CDL education. Part one.

Jakub Rewiuk - medical student, essayist

The terrain of the war crisis seems to be an area where extreme human attitudes are constantly mixing, from primordial hatred to acts of heroism and altruism in their purest form. Every conflict, whether completely new or unresolved, smouldering somewhere beneath the surface, is also a testing ground for our conscience. From here, tragedies, traumas and ruptures in nations grow. Here, between what is worst in us and what makes us still human, the humanitarian movement has its origin.

I have been a member of the Foundation since last year, and have had the pleasure of delving into the rich world of medicine for the past three years. The project Doctors Charity Centre Doctors Africa has proved to be an ideal field for many people like me to develop their passion and the opportunity to share their help with those in need. The word 'sharing' is not misused here. Despite the passage of a relatively short period of time, I have found time and again that helping always benefits all parties involved. Education has been a pillar of the Foundation from the beginning. While ad hoc action on the ground is in the blood of most medical missions, the involvement of students and the effective promotion of the idea of so-called development aid (by sharing knowledge, we stay in Africa long after we leave) seem to have been our little revolution.

So let's stick to this noble idea!

I invite you to take a humble journey through a selected issue of aid, charitable activities, the functioning of volunteering. Every day I get to know it in small portions, from books and from experiencing it on my own. However, you may find any of the excerpts interesting and want to explore them on your own. Perhaps they will even think that this knowledge has proved useful. Then my little contribution will be added to the development aid project and I will prove to be a nomen omen for a solid volunteer candidate (so that the pre-election mood is fulfilled).

The foundation is laid, so let's get started!

Starting from the origins of the existence of charitable organisations, I would like to invite you to discuss the most interesting issues related to helping others. While the question of its legitimacy should never be crowned with a question mark, the questions of how to implement it remain a subject of dispute.between proponents of different ways of implementing it. In a number of articles, I will try to capture under a magnifying glass the various aspects of the organisation, recall what history teaches us and, at times, allow myself a few brief guesses as to the future (a rare affliction of fantasists) into which we are entering today. My work is supported by the extensive bibliography recommended by the Foundation, but I do not stop there. I also try to reach for pop culture texts, non-fiction (as far as Polish literature is concerned, we have reason to be proud) and excerpts from fiction. Film and video games also find their place.

I invite you to read the first part of the text.

THE CRACK

Si vis pacem, para bellum - this is the message our European ancestors come to us with from behind the veil of dusty manuscripts. Has anything changed in this respect after the passage of fifteen decades? The words of the counter-argument vary. Slightly younger than this Roman sentiment, a pop culture classicist hastens to reply that this discussion is pointless, because after all - "War? War never changes." Often faced with its harsh face, we can only pass by with our ridiculous human helplessness.

I could begin the story of the origins of the humanitarian movement at this point, stating somewhat pathetically that there were also those who tried to overcome this helplessness. Then to follow the apotheosis of the slogan 'tutti frattelli', which guided Dunant on the slopes of the Solferino, and reach for the image of Florence bent Nighhtingale over the beds of British army soldiers dying in the Turkish heat.

Yes, it's a pretty good start after all....

CHEESE WITH LEAD HOLES

Tradition has it that the idea for the organisation, later to become known as the Red Cross, originated in the mind of Henri, a wealthy merchant Dunant, when he drove past the town of Solferino to meet Emperor Napoleon III himself. On the outskirts of the Italian town, thousands of soldiers from both sides were dying in agony, and the poorly organised and scarce medical services were unable to provide even a dignified death for the wounded, without undue suffering. The Swiss could have passed by the whole incident indifferently, as his business sense probably should have told him. Being unconcerned is sometimes at a premium. However, the opposite happened.

Dunant, crushed by the enormity of the misfortune, decided to organise, with his own funds, a field hospital in a nearby church, where he received the dying regardless of whose colours they wore before the battle. Although the foundations of the first humanitarian organisation were already being outlined in the heights of Lombardy, it took the Swiss more than two years to write down the Memoir of Solferino, which attracted the gaze of Europe, including wealthy sponsors, and allowed him to put his plans into action. In 1863, in the ever-neutral 'Land of the Cheese Hole', an organisation was set up that would be guided by the ideas of the Christian cross in its coat of arms and intention.

THE SIX HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

History flows in many streams at once. Around the same time, in a London foggy with Victorian steam engines, Florence Nightingale was opening the first school of nursing in 19th century Europe. The British 'Lady with the Lamp' intended to shine a light on the problem of the poverty of medical institutions and the situation of its staff [it is only worth adding that for the mere idea of reaching out towards poverty, instead of offering it to one of the aristocrats, she was in danger of being permanently discharged from her noble family]. Although attempts were made to bring her up as a gentle lady, Nightingale spent more time amid the roar of cannon than with the sound of china crockery. She was in charge of a field hospital in one of Istanbul's districts, where the blood of Turks, British, French and Russians flowed mixed through the Bosphorus Straits, driven by the steam turbine of the Crimean War. In the outpost of the British Sculari barracks, Nightingale had the opportunity to verify her notion of killing in the name of the fatherland. Although she had been dealing with the loss of patients for many years, here she was in for an unpleasant surprise.

To her amazement, it was not bullets that were taking the most lives from this hell, but death was splitting its cards almost equally into six piles: typhoid, dysentery, cholera, other infections, wounds and starvation. A militant disposition commanded her to roll up her sleeves and take action. The first attempts at change failed. When the barracks' internal management did not agree to her proposals, a letter sent to the Times came to her rescue and only then did the money flow from the ministry in a wider stream.

Perversely, it can be said that help arrived on time. With Swiss precision..

Let us leave Mrs Nightingale for a moment in the glow of her small victory. She removed a small pebble and expected an avalanche of good fortune. But war is a crack in the image of humanity, and cracks run along the line of least resistance, which is not always where we expect it to be at any given moment.

UNDER PARAGRAPH 22

Nightingale noticed, after only a few months of intensive efforts to help the affected soldiers, the worrying results of her efforts. The mortality rate was not falling at the rate one would expect from it. Instead, the hierarchy of causes of death was changing. More and more soldiers were dying after the battle, as a result of their wounds, rather than going out into the field half-living from disease and exhaustion. It happened. The scoreboard of the war god Mars and Nightingale showed a score of 1:0.

As a result of the improved living conditions of the British army, originally unfit soldiers were returning to the front line prolonging conflicts, usually conducted according to the old-fashioned principle of 'whoever doesn't fall first is better'. The powers-that-be, standing over the chessboard of war, showed their cunning in discovering the law that, years later, Joseph Heller described in his novel - "if you don't want to fight, it means you're not crazy, and that's enough to send you to the front again". Who in their right mind and body wants to return to hell? To her despair, Nightingale discovered that she had merely become part of a machine that provided cannon fodder for the spearhead of the trenches, rather than actually stopping the onslaught of war. What's more, it's likely that her efforts, sleepless nights over sickbeds and hundreds of changed dressings only stretched the pathetic picture of war into the months to come.

Here was the bitter as strong tea truth and suddenly the Mars-Nightingale 2:0 result was quite real.

The defeated lady returned to 's homeland Shakespeare and the Crimean War burned out at its own pace. Nightingale's achievements and the phenomenon she had noticed passed almost unnoticed. It was only a few months after her return that Nightingale heard of a nascent organisation on the continent that would put an end to the suffering of the common soldier.

SUCH AN ABSURDITY COULD ONLY ARISE IN A COUNTRY THAT HAS NEVER KNOWN WAR

According to accounts, these were the words Nightingale used to react to the news of the Red Cross plans. Adding to her first impression was anger, incited by the idea of being an impartial force between conflicting parties. After her experience of the Crimean War, she knew that by helping soldiers, humanitarian organisations were prolonging the duration of a conflict that also involved civilians in its flames. Her demands, however, rarely found understanding among wealthy citizens, a large proportion of whom were swayed by the idea of bending to the fate of the 'simple soldier'.

Nightingale had overt objections to 's Dunantslogans, which he chose to put on the banners of the Red Cross. Alongside 'equality', 'impartiality' and 'fraternity', she would find room for yet another noble trait - 'stupidity'.

The Red Cross organisation is a powerhouse today. It stands proudly at the head of a procession of thousands of so-called INGOs (International Non-Governmental Organisations) and covers most of the countries of the modern world with its protective mantle. It has seen the hell of D-Day, it has seen the forests of Rwanda and the city streets of Yugoslavia. Today it is looking at Ukraine and Israel. And probably no one, at the beginning of the second decade of the new millennium, he would have no reason to follow in the footsteps of Florence Nightingale and try to question the sense of her creation and, behind it, the legitimacy of the efforts of a whole garland of 's successorsDunant. This is a good thing. Thanks to the images conveyed by the media, it seems that a humanitarian attitude is even more necessary for us every year. However, the  paradox Nightingale-Dunantstill remains. I think it is difficult to deny him a grain of truth, almost in the same way as it is to find the courage to embrace his demands.

TOSS A COIN TO YOUR SOLDIER

A good insight into the need to discuss the paradox Nightingale-Dunantis served up to us by Linda Polman in her high-profile reportage 'Caravan of Crisis'. She evokes the image of the campGoma , which turned out to be one of the biggest failures of the modern Red Cross. The huge campsite on the slopes of the volcano the Nyiragongo was intended to be a refuge for the population Tutsi [camp itself I plan to elaborate on in later sections of this article, due to its complexity and colourful themes], but turned out to be a rafting ground for fleeing Hutus, including armed troops who only a few weeks earlier had massacred from Lake Goma Kivu to Kigali itself.

The phenomenon of fighters hiding among the civilian population is seen in almost every ongoing conflict. It is a phenomenon so widespread that it has coined a term - refugee warriors. Refugee camps naturally attract media attention and are the focus of INGOs' activities, and this picture should not surprise us. What may come as a shock, however, is the scale of the problem. One need only glance at the camps set up in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, originally intended for the Palestinian population after the 1948-49 conflict. In her text, calls them 'small states from which the war of liberation is now being waged', and it is difficult to deny that she is at least partly right in this statement.Polman

The inability to screen the supported population and the real control of many sectors of the asylum by armed organisations on different sides of the barricade means that aid to the needy is inextricably linked to the prolongation of the armed conflict. It is difficult to estimate what percentage of the food, clothing and health care sent goes to soldiers who will later return to the frontline. Given the numbers INGOs are currently operating with, the equivalent of these funds should be counted in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here is a modification of the N-D paradox for our global village.

Referring back to the global village with its market and coercion, we can find yet another bone that awaits us if we wish to transfer the ideas behind the Red Cross to contemporary conflicts. Following Linda Polman, we can state that the first relief camps were based at a distance from the epicentre of the conflict itself (see Solferino and the neighbouring village). Today, INGOs and their volunteers often operate on the front line. The superficial characteristics of armed conflict have also changed. At the moment, most of the activities carried out have the character of a civil war, from behind the proverbial 'neighbourhood fence'. All of this makes the members of the organisation soak up even more of the 'local war sauce' and the axis of their activities moves closer to the metaphorical market, the epicentre of the struggle. And as it is in a crowded marketplace, it is hard to blame INGO volunteers, thrown in from an alien world, for having trouble identifying the different sides, separating flags, colours and targets of action. The outstretched hand of a fighter (who will return to the front in a few days once he has licked his wounds at the INGO's expense) and the orphans seem unrecognisable. Someone pinched might say that the postulate of impartiality has been fulfilled. Only is this precisely the image of aid that originally had in mind Dunant?

Want peace? Don't help prepare for war. Unhappily for our conscience, war and harm to the individual are intertwined in an inextricable stitch. A penny saved to stop a conflict is sometimes a death sentence for a wounded soldier. paradox The Dunant-Nightingale leaves us even more helpless to the mechanisms underlying aggression than the Swiss merchant standing on the slopes of the Piedmont. Pure demands are met with effects that are difficult for us to accept and even more difficult to try to combat. After a moment's reflection, it seems that the canons of modern wars teach us, with redoubled force, that, despite the passage of centuries, we still know very little about where the source of humanity's fracturing lies. Even less where its end will lie.

Jakub Rewiuk