glance at the headlines and want to know what it is like to be there, responding to world tragedies as they unfold.

Maskalyk makes a point of telling readers that MSF Switzerland — the branch office that sent him to Abyei — had concerns about his blog and (it can be inferred) was likely uncomfortable with the idea of him publishing a book in a similar vein. Maskalyk writes that “there are some that feel that [the blogs] … are akin to voyeurism, a commodification of the MSF experience.”

This is a shame, because it is by making stories like Maskalyk’s available and accessible to audiences that those living in far-flung corners of the world, in places like Abyei, have a better chance of being heard.

Or, as Maskalyk himself explains, “That which separates action from inaction is the same thing that separates my friends from Sudan. It is not indifference. It is distance. May it fall away.”

REVIEWED BY SAMANTHA NUTT

Samantha Nutt is a medical doctor and the founder and executive director of War Child Canada.

May 1, 2009 at 5:31 PM EDT

Six Months in Sudan: A Young Doctor in a War-torn Village, by James Maskalyk, Doubleday Canada, 339 pages, $29.95