Missions, Doctors, up to the other side of the world, 1989
It all started in Orly on December 22, 1989. That evening, news of Ceaucescu’s fall was announced. An anesthetist friend hired by Médecins du Monde drove me into high gear at Orly airport: there, part of Hall number 2 is occupied by a group of adventurous doctors. They are AIDS specialists, surgeons or general practitioners, all belong to MDM, and await the hypothetical departure of a plane chartered by the NGO for Romania. They will be the first to enter the city of Bucharest freed from the yoke of the Ceaucescu spouses, and I will be part the journey.
Since that date and until the city of Banda Aceh was swept away by the tsunami of January 2005, I undertook to follow the French doctors in Niger, in Saint Petersburg, from Iraqi Kurdistan to Sarajevo, the besieged Bosnian capital. I’ll go to Doctors of the World’s headquarters in New York or Paris, with the volunteers who roam the streets of the capital every night.
During all these years, rambling among the turmoil of contemporary history, the doctors would leave for long months or for emergency missions.
Gerard Rondeau
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