Download An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action for the Twenty-First Century AudioBook Free
"As Albert Camus composed, the doctor's role is as a see - to see authentically the reality of humanity, and to speak out resistant to the horrors of politics inaction... The only real criminal offense equaling inhumanity is the criminal offense of indifference, silence, and forgetting." - Adam Orbinski In 1988, Adam Orbinski, a medical scholar in his 20s, embarked on a year-long research visit to Rwanda, a trip that would change who he would be as a doctor and as a man. Investigating the conditions of pediatric AIDS in Rwanda, Adam confronted popular pain and hurting, a lot of it preventable, a lot of it occasioned by politics and economic corruption. Fuelled by the injustice of what he previously seen in Rwanda, Orbinski helped establish the Canadian section of Mdecins Sans Frontires (Doctors Without Edges/MSF). As an associate of MSF he travelled to Peru throughout a cholera epidemic, to Somalia during the famine and civil battle, and to Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
In April 1994, James replied a call from the MSF Amsterdam office. Rwandan federal government soldiers and armed militias of extremist Hutus possessed begun systematically to murder Tutsis. While other foreigners were evacuated from Rwanda, Orbinski agreed to serve as Chef de Mission for MSF in Kigali. As Rwanda descended into a hell of civil battle and genocide, he and his team proved helpful tirelessly, maintaining thousands upon a large number of casualties. In 14 weeks 800,000 men, women and children were exterminated. Half of a million individuals were injured, and hundreds of thousands were displaced. The Rwandan genocide was Orbinski's undoing. Confronted by indescribable cruelty, he battled to get back his footing as a doctor, a humanitarian and a man. In the long run he chose not to retreat from the planet, but resumed his use MSF, and was the organization's chief executive when it was awarded the Nobel Calmness Reward in 1999.
