Intervening Years

By 1989, the Soviets had left Afghanistan. The nation spiraled into further chaos, the freedom fighters trying to wrestle control from the Communist government and each other. The United States pulled out all aid in 1991, but it was in late 1990 when Freedom Medicine closed. They’d been a small organization focused only on Afghanistan, and without that focus, they simply closed their doors and went home.

Pakistan was still trying to send refugees home, but with civil war raging in Afghanistan, they refused to go. In 1992, the freedom fighters ousted the Soviet-backed government and took control, but the country was in dismal shape and ripe for exploitation by men who made promises they’d never keep. The Taliban emerged in 1994 and fought viciously to wrest control of the nation. In 1996, they took Kabul, and the rest of the nation soon fell. The Taliban ruled with an iron fist. There was scant information coming from that besieged nation, and though I scoured the news, there was little to learn. Few aid groups remained, though one or two had managed to stay. Though the Taliban tolerated some aid groups, Americans were not welcome. It seemed that my dream of returning there was all but lost.

I was still determined to volunteer again, if not in Afghanistan, then somewhere that needed me. In 1993, I called Americares, an aid group based in Connecticut that I’d seen on the news. After an interview, they offered me a position in Kenya in a new refugee camp built to accommodate the thousands fleeing the civil war in South Sudan. I would help get their medical clinic up and running as long as I could get the time off from work.

I was back in the ER full time by then, but my generous manager agreed to a one-month leave so that I could go. I checked my vaccines, made a list of things I’d need, and began to pack. Days before my expected departure, Americares called me to say there was a problem in the camp and aid workers had been evacuated. “You’ll still be going,” the caller reassured me, “but you’ll have to stay in Nairobi until we’re sure it’s safe.”

“For how long?” I asked.

“Not more than three weeks, probably less.”

Damn it. I didn’t have enough time off to sit in Nairobi and wait. “I won’t be able to go,” I said, my voice cracking. “I only have a month of leave.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding as disappointed as I felt. “You’ll give us a call if that changes, won’t you?”

I nodded and quietly hung up, afraid that aid work was somehow out of my reach. But cable news, just as their commercials promised, had ushered in a whole new way for news junkies to see what was happening around the world. The internet added yet another outlet for my curiosity. I followed the news of Afghanistan online and scoured the internet for available aid assignments. Every time I saw a humanitarian crisis reported on CNN, I was desperate to go, but I’d just bought a house and rented out my condo, which brought a whole new level of financial responsibility into my life. Aid work was still my goal, but it wasn’t in my immediate future. I spent my time falling in and out of love and trying to coax grass seed to sprout in my yard. I had better luck with the grass than with my choice of men, but I still had a dream—that I’d return to Afghanistan and aid work once again.

In the meantime, I left the ER that year and took a position in a fancy uptown law firm working on medical malpractice cases—no weekends, no night shifts, and better pay. And by 2000, I’d saved enough money and was finally able to make those plans to return to aid work. By then, aid work had become increasingly businesslike—far more technical and targeted, and driven by sophisticated grants overseen by government agencies and private donors who doled out money based on fact-based research, and stringent goals and objectives. Gone were the days of throwing money at problems and hoping for the best. I wasn’t sure I’d be considered experienced enough, but I threw caution to the wind and applied anyway.

MSF (also known as Doctors Without Borders) was an NGO that had always interested me. I had never forgotten that harried French nurse who had brought Noor, the tiny, badly burned boy, to me in Chitral. IRC, the International Rescue Committee, was another NGO that I had seen in Pakistan and had admired. IRC is recognized for its planned and thoughtful interventions in the bleakest corners of the world, where they strive quietly and diligently to deliver aid to the world’s forgotten and dispossessed. Both are very impressive groups and I was excited when they each responded quickly to my applications.

I flew to New York City for interviews—the first with MSF. Once it was clear that I met their requirements, they began to ask where I would be willing to go. “What about Afghanistan?” I asked. I’d learned that life there under the despised Taliban had gone from bad to worse.

Bendu, the Liberian woman who interviewed me, looked at me sternly and shook her head. “No way, no Americans. Too dangerous.” My face fell. She leaned back in her chair, nervously clicking the pen she held in her hand. “If you have a passport from another country, though,” she added, “we can consider you.”

“Another passport?” I asked, intrigued by the possibility. “Do you know how I can get one?” She shrugged in reply, perhaps already regretting her suggestion. But it didn’t matter. I was determined then to somehow get a foreign passport and get back to Afghanistan.

In late winter, IRC offered me a three-month posting to a refugee camp in Africa, to the same camp I had been headed to some seven years earlier. It seemed that fate meant for me to be there. I took a leave from my job, and I was on my way in March of 2001, but not before the Irish consulate in Boston confirmed that I was eligible for an Irish passport as long as I could gather the necessary documents from Ireland and Boston. Before I boarded my plane, I made arrangements to get my grandparents’ birth certificates from Dublin.

I was headed to Africa, but Afghanistan was still my goal.