Matthew Hall Medicins Sans Frontieres The Sun-herald

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January 4, 2009 THE SUN-HERALD

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EXTRA THE INTERVIEW

Sense of purpose ... Nick Lawson, director of human field resources with Medecins Sans Frontieres at the organisation’s New York office.

Photo: Michael Nagle

Forthegreatergood

T

he drone of Antonov bombers brought a swift end to Nick Lawson’s meeting with local health officials. With few words, the man from the People’s Liberation Movement got up from his chair, looked out of his office window and ran. Lawson, with little debate, ran too. In Sudan, when you’re working in the middle of a civil war and government planes are rolling in to drop their bombs, running is a skill worth highlighting on your CV. Lawson found dubious shelter under a tree. There was no escape, though, from a loud chopping sound. Helicopters? Bullets? It was the sound of a bomb as it spun through the air on its way to a target – any target. Eventually (it seemed a lifetime but was probably just seconds), the bomb hit the earth 300 metres from Lawson and his tree. An explosion flared into a huge sheet of flame. Everything nearby caught fire. Napalm. Lawson counted out four or five more bombs falling in that attack. Nine people were killed. ‘‘Coming from Australia,’’ he recalls laconically, ‘‘I’d never been bombed before. It was, literally, a baptism of fire.’’ So you want to talk about a sea change? How about this? Just months earlier, Lawson had been sitting at home in Perth contemplating what to do with his life. Now 40, like many Australians, he’d travelled overseas after leaving high school, breaking up adventures in Canada, England and Japan with plans to return to university, or maybe do something else. One night, in 1996, his housemate – a doctor – pulled him along to an information evening for an organisation called Doctors Without

Medecins Sans Frontieres continues to prompt altruistic Australians to help those in need, writes MATTHEW HALL. Borders – or Medecins Sans Frontieres as it’s officially and widely known in French. Created by doctors and journalists in 1971, MSF provides aid in nearly 60 countries to people affected by catastrophe due to wars, epidemics, malnutrition, lack of resources or natural disasters. ‘‘I always thought it was French doctors in ski suits jumping out of helicopters or something,’’ Lawson laughs. ‘‘Sometimes in life, you spend your time saying you know what you don’t want. Sometimes it is difficult to know what you want. Then what you want is clearly presented in front of you. I really wanted to do this.’’ Lawson left the presentation inspired but he was not a doctor. Never had been. Never wanted to be. He was good at, generally speaking, doing things. Solving problems. The good news? MSF was not just recruiting doctors. A guy like Lawson was, in fact, just the person they were looking for. That was in November. By January he was in Kenya preparing to fly to Sudan with an 11-page job description that was as long as it was simple. Lawson had to ensure medical staff could do their jobs in very difficult circumstances in a very strange environment. Which was one reason why he was sitting in an office with an official from a rebel military group when the bombers flew in. Lawson is just one of many Australians scattered around the

globe working for MSF. Kath Andersen, a human resources director at MSF’s New York office, grew up in Broken Hill and jokes that when she worked for the organisation in Sudan she’d simply exchanged the red dirt of outback NSW for Africa’s black dirt. ‘‘It looked exactly the same,’’ she says. Like Lawson, Andersen, 42, joined MSF after attending an information evening in 2002. For the previous 15 years she’d worked in publishing and retail. ‘‘I’d read about an MSF project on the edge of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and that was where I wanted to go,’’ she says. ‘‘They said I could go to Ethiopia. I said I’d better look on a map to see where that was.’’ Andersen’s previous work experience in administration and human resources had provided the skills MSF was looking for. She spent the next three years in Ethiopia working on HIV, nutrition and primary health-care projects. There, she also met and married her husband, a local professional footballer. ‘‘I did get out of the village,’’ she laughs. Paula Llavallol spent her childhood in West Pennant Hills but really grew up during a visit to a Nairobi slum in Kenya. She joined MSF after university in 2000, ‘‘as a little ant and burrowed my way around the organisation’’. Like many people who work for

charitable organisations, she wanted a fulfilling career but had no idea what, where, or how. Working in the communications department of MSF’s Sydney office, she was invited on a trip to Kenya. ‘‘It was devastating,’’ she says. ‘‘We went into people’s homes and the first person I met was a mother on her deathbed with nine children. ‘‘It was like that with family after family after family that we visited. It was the first time that I saw the world was not what I thought it was. ‘‘Previously I’d thought I was so devoted and altruistic but that scale of suffering and poverty right in front of you with no apparent hope was the time to decide to do something. ‘‘I’m not on a crusade to save the world but I made an agreement with myself that I have the capacity to do something and I would try to do what I can for people who are suffering.’’ Llavallol, 34, has since worked for MSF as an administrator in Madagascar, where infant malnutrition and famine are serious problems, and provided medical care for street children and juveniles in prison. Now also based in MSF’s New York office, she spent several years

‘I always thought it was French doctors in ski suits jumping out of helicopters or something.’

in Bogota, Colombia, involved in a project working with civilians caught up in a continuing civil war. ‘‘One boy came with his father bearing a shrapnel wound on the back of his neck,’’ she recalls. ‘‘He was four years old and hadn’t slept in the five days since a bomb had hit his dad’s horse. He was afraid that if he closed his eyes the bomb might go off again. ‘‘I am drawn to being able to assist in making the connection between suffering and relief – not on a global level but on an individual level.’’ In 2007, there were 111 MSF field positions filled by Australians and New Zealanders. Just over half were medical staff – doctors, nurses, midwives and pharmacists – with logisticians and administrators filling out the figure. Currently, Australians are working for MSF in 28 countries including Chad, Ethiopia, Georgia, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Zimbabwe. Leaving can often be a problem. ‘‘It is difficult to let go and not worry about the people you have been working with,’’ says Andersen. She says motivation comes down to two basic threads – being challenged and making a difference. ‘‘I was really aware that I had got to the point where I had everything I needed in Australia,’’ she says. When Nick Lawson arrives at work each morning at his New York office, news headlines – ‘‘Sudan Kills Refugees in Darfur’’ – often provide instant answers to any questions about what he’ll do each day. ‘‘Is this a job that ever ends? I’d like to think so,’’ he says. ‘‘The whole idea is to do yourself out of a job but human nature, at this point, doesn’t lend itself to an end. ‘‘MSF has been around for about 40 years and we will be around for a lot longer.’’ XTRA

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