A Band-Aid for a Broken Leg
by Damien Brown
Although I'm not a big nonfiction fan, I do enjoy a good memoir. They do for me the same thing fiction does ... give me a glimpse into the lives of others in a way that makes me think philosophically about things and issues I might otherwise not contemplate. A Band -Aid for a Broken Leg is Dr. Damien Brown's story of his experiences serving a volunteer with the aid organization Doctors Without Borders. Brown, who hails from Australia, gets hooked on the expat life after a medical trip to Thailand. After returning home, his life in Australia seems mundane and uninspiring, so he signs up for DWB and soon finds himself in a sparsely populated village in Angola where poverty, AIDS, and desperation are all around him. His memoir is both funny and sobering at the same time. You'll find yourself laughing at Brown's deer-in-headlights response to things like lack of indoor plumbing, local surgeons trained on battlefields instead of medical schools, and a series of misunderstandings that arise because of cultural differences. And then, on the next page, you'll find your heart breaking at the descriptions of starving children, young adults dying of AIDS, and mental illness that is misunderstood and untreated.
Having been an expat myself, I can vouch for Brown's accuracy in describing how surreal is can be when nothing at all looks, sounds, smells, tastes, or feels familiar. It is thrilling and overwhelming, all at the same time. Once Damien finds his footing, he forges vibrant friendships that help him learn much about himself and realize how disparate and unknowable the world can be.
At the end of his six-month assignment in Angola, Brown decides to continue volunteering with DWB and spends time in two other African countries, both of which have similar challenges but neither of which steal a piece of his heart the way Angola did. His love for his Angolan experience shines through in his writing. I chose this book because of DWB's recent presence in current events during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. I wanted to peek behind the curtain and understand more about the work of the organization, the motives of the volunteers, and what life is like on the ground. When I turned the last page, I did so with enormous respect for what DWB volunteers do ... and what they give up in order to do it.
Other Books Considered:
Angola: A Love Story, by Brandon Aguiar
Buried in the Sky, by Rick Andrew
Walking on Dry Land, by Denis Kehoe
Human Love, by Andrei Makine
The Book of Chameleons, by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
The Small Bees' Honey, by George Clark
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