Rate this book

A Doctor Without Borders (2010)

by James Maskalyk(Favorite Author)

3.96 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Hikmah

review 1: Do you know how to fall in love with someone you've never met?You read his book. This book.I came to Maskalyk's writing from his blog, which is itself a thing of beauty and you can find it if you Google "suddenly sudan". Don't let it redirect you! You want the man from MSF, not the sitcom. So I read his blog, and I read his other blog (Dial 'D' for Dadaab, if I remember correctly). (I must be the only person left online who writes out "if I remember correctly".) And just like that, I regretted my ill health because it meant MSF would never let me do these things in these places, be even one-hundredth the person he was. All the same it is making me want to go forward in all the things I can do -- write, photograph, give counsel, seek wisdom, love. If there are ever cures fo... morer the things that are wrong with me, I will take them and take my chances. Reading this, I want to scoop up places like Abyei and hold them close. Say "We are watching and we love you." Because we are watching, and I hope I am not the only one whose heart is overflowing. -- Which is not to say that this is a portrait of perfection, but perfection is tiresome. Trust me. You don't want a sanitized version of "a young doctor in a war-torn village". You want more than the cover copy. You want the man who drops an F-bomb on page 5 and makes girlfriend jokes with his best friend in the compound. You want the man who is just as petrified as I am of planes (for different reasons). You want the man who rolls up his sleeves and mucks in. The one in this book, anyway, seems to live by my motto: "do what comes next." Isn't that all any of us can do? So my personal canon grows by one and will sit between the Ibbotsons and the Grants, in front of the McKays, perhaps cheek-by-jowl with that first Streatfeild. Maybe I'll review "Intern" next, for kicks. It's been awhile.If I could give a book more than five stars, this one would get them all.
review 2: I will warn you that although the subject matter is fascinating and meaningful, the writing itself was not quite there. The book began as a blog, and perhaps Maskalyk’s story transmits better in that format.The author ends up in a village called Abyei in Sudan through the organization Doctors Without Borders. His six month stint is full of dust (as he mentions quite frequently), as well as a frustrating inability to save everyone who ends up at the clinic. Some of his descriptions of dying infants are absolutely heart-wrenching, yet he ends up writing about it in a detached manner as he learns to deal with the inevitability of death.On my part, I would have liked to learn more about the cultural differences in treating illness and injury in Abyei. He only mentioned the local healer once, but beyond that there is little mention of local beliefs as they relate to medicine and healing. I guess Maskalyk wasn’t really trying to educate the reader on the Sudanese so much as he wanted to give an account of what it’s like to be thrown into a situation that is vastly different from what you are accustomed to, and in that sense he succeeded. There was no sugarcoating of the place, and I appreciated his frank discussion of the misery and boredom. He could have easily glorified the situation to make himself seem like a “better,” and more compassionate person, but he ended up teaching me that sometimes you can feel too much, and that gets in the way of accomplishing the mission. less

Download links for: A Doctor without Borders

Advertising