(no subject)

[ambergolightly]

A year ago today, I was in the ballroom of the Wyndam Washington Hotel in D.C. listening to a speech given by Dr. Edward Rackley, a close advocate and a former advisory leader of Doctors Without Borders- Médecins Sans Frontières. I remember there being this curly-headed South American setting in front of me, almost completely blocking my view of the doctor, and I remember thinking at that time that the speech being given certainly did not sound very well prepared. We, the audience had to endure long periods of silence while the speaker, as it seemed, struggled to comprehensively gather his thoughts. He explained the mission of Médecins Sans Frontières, an nongovernmental organization devoted to not only providing on-the-scene medical care for people in places like Chechnya, Angola, and Kosovo, but also doing it at all costs....you know, like on E.R. The doctor then pulled out a letter from his rather shabby-looking brown sports jacket,and started reading it, a first hand account from his doctor friend who was roughing it out in Lybia. As the letter told, the doctors in Lybia had converted an old library into a make-shift hospital, but because of the horrors of the civil war, were forced to simply use the library as a means of shelter against the bullets and bombs flying overhead. The whole time Doctor Rackley was reading the letter, I could see that his eyes looked more than a little weary, and I could hear that his voice was cracking ever so often. Despite all this, I remember thinking that the speech was boring. I can be so stupid at times...because all I can think of now is how that curly-headed boy setting in front of me during the speech is now dead, and how the doctor in Lybia is now dead. Sometimes you don't the impact a single experience can have on your life, or how a single doctor working and dying in Lybia can have such an affect on the thoughts and feelings of a girl on completely the other side of the world.
So...I now realize that Doctor Rackley was not struggling to gather his thoughts, he was merely struggling to keep from crying about something so personal to him, something he really didn't have to share with a room full of indifferent teenagers, but did anyways.

ok, that's enough. sorry for the long reminiscence. I can get so passionate at times :).