Sept. 2, 1997
Kunming, China

Sometimes there are definitive moments that change the course of our lives. For me, that moment was in 1985 in London's Wembley Arena. I was attending the LiveAid Concert, a 10-hour concert held in London and Philadelphia to benefit the famine victims in Africa.

I was moved by the effort put forth by the concert promoters and artists and by the problems faced by the famine victims. It was on that day that I decided to change the direction of my life.

I decided to become a Peace Corps volunteer, and I worked in Thailand as a nutrition volunteer. I enjoyed this experience, and I realized I wanted to continue working internationally.

My background, however, was in sociology and social work. I felt I lacked a technical skill that would allow me to be truly helpful, so I set my sights on earning a masters in public health.

So after returning to Colorado from Thailand in 1989, I started taking prerequisite courses for a nursing program. Two years later, I was accepted into an accelerated nursing program at Johns Hopkins University.

I graduated in 1992 and worked for two years on an inpatient unit in a Denver hospital. I felt I needed to gain experience as a nurse before continuing on with a master's. Three years later, I graduated from the MPH program at Johns Hopkins.

As I began looking for international employment, I worked for a summer as a nurse in a Head Start Program with the Colorado Migrant Health Program. This program provides medical attention to children of the migrant workers in Colorado. Later, I worked through a nursing agency and was assigned to a variety of inpatient and outpatient settings.

Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Medecins Sans Frontieres, is an international humanitarian aid organization. They were doing the kind of work that I wanted to be doing, so last summer I applied to the New York office. A few months later, I was sent to their training course in the Netherlands, and then was I notified there was an opening for a public health nurse in their program office in Kunming, China. The job description, although it was vague, looked challenging.

The program had supported a village doctor-training program, and there were plans to expand the program. The job also involved emergency assessments and assistance after natural disasters. I accepted the position. The rest, as they say, is history.

Many questions raced through my mind -- What will the job be like? What are the people like? Are they similar to the people in Thailand? What will I be eating? Where will I be living? Any questions that I didn't think of were asked by friends and family.

I talked to the country manager of the project, and I was able to get many questions answered. But there were many more questions that had to wait until I arrived in China in January 1997. The reality, which will be forthcoming in subsequent dispatches, is far different than you imagined.

Jan. 15
Happy New Year from China... and bring on clinicals

Oct. 24
Life as a village doctor in southwest China

Sept. 24
Trying to keep warm in the city of eternal spring

Sept. 2
From LiveAid to Kunming

Introduction

Peggy Jarrett at the Thailand Peace Corps office where she worked from 1987 to 1989.
Click photo to enlarge