An Imperfect Offering

An Imperfect OfferingBy: James Orbinski As Albert Camus wrote, the doctors role is as a witnessto witness authentically the reality of humanity, and to speak out against the horrors of political inaction. . . . The only crime equaling inhumanity is the crime of indifference, silence, and forgetting. James Orbinski In 1988, after a year long research trip investigating pediatric AIDS in Africa, Dr. James Orbinski was inspired to work with others to establish the Canadian

By: James Orbinski     

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“As Albert Camus wrote, the doctor’s role is as a witness–to witness authentically the reality of humanity, and to speak out against the horrors of political inaction. . . . The only crime equaling inhumanity is the crime of indifference, silence, and forgetting.”
—James Orbinski

In 1988, after a year-long research trip investigating pediatric AIDS in Africa, Dr. James Orbinski was inspired to work with others to establish the Canadian chapter of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders/MSF). After working in Peru, Somalia and Afghanistan in 1994, Orbinski agreed to serve as the Chef de Mission for MSF in Kigali, Rwanda and arrived at the centre of civil war and genocide. Confronted by indescribable cruelty, he struggled to regain his footing as a
doctor, a humanitarian and a man.

In An Imperfect Offering, Orbinski explores the nature of humanitarian action in the twenty-first century and insists that while responding to the suffering of others, we must never deny them their agency or lose sight of their dignity.

“Ummera, ummera–sha” is a Rwandan saying that loosely translated means ‘Courage, courage, my friend–find your courage and let it live.’ It was said to me by a patient at our hospital in Kigali. She was slightly older than middle aged and had been attacked with machetes, her entire body rationally and systematically mutilated. Her face had been so carefully disfigured that a pattern was obvious in the slashes. I could do little more for her at that moment than stop the bleeding with a few sutures. We were completely overwhelmed. She knew and I knew that there were so many others. She said to me in the clearest voice I have ever heard, “Allez, allez. Ummera, ummera-sha” –‘Go, go. Courage, courage, my friend–find your courage and let it live.’
—From An Imperfect Offering