By CHARLES BAILEY
Firefighter/Paramedic

In the late spring of 1999, the government of the United States began the process of preparing for the arrival of nearly 20,000 refugees. The refugees were Albanians/Kosovars forced from their homes by years of violent civil war and ethnic cleansing.

AP World Wide Photos/Jeff Zelevansky Kosovo refugees wait outside the refugee clinic at Fort Dix, N.J., Thursday, May 13, 1999. The clinic provides vaccinations and emergency care for the nearly 2000 Kosovo refugees.

It was a group of men, women and children from all social categories. Millionaires and paupers suffered together in overcrowded refugee camps in Macedonia. After the decision was made to bring them to the United States it was realized that they had received little, if any, health care over the course of their dislocation and that it would be necessary to provide them with health care on their arrival in the United States.

I work for the Public Health Service on a part-time basis as an Emergency Response Coordinator. While working one day on the problem I was made aware of the fact that a clinic being built was short on staffing, especially paramedics.

Being a paramedic, I volunteered to go help. I called work and took a week off, then hurried home to prepare for a ten-day experience at Fort Dix, NJ. I left for Fort Dix not really knowing what to expect. I was going to function in the health clinic as a paramedic, and in any other capacity where I could prove useful. I just did not know what really was going on.

AP World Wide Photos/Charles Rex Arbogast Kosovo refugee Isuf Marevci, right, composes himself as he and his 10-year-old son Hekuran, center, give fellow refugee Alie Spahiu, left, information on a family member who is still missing for Red Cross volunteer Sara Schoon, back to camera, of Houston Tex., inside the refugee village at Fort Dix, N.J., Thursday, June 3, 1999. A tracing center set up by the American Red Cross at Fort Dix is trying to help Marevci and hundreds of other refugees locate relatives separated by the conflict in Yugoslavia.

The clinic used to be an Army mess hall. It was converted from a kitchen into a clinic in three days. The clinic had an Acute Care area (compact emergency room), medical records, 11 exam rooms, dentist, medical lab, full service pharmacy, three immunization rooms, a warehouse, an administrative nerve center, an x-ray department, and a satellite Centers for Disease Control (CDC) office to check for parasites. All this was built and functioning in three days.

As in any situation the first days were hell. Confusion reigned with an iron hand over the land. The group of people assembled to accomplish this feat rose above the call of duty. They made it work. I have been involved in many chaotic situations before, but never have I seen the teamwork and the ingenuity that made this project happen. Each person put aside personal differences in the interest of making the team work, and it did.

I was glad to be a part of the team. I did nothing special. There were many others who worked as hard as or harder than I did. The days were long and draining both physically and emotionally. By the day I left this small clinic, just ten days old, over 2,000 medical exams had been processed. That is incredible.

I went back to the hotel each night with the intent of documenting what I saw and what I did. I was too tired to do this most days. On the fifth day though, I did write. Now that I am removed from the situation I believe the words of that night speak all that I have to say about my 10 days at Fort Dix.

Day Five

The tragedy of the situation has started to settle in, fighting a hard battle with the optimism that pervaded the first few days. I have made many new friends. I am getting very close to the translators. They are close in age to me and of similar lifestyles. The closeness comes at a price. As I get closer they feel more comfortable telling me their stories and the stories of the people that they translate for.

AP World Wide Photos/Dan Hulshizer An ethnic Albanian child runs through cots set up for newly arrived refugees from Macedonia at Fort Dix, N.J., Friday, May 7, 1999. A second planeload of Kosovo refugees arrived in the United States on Friday. The United States has agreed to take in up to 20,000 of the hundreds of thousands of Kosovo residents who have been forced from their homes by Serb troops after the start of NATO bombings.

One such friend told me today how her best friend in the world was gunned down. She got the news from a survivor, a mutual friend who was there when the death occurred. This tears my heart apart. The closeness comes at a price. Her friend hated tears and for that reason she feels obligated not to cry. She does cry however, explaining that, "the tears come on their own."

I am dismayed. I too cry at hearing these things. These are feelings that 19-year-old children should not have to deal with. But then how much more difficult is it for the six-year-old girl who watched her father being gunned down. I am starting IV's on people who are still bleeding.

Children are the saving grace of any society. In them the face of the future has never been so clear. It is in the eyes of every little child that comes through, hope that is. I look in and see pain but the pain is muffled by the promises of another tomorrow. The horrors, as real and as visceral as they are, are the foundations for a limitless future. They come to me with shimmering eyes gleaming through the pain. Having a smile after their journey is victory enough. It is more victory than I could ever muster.

In many ways I am faced with the realization that no matter how hard it was for me as a child, I have no room to complain about anything. I never had my reality rooted in the acrid smell of spent shells and blood. For this I am thankful. We should all be thankful. Being here has made it so much easier to live, and so much harder. It is this dichotomy of feeling, this contradiction in emotion that has made this excursion so difficult.

Here I am on the cutting edge of a multi-million dollar government humanitarian campaign. I certainly can tell my children years from now that I took time off from work to treat refugees from a foreign land. I am thankful that I have made so many friends along the way. I can tell them that I took part in organizing and maintaining one of the greatest outpourings of help ever recorded. I can tell them that I made children just like them laugh in the sunshine of a temporary home. I will remind my children often of just how lucky they are and in doing so remind myself. Whether or not I wanted to be I am changed forever.

The clinic is a special place. I have done more IV's and more blood pressures than I ever have. I have learned to function in a situation where my patients do not understand a word that I say. I do not understand a word that they say. I have learned some Albanian over the course of these days but still am not able to put many sentences together. I think that if I had more time I would. Then I think that I have all the time in the world. And then I realize how incredibly random everything is.

So tonight I will try to sleep. I will try to fight back the tears that come on their own. I will try to keep the images from haunting me. I will try to not be afraid. I fear that I will not be successful. I will have to, at some point, share the pain of my patients, and share the pain of my newfound friends. I have taken some pictures but they can never tell the story. I can write all night, but I can never tell the story. A little piece of me has been left here, like it or not.

Content Copyright 1999, Charles Bailey and Firehouse.Com
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