E-mail a friendDr. Jill John-Kall
airdate August 21, 2007
Dr. Jill John-Kall is the medical director in Nyala, Darfur for the U.S.-based relief agency International Medical Corps. In pursuing a medical career, she followed in the footsteps of an aunt, uncles and her Indian-born father. She spent her childhood summers in rural India, where her family provided free medical care from her grandmother's home. Long committed to relief work, John-Kall has had previous posts in northern Uganda (with Doctors Without Borders), southern Sudan and eastern Chad.
International Medical Corps doctor says the people she meets in Darfur are hopeful. (1:05)
Dr. Jill John-Kall
Tavis: For the past two years, Dr. Jill John-Kall has served as the medical director in Darfur for the International Medical Corps, the U.S.-based humanitarian aid organization. Prior to that, she served in Uganda with Doctors Without Borders. She plans to head back to Sudan after taking a year off to obtain a masters degree in London. Dr. John-Kall, nice to have you on the program.
Dr. Jill John-Kall: Hi, thanks for having me.
Tavis: Glad to have you. I was saying before we started talking on the air here that I guess a year off is probably a good thing. I can only imagine, after being in Sudan and Darfur and seeing what you have seen, which we'll talk about here in a moment, after a while it must start to work on you, yes?
John-Kall: Absolutely. I think it was a really good time for me to take a break, because you do suffer from burn out and there's a lot of stuff that you see that you can't really deal with on a day-to-day basis because you just kind of have to move forward. So this was a good time for me to just take a year off, do something for myself, and then get back in the field.
Tavis: When you say that you get burned out, what most leads, you think, for you, at least, to that sort of burn-out?
John-Kall: I think just the daily wear and tear that you have to go through, because you're looking at so many different aspects of your job. You're looking at the beneficiaries that you're serving, you're looking at how the programs are running, can you get things like drugs and other medical supplies to your beneficiaries?
What about the rest of your team - is your team okay? Because even they have their own stressors, and you might be the sounding board for them. So we just deal with it day to day to day to day, and I think it definitely wears on you.
Tavis: What about the people, these precious people in Sudan - the babies and the mothers and what you're seeing with regard to their health, or lack thereof, that really must work on you?
John-Kall: It works on you but it also is the thing that keeps you going because once you see that you can actually make a difference, even with simple things like vaccines, for example, which are so commonplace to us here in the U.S. But when you see that you're making a difference, even though the more people come to you, you feel better about actually helping these people. That is actually what gets you going.
Tavis: Tell me in context - we're looking at some pictures of your work here - in the context of how massive this crisis is, I'm trying to juxtapose how it is that the crisis is this big, and what you're doing is this big, and yet it feels impactful.
John-Kall: Well, the crisis is huge, and I honestly don't see it getting any better any time soon. However, when I began doing relief work I went in with the attitude that I am going to save everybody, and you really can't go in with that kind of attitude otherwise you're going to be massively disappointed in yourself and in your team. What we try to do is we try to help the people that are at most risk, that are most vulnerable, and that actually is what really makes the difference.
Because yeah, you're right - I might be working here, but at least in this little universe of ours we're doing a great job. International Medical Corps does so much good work out there that just the communities themselves, when they see you and they're happy to see you, that's indescribable. That's (unintelligible).
Tavis: I don't mean to make you political, but since you went there let me follow up.
John-Kall: Did I go there?
Tavis: Yeah, you did go there. Where you went was this: you expressed a lack of hope that it's going to get better any time soon. There are a lot of folk who don't feel that way for different reasons, but you've been there. Why do you feel that way?
John-Kall: I just feel that when I initially got there, things were kind of stabling out, etc., but with the signing of the DPA in May of 2006, things kind of headed downhill because not all the parties signed it, not everyone was involved in the wealth-sharing, the power-sharing, and now I know there's this push for the U.N. to come in.
But there are just so many other aspects to this problem; it's just not so black and white. And aside from that, just within the rebel faction, there is even more factioning, so I think now there's more than 14 different rebel groups, and everybody wants a piece of the pie. And unfortunately all this is coming at the expense of the humanitarian space.
And we work within that space, and it's shrinking. We are now being targeted by different groups of people for our vehicles, for our cell phones - our sat phones, rather - and so we are working at a much higher risk than we were last year. But I think we're still going out there because there are still people that need us to actually work out there. And I'm happy with that decision, so.
Tavis: I can't ask you to speak for other people - how do you balance, to your point now, the increasing risk, by your own definition, by your own explanation, the increasing risk that you have to take with going back when you've finished this next degree?
John-Kall: Well, for me personally, I'm taking this break not because I wanted to get away from the program, but I just know that I needed a break. However, I'm sure that there's going to be people still in need, because the situation in Darfur is so complex that even if, like, peace is quote, unquote "found," there's still a whole kind of development area that we have to go into.
People now are getting services that they might have not had before, but how do you force people back and say, “Yeah, it's safe,” but there's no hospitals, there's no schools, all the infrastructure has been destroyed. So there's definitely going to be people still needing services, and that's why I'm willing to go back.
Tavis: You spoke a moment ago of, broadly, the politics that make this difficult to get to this thing called peace. We read and hear - not enough, but we read and hear about what's going on with regard to the politics of what's happening in Darfur and Sudan. What do you hear from the people that you see every day? What are the people saying to you about what's happening inside their country?
John-Kall: Well for example, in one of the camps that we work in, an Ansalam (sp?) camp, at the beginning of 2007 there was about 4,000 to 5,000 people there. And then in the next successive months, now they're up to about 35,000 and over. So there's definitely still violence happening, there's still displacement happening. The people that I speak to, they have a lot of hope because we're actually giving them services that they need.
So they're actually looking at their kids and their kids are not dying of things like malaria, whereas they used to. So in that sense, I think they are hopeful, although I think there might be some misperceptions as to how soon peace will come to Darfur. And that's something that individually speaking, I can't say that it's going to happen any time soon. When I say that to other people, they might disagree, so…
Tavis: I'm curious as to how one can be right in the line of fire - that is to say, on the front line of helping persons who are running from the crisis, running, literally, to save their lives, and to separate the politics from what's happening in that region with the work that you're supposed to do. I'm such a passionate person and I'm such an opinionated person, I can't imagine me personally being over there trying to help a particular group and being able to separate my feelings about the politics from the work I'm supposed to be doing. How do you balance that?
John-Kall: Well to begin with, as a medical doctor it's easy for me to just look at things in a very medical perspective. We're doing live-saving services, and that's what we have to focus on. Because we see people that are not just victims of the conflict in terms of IDPs, but we also see any kind of gunshot victims. If they have a uniform, if they don't, we still have to see them because that's our privilege to be there to actually offer these services.
However, I am also opinionated, and I do have my own opinions as to what's happening. But we've learned that we really can't be that outspoken because there are certain consequences to what we say and do.
Tavis: See, that's my point. I don't know that if I'm a doctor - which is why I'm probably not - well, I'm not smart enough to be a doctor anyway - but I can't imagine that given who I am that I could see someone in a uniform, particularly if it was the wrong uniform, knowing that they're on the wrong side of keeping this mess going, I don't know if I could separate that.
John-Kall: But in all honestly, who is to say who is on the wrong side, you know what I mean? If you came to me and I don't even know you, and if you got shot - I don't know who shot you, but all I know is that you are a person that I need to take care of, and I need to save your life. And that's what we have to do out there. We can't really look at well, we don't really like you and we think that you're a rebel or you may not be a rebel; you might be with the government.
And being a medical agency, that actually helps us out a lot because we're completely neutral and we don't take political sides. We often have our own opinion, but it helps us in the sense that we can go out there and say, “Look, we're here to serve people.” And even the beneficiaries have more faith in us because they've seen us being very fair. Because the other thing you'll have is if you tend to kind of side with one side, politically speaking, that can actually damage your programs and security-wise, that can also damage your programs.
So it's actually best to have a very kind of neutral stance on everything.
Tavis: Is there danger in places like Darfur that persons like yourself won't want to go there or won't want to stay there because the conflict seems to be never-ending? It's one thing if you feel like you can go somewhere and help make a difference at a moment of crisis. When the crisis goes on and on and on and on, I wonder if that - it all hurts your recruitment efforts?
John-Kall: Personally speaking, I don't think it does because we've had new team members come to Darfur to be on our teams, and they're coming with a lot of dedication and hard work. Many of them have worked in other places like Somalia or Ethiopia or any of these other countries, and they always come with a certain passion, I'd have to say.
And I'm hoping that one of the things that draws them to us, specifically to International Medical Corps, is because the way you describe it, it's very easy to kind of lose hope and be, like, well, this conflict is just going to go on and on. But however what we do is we do emergency relief and we also do development. And for us, that makes it a lot easier because we are out there in the field and we're treating patients and we're giving them what they need, but we're also doing a lot of capacity building.
So we know that our programs will be sustainable, and I think that goes a long way in terms of kind of at least taking away from this hopelessness that you might have. I've seen a lot of other programs go down the tube as soon as the organization pulls out, because they haven't done any groundwork to actually sustain the programs.
But that's something that we do, and I take a lot of pride in that because we've been in situations where we've had to evacuate most of our staff, and it's been the local staff that kind of continues to provide live-saving service.
Tavis: You mentioned earlier passion. I suspect it certainly takes a great deal of passion, for one, to want to do what it is that you and others like you do. But beyond the passion, to your teams, the teams that you worked with heretofore - beyond the passion, is there something that you've discerned about you as a group, as individuals, that better suit you for this kind of work?
I'm a passionate person. I know a lot of folk who are passionate. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are suited for the kind of international crisis work that you put yourself in harm's way to do. Is there something about you and your team members beyond the passion that you've noted as pretty consistent?
John-Kall: In all honesty, we come from very various backgrounds. Many of us are medical people; many of us are not medical people. We have (unintelligible), we have communications people out there. And really, it's just something within you that feels like I can make a difference. And I think that's something that's kind of lost in our everyday work and life here, is that you kind of forget that as one person, you can make a difference, you know what I mean?
But you just have to get educated on what you need to kind of focus on. Like if you're interested in Darfur, go to our website, look at it, find out what is actually going on there. Don't just blindly kind of sign up and say, “Oh, yeah, I heard about Darfur.” But once you get involved and you get educated about some causes that you're interested in, that passion will be in you and it will absolutely fire you up to do something.
Tavis: Is Darfur the worst stuff you've ever seen?
John-Kall: Yes and no, because I've worked in other countries too, and - I've worked in Chad, and Chad is very interlinked with Darfur. We were working with Sudanese refugees in Chad. And I think the whole crisis and the fact that it's worsening now is - it's tough.
Tavis: Finally, do you take from these experiences a particular belief about the state of our world when you see stuff like this?
John-Kall: Yeah, and sometimes it's probably not a really good feeling. But I do honestly have - I'm not a religious person, but I do have an unshakable belief in God. And it's probably that kind of belief and faith that gets me out there, and I feel like I can do what I need to do without actually thinking about oh, should I duck? Is there a bullet coming? Or something like that.
But as negative as it sounds, I also think that there are people that can do a lot of good. And I don't expect everyone to go to Darfur, but even sitting in your living room - like I said, one person can still make a difference.
Tavis: There are a lot of folks in their living rooms watching right now, and I'm glad you came on.
John-Kall: Thank you very much for having me.
Tavis: Dr. Jill John-Kall, nice to meet you. All the best on your studies, and what comes after that.
John-Kall: Thanks.
Tavis: My pleasure.
Back to August 21, 2007