He wrote about his life on assignment in Abyei, a town near the Darfur region of Sudan, where he spent almost six months tending patients at great personal risk. In Six Months in Sudan, Maskalyk weaves these daily journal entries into a moving and beautifully written memoir of his time with MSF.

I was exhausted, sick, and on a bike in Amsterdam. The day before, I received an email from a doctor telling me I had two brands of parasites. The proper treatment for both was metronidazole, one of the only antibiotics you cannot drink alcohol while taking.

I had spent some time, since receiving the email, doing some research on the effectiveness of other therapies. There was no question, metronidazole was the best. Some trials suggested that one dose of tinidazole was nearly as good. I rode around to three pharmacies looking for it, and it seemed like it was no longer being produced. A distant third in therapeutic choices was the antiparasitic drug, mebendazole. It achieves success in only 68% of cases, making it a poor alternative. It is, however, possible to drink alcohol while taking it. My backpack was full of doses that I had just purchased. I couldn’t see an alcohol free two weeks for months, and certainly not in the next few days. I was just back from Sudan, where I had spent six months in the middle of the desert, working as a doctor in an isolated, rural hospital, overwhelmed by the drowning need of the place. I couldn’t shake it, even in my dreams. Too many sick, starving people.

I am on my friend’s bike, now, pedaling back from the pharmacy. Every now and again I get a stomach cramp and have to pull over to find a bathroom. It is probably my imagination. I have likely lived in symbiosis with these guys for months.

I park my bike on one of Amsterdam’s many bridges and pull up a chair at the edge of a café. It is cool. It will rain soon. Nice.

“A glass of white wine, please.”

This is nicer. A book, a glass of white wine. No one knows me, no one looks at me. I don’t have to say anything.

“Thank you very much.”

I open a book I just purchased and start reading. I can’t focus on the words. They blur and tumble.

The light is so clear here. Must be the rain, no dust. No dust. Ha. Hahahahaha. Fucking dust. Jesus.

I look around. The woman beside me notices me laughing to myself. She smiles back.

Lady, if you only knew. About all the dust. Hahahahaha. Jesus. She smiles again.

I can’t read. I’ve read the same sentence four times. I turn the book over at page three.

I am sitting at a table on a gently sloping cobblestone road. Behind me is one of Amsterdam’s many aqueducts, its boats creaking with the sway. The sun shines for a second, then twinkles out behind a cloud. On the low roof opposite me, a group of students have pulled some brown cushions from inside their apartment and are sitting on them drinking wine. A car eases past.

Across from the café patio where I am sitting is a bar, its glass doors swiveled open. Inside of it, two men in suits lean on a dark wooden bar. A woman sits beside them, tapping a message on her mobile phone, a glass of red wine in front of her. I can hear the faint 4/4 thump of house music from inside. A waitress takes my glass.

“Another?”

“Just the bill, please.”

I leave a handful of change on the table, and walk back towards the bike.

Wait a minute. It’s not here. Someone must have stolen it. Shit. Oh. There it is.

I pedal up across the bridge and down the other side. I have nothing but a vague idea of where the apartment is. I wonder briefly what it would be like to slam into the brick post on the corner.

Slam. Fast. Crack. Bright light. Where am I. Blink. Spin. Ohh.

I shake the thought away and keep on pedaling. The sky has grayed over.

Oh, I recognize where I am. I think.

I pass a young couple, hand in hand, on the side of the street. They’re stopped, looking at a large photograph.

There’s a series of them.

It’s an exhibition. I pull up alongside one. It is of a polar bear, swimming under water, wide legs about to beat, nose angled up towards the surface. Light filters in from the ice above and the rays balance between his large paws. The water is so piercingly blue, it makes my teeth ache.

I get off the bike, start rolling it from one picture to the other. Two impala in front of a setting African sun, a red shimmering hole hanging above an oily horizon, about to set the world on fire, the silhouettes of the animals cindered shadows. An ink black leopard. A tree frog surprised on a leaf, wide eyed.

I see a placard describing the artist. The photographer is a world famous naturalist. A quote below his biography states that, in one critic’s opinion, he “singlehandedly makes the greatest case for preservation of our planet”.

I walk back to the photos. A baby elephant huddles under his mothers legs as rain streaks down on all sides. I take a closer look. The color is astounding, the definition in each fold of the elephant’s small ears so pure, I can’t believe my eyes. Someone leans in beside me to get a closer look. Murmurs of admiration.

I walk towards the information booth. It is surrounded by books and postcards. People are queued at the cash register. I join the end of the line.

After a few minutes I reach the front. The man behind the counter slides a recently purchased calendar into a clear plastic bag, hands it to the customer, and smiles at me.

“How can I help you?”

“Do you know about the artist?”

“Of course.”

“Does he shoot digital or film?”

“Digital, I think.”

“And does he alter the photos after he has taken them?”

The man’s smile pauses.

“I…don’t know,” he answers, then shrugs. What does it matter?

“It would help me to know. It’s important. If he’s encouraging me to care about the world, he has to show it like it is. Like he was there for a moment that I missed, you know? One that happened and is now forever gone.”

The man looks over my shoulder at the customers behind me.

“I mean, if he takes a picture, then makes the sun redder or the water bluer, then I can respect him as an artist, but then it becomes about him, and not the world. You know?”

“Sir, can I help you?” he gestures to the man behind me.

“Can you find out for me? Is there anyone here who might know?”

“I’m afraid not.”

I step to the side and a man puts down a book, the polar bear photo on the cover. Behind him five people are queued with purchases of flat animals in their hands. I walk back towards my bike.

When I was in Sudan, my translator told me that during the war, all of the animals left. They went to Kenya, or Uganda. The elephants were the first to leave. They are the smartest.

I pedal away from the exhibition thinking how much easier it would be to get these people to care about Abyei’s missing elephants than it would the stack of forgotten patient charts I left stacked in its hospital.

Dr. James Maskalyk is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Emergency Medicine at the University of Toronto, where he teaches, and practices Emergency Medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital.

1. Andrew Christie Says:
   June 2nd, 2009 at 2:14 pm

   I read this book as a proof, there may have been the odd change to it. It’s very immediate, raw and disturbing. If you’ve ever donated to MSF then after reading this you’ll know your donation wasn’t wasted.

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