A New Definition of `Volunteer'—Kosovo Relief

Dr. Christina Moor admits that she overpacked for her first trip to Albania. "I completely destroyed my shoulder. I can't even carry a backpack now." Moor spoke to a group of students on Mon., Feb. 26 in Davies Auditorium about her experiences in Kosovo as a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders, known throughout the world as Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The Yale College Student Union sponsored the visit. Moor discussed everything from her oversized suitcase to her encounter with a new culture to her difficulties and successes on a medical mission to Kosovo.

MELISSA GARREN/YH Dr. Christina Moor shared stories of volunteering in Kosovo with students in Davies Auditorium on Mon., Feb. 26.

Moor had only four days' notice before she left for Kosovo. She was approached by MSF, a group founded in 1971 by French doctors who "believe that all people have the right to medical care, and the needs of these people supercede respect for national borders." The organization sponsors 2,000 volunteer medical professionals and 15,000 locally hired staff in camps around the world designed to provide emergency medical assistance, and more importantly, to bear witness to the plight of populations they serve.

The need for mental health professionals in addition to medical doctors in the refugee camps of northern Albania had become clear to doctors working in the area as they began to encounter disorders that they could not cure with medicine. According to Moor, "people couldn't sleep or children started wetting the bed again." Moor, a clinical psychologist and mental health consultant, was one of the first mental health professionals to come to Bosnia to help the refugees from Kosovo with the trauma of their experience and to train others to deal with the traumatic situations of the refugees.

Trauma was a way of life for Moor during her stint in northern Albania. She told the audience about her experiences of helping a 13-year-old girl whose family had lost an infant child while crossing the mountains and had blamed their daughter for the loss. "Nobody could convince her that it wasn't her fault."

She told the story of how one of her fellow volunteers was only recently released after being held captive for three weeks in Chechnya. "Even though I didn't know him personally, I felt like I knew him because we had a lot in common," she said. Moor described the close bond she shared with her fellow volunteers; when one was taken prisoner, everyone felt the danger.

One of the hallmarks of the MSF program is that none of the volunteers or employees is armed, and according to Moor, their policy is "not to participate in the fighting but to talk about what they see."

Even though Moor, as a psychologist, was in a unique position to hear the sometimes horrific stories of the refugees, she had to overcome her reluctance to give up the confidentiality that normally accompanies her work by meeting with patients in groups and sharing their stories with the authorities if they wished.

"This was a culture where people don't do things one-on-one. The whole family came. And I had to ask everyone I spoke to, `What do you want me to do with this? Do you want this to be just between us, or do you want me to tell people about it?'" Many came to her in the hopes that their testimony could be used to prosecute war crimes.

Another aspect of this objective is to get the refugees to talk amongst themselves about their experiences in an effort to help them deal with the issues they are facing. Moor told the crowd a moving story about her encounter with several teenagers who had nothing to do while in the refugee camps. She allowed them to come and help her clean and organize her tent in exchange for a place to spend their time. As she got to know them, she asked them if they knew the story of Anne Frank, and when they said they did not, she taught them about the little girl who was once in a situation not very different from their own.

Moor a made a trip with the teenagers to what she described as the "Kosovar version of CVS" to buy them notebooks so they could keep their own diaries. The next day, she made the trip again because nobody owned a pencil. They began to keep their diaries, hiding them in Moor's tent at night because she, unlike their little brothers, promised not to read them. They steadily began to behave more normally. "They would tease each other and flirt with each other—normal behaviors for kids their age. And one came to me clutching his diary and said 'Dr. Moor, I am going to keep this forever and tell my grandchildren what happened here.'"

Moor says a primary goal when dealing with children in a crisis situation is to "get the kids to the most normal routines as quickly as possible. We want the kids in a normal routine, a predictable routine, with some fun and play." So the volunteers set up art supply areas, safe activities, and play areas. Moor, however, spoke out against Art Therapy. "You know, draw a picture of your village being destroyed. Now don't you feel better? They just end up giving the drawings to CNN. I'm not sure anything therapeutic has happened, but I am pretty sure something exploitative has happened."

On top of the obvious difficulty that arises from trying to provide care for hundreds of thousands of people, Moor also encountered problems with the press, who knew her as "the American shrink on the ground." They followed her from tent to tent because "they knew if somebody got raped, she'd be talking to me. This was in a culture where no woman wanted to talk about rape because if her family found out, she couldn't go home—she couldn't marry."

As for the language barrier, Moor changed translators several times before she found someone who was helpful. She worked with a doctor who volunteered to be on call 24 hours a day. "He lasted 11 days. You have to remember that you're just one person."

Over the nine months she spent in northern Albania, Moor helped thousands of volunteers provide food, water, shelter, and medicine for tens of thousands of people who had left everything they owned behind to escape persecution. Life was difficult for the thousands of refugees and the doctors that came to help them. The need for help was great, especially in the area Moor served.

Moor was located in a camp positioned in a town with a population of 25,000 people; there were 10 times as many refugees. "We'd be in a big field with 50,000 tents and a few hundred thousand people. Sanitation was a problem." Moor talked about how she arrived at an airport without customs or air-traffic control, crashed on somebody's apartment floor with the rest of her team the first night in Albania, and only got a mattress five weeks later.

"Privacy just did not exist. Walls weren't noticeable." Moor tried to impart on the students that it takes a certain kind of person to be a volunteer for MSF. She told the students who might consider volunteering to look within themselves. "Think about what kind of person you are and what your commitments are."

Moor says she wanted to help because she was at a point in her life when nobody was dependent on her. "I'm not saying my family was thrilled, but they were supportive." How did her husband take the news? "He was supportive. He understood that this was something I needed to do, and something he may consider doing in the future. When asked if she would consider going back, Moor responded enthusiastically, "Oh definitely! I will be going back. As long as I can carry my suitcase!"

What is Doctors Without Borders? Doctors Without Borders delivers emergency aid to victims of armed conflict, epidemics, and natural and man-made disasters, and to others who lack health care due to social or geographical isolation.

Interested in volunteering for MSF?Due to the nature of MSF's field operations, the organization does not have positions for students, medical students, medical residents with fewer than two years of residency for its field missions. Internships and volunteer positions, however, are available in the MSF New York and Los Angeles offices.

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