Beyond the Border (Interview with MSF Aid-Worker)

With unrest in the Middle East and North Africa making headlines once again, Sam Goddard speaks to Bev Collin a paediatric nurse for Médecins Sans Frontières since 1992.

There have been times, as an aid worker, when I feared for my life. In Somalia I was in a vehicle that was shot at; I have also been held at gunpoint. I can remember thinking at the time, ‘This really isn’t the way I want to go’. When I was in my twenties, I used to rely on a collective, bigger-picture perspective to reassure myself whenever I got into this kind of situation. I would look at my colleagues who were in the same boat and think to myself, ‘Some of them have had a much worse time of this than me’. One guy I worked with was kidnapped, for example, so I used to weigh my own experiences against theirs.

About three years ago I was in Ethiopia advising the medical team there, when the village I was in was hit by rebel forces. My colleagues and I had to hide behind a stone wall for five hours, and all that was going through my head the whole time was, ‘my husband’s going to kill me when he hears about this’. The experience of being in danger just felt really different; it suddenly didn’t feel worth the risk. With youth comes with a certain amount of drive and ideological fearlessness, but as you grow older and realise, through experience, how quickly things can turn from OK to not OK, from life to death, you start to think twice. I suppose I’m less reckless now.

The first time I worked for MSF was in Somalia. I’d been working in Australia as a paediatric nurse, and applied through the French section in Paris. I decided to apply because I’d previously been working in a fairly progressive field of medicine, in a bone marrow transplant unit, and there were quite a lot of ethical questions involved, so drawing a line as to how far you should go in treating someone wasn’t easy. I figured that working with kids in parts of the world where they’re dying every day from diarrhoea and malnutrition was what I wanted to do; it was a vast challenge, but also an immediate, visceral one.

The conflict in Somalia in the nineties was huge. When I turned up in Baidoa for the first time, there were literally dead bodies lining the streets. We had to quickly set up a hospital and, in effect, re-establish medical care for the people there. I’ve also worked in the Congo during the mass exodus of Hutu refugees from Rwanda; also in Palestine, in Sudan, Darfur, and more recently in Afghanistan. The MSF operate primarily in war zones and, for the most part, you’re dealing with major injuries. Physical trauma is the main problem but, of course, war causes a great deal of mental trauma for those caught up in it as well.

Thoughts about death are quite subjective. I honestly haven’t ever felt afraid of dying. My life experience is what it is and I can’t change that. I’ve been privileged enough to experience some truly incredible things in my time; I’ve seen people who, against all odds, survive their difficulties. I’ve had an old man bringing his dead baby to me with tears in his eyes in Afghanistan, for instance. Sharing a moment like that was just amazing. Life and death, to me, merge into something quite special. I don’t see one as black and the other as bright and breezy, but rather see death more as part of life.

I have always been motivated by justice in healthcare. It’s easy to forget that it isn’t just about staving off death; it’s sustaining life. Watching the news, and seeing the impact of the war in El Salvador in the late eighties, particularly the impact it had on one particular goat farmer there, really got me thinking, that had I not been born in the UK, but rather in El Salvador, it could have been me in that situation. I still like to weigh my situation up with that of others, whoever they might be.

Doing what I do, I have definitely become more sensitive to the concerns of the people who care about me, and in the process become less likely to follow my impulse to throw myself into working in precarious situations. I’ve learnt from my work to respect the situation you find yourself in and the other human beings around you. In general, I think it’s important to take the pain, and to face the difficulties, because it enriches the way you live day-to-day.

"I’ve had an old man bringing his dead baby to me with tears in his eyes"

"In general, I think it’s important to take the pain, and to face the difficulties"