Stranger in a Strange Land: Reflections on My First Medical Relief Mission

The camp had been christened Balakot Hospital, a glorious name for an altogether inglorious collection of canvas tents and steel operating containers that was the center of a spreading field of refugee tents marked “UNHCR” or “Iran Red Crescent.” Before the earthquake, our camp had been the science high school for this small Northern Pakistani town nestled on the border of Punjab and Kashmir. A small secluded courtyard in the middle of the college was still beautiful, despite the surrounding destruction. In the silence of the early morning, I would walk alone through the courtyard as if it were a museum, looking into rooms exposed by ruined walls and a collapsed roof. With stunning similarity to the ruins of Pompeii, the little wooden desks and twisted metal bedframes that survived made it easy to imagine the lives the students had led. I recognized formulas scrawled on the chalkboard and read the elementary English penciled into a small black composition book. Although a new life pulsed outside the walls of the college, the immediacy of the past was a chilling reminder that this museum was merely three weeks old. The foggy dawn at Balakot Hospital is one of many vivid scenes seared in my memory from a medical relief mission to Pakistan after the earthquake of 2005, a journey I never expected but had yearned to make. Disaster relief is not a spectator sport, but my progression through medical school toward emergency medicine residency contributed to increasing restlessness as I watched the Indonesian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina relief efforts from the televised sideline. There was always some excuse to stay home, but desire and opportunity collided in October 2005. A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the border of Pakistani Kashmir and Punjab, a mere 300 miles from where I spent a summer baking in the heat at an Indian hospital for a summer research project. One week later, an email was sent to all Yale medical students seeking volunteers for a medical relief team led by a Pakistani Yale professor. Twenty students replied, but only three fourth-year students, future Emergency Medicine residents, were chosen. The excitement was overwhelming; whether preparing a personal medical kit that I would eventually conclude was full of flashy but relatively useless items or breaking the news to Mom, I spent every waking minute immersed in the journey. However, when I finally