Next I spend a blissful, deluded interval contacting organizations with a medical focus, hoping that my pharmacist-trained husband will accompany me and that my layman’s foot can slip through the door alongside his professional one. He and I share an impressive travel-bum’s résumé. We had in fact, begun our marriage hopelessly adrift in a life raft in the Tasman Sea in the South Pacific a couple decades earlier, but that is another story. Regardless, I figure he’ll just be in raptures to join me on this new adventure.
“Pami, I’m paying the mortgage, the college tuitions. I have responsibilities, work that I enjoy. Besides, this is something that you need to do. I don’t need to do it. I don’t even want to do it,” Joe gently makes clear.
“Well, you support me, right? You’re not afraid for me to go, are you?” I implore.
“Yes, I support you in this,” he assures me and then with a tender smile adds, “and yes, Pami, I am afraid for you to go. But I know you, and I’m more afraid for you not to go.”
I pursue my communications with the medical groups anyway. Besides having a husband in the healthcare field, don’t I also have a father who’s a physician? Didn’t I raise our own outstanding children and work professionally for years assisting a slew of other families with their kids? I have strong arms in which to hold sick babies, broad shoulders on which distraught parents can cry, and a huge heart that bleeds for the less fortunate. I can be an asset!
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, the recipients of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize, is recognized as one of America’s one hundred best charities. They earned a top rating from the American Institute of Philanthropy and an exceptional, four-star rating from America’s largest charity evaluator, the nonprofit group Charity Navigator, the maximum awarded, stating that they exceeded industry standards and out-performed most charities. They reject me, stating in their letter: “We find out where conditions are the worst, the places where others are not going—and that’s where we want to be.” Me too! However, their letter also proclaims that besides focusing tightly on their missions, involving local leaders, and trying to ensure lasting results, they “ . . . don’t venture into areas in which they lack expertise,” subtly suggesting that perhaps I shouldn’t either. Yet enclosed with my edifying brush-off is a form instructing me “how to join.” By filling it out, I can authorize automatic monthly payments from my credit card or checking account and be assured that my contribution will allow their field staff to save lives around the world. My strong arms, broad shoulders, and big heart notwithstanding, I trust them, accept my lot where they are concerned, and send a check. But I am not ready to throw in the bloody towel yet.
Right about this time, I stumble upon an article in our local newspaper about a female physician who is planning to sail with the Red Cross to aid disaster victims of the recent tsunami. The vessel in question is scheduled to depart from our local port. With my trusty Merchant Seaman’s ticket that I earned years earlier during my sailing career, my familiarity with the affected areas, and of course, my fervent desire, it seems only natural to assume that I would be welcomed aboard. Once my work with the ship is complete, the Dark Continent will be an ocean closer and my new credentials earned on an American medical vessel should facilitate my jumping ship in order to aid disaster victims in Africa. Following my phone call to the regional office, the Red Cross representative who I speak to does not even deign to send me a brochure, stating that without specific medical training and expertise, they cannot use me in any official capacity whatsoever.
“Unofficial capacity? Anything?” I take a shot.
“My dear (I am seriously tired of the patronizing ‘my-dear,’ cold-shoulder treatment I keep receiving), it doesn’t work that way,” the phone rep heaves with a superior sigh. “Just ‘wanting to help’ won’t get you in anywhere.”
“Anymore!” I want to assert, but what’s the point? I obliterate the Red Cross from my short list and soldier on.
While scouring the information network for anything humanitarian-related, I come upon an article written by Tracy Kidder about the medical missionary, Paul Farmer and his associates. Within the exposé is a list of groups that are committed to helping people around the world. These groups reportedly “accept volunteers.” The article is entitled, “How You Can Help: You don’t have to be a medical professional.” Half a dozen groups are given brief bios and a Web site is provided at which a comprehensive list of global service organizations can be accessed. I contact every one.
Under the heading, “Get Informed,” three agencies are listed: the World Health Organization (WHO), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS; based in Switzerland), and the humanitarian agency, Save the Children. The first organization, WHO, is the United Nations’ agency specializing in health. I am familiar with them from my first voyage around the world a quarter of a century earlier. Our circumnavigating ship’s crew used the agencies’ information updates via our VHF radio to find out what disease outbreaks had been reported in specific regions through which we were sailing. Typically, however, the cruiser’s grapevine gave us a credible heads-up days or sometimes even weeks before WHO got wind of the risk.
As for the other two organizations, many consider UNAIDS to be the main advocate for global action on the epidemic, while Save the Children has been a leader in health advocacy for seventy-five years, working in several U.S. States and fifty countries to help improve the health, education, and economic opportunities of children and their families. You can’t spit without hitting some form of solicitation or distressing news bite from them in the mailbox, on television, or on the Internet. In fact, I receive a personal invitation from somebody named twebster at Save the Children’s Partners for Children Giving Circle in my e-mail almost weekly. A Charles MacCormack also thanks me personally for my donations. Save the Children has received the InterAction Child Sponsorship certification, has met the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance standards, and has also been deemed a Four-Star charity by Charity Navigator, America’s largest independent charity evaluator. I know my money is in good hands, and that’s nice since money is all that they will be requiring of my hands.
Under the heading, “Get Involved,” the Peace Corps, Partners of the Americas, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme, and Global Volunteers are given special attention. The Peace Corps has sent more than 178,000 volunteers to 138 countries to work on issues ranging from AIDS, to education, information technology, and environmental preservation. In the early 1980s I was asked to write the Peace Corps a recommendation for one of the crew members of the tall ship on which I was second in command. In spite of being a bit of a slacker with a few other questionable character traits, the sailor in question had a good heart and I told the Peace Corps as much. He was subsequently accepted. So I’m partially responsible for the good work done by one of those 178,000.
Partners of the Americas is a non-political network of citizens from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the U.S. who work to improve people’s lives through a grassroots network that connects individuals, institutions, and communities to serve and to change lives.
The UNV has volunteer specialists and field workers of more than 150 nationalities serving in developing countries, as well as working online to translate documents, research data, build Web sites, and mentor young people.
Global Volunteers’ blurb says simply that they are a private, nonprofit organization that has programs in nineteen countries worldwide and that no experience is necessary to apply. Through more in-depth research, I learn that they are also non-ecumenical (not Christian-based). I also learn that is somewhat of a rarity. In fact, the young woman at the agency headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota with whom I have many heady philosophical phone conversations is a refreshingly neutral, young Jewish woman named Ellen. I grow to appreciate the program and the representative. We become long-distance pals, speak often and at length, develop a mutual respect and trust, and discover avenues of kindred spiritedness. She is reluctant to give up on me and she almost recruits me. I give her huge kudos for that. I am even contacted by someone in my new friend/agent’s office at her behest and am offered a position to travel with them at half price, in a journalist’s capacity. Nonetheless, I cannot justify coughing up the exorbitant fee for a “volunteer vacation” (their words).