James Maskalyk

Dr. James Maskalyk is young, unattached, and willing to take risks, so he joined Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) and was assigned to a six month mission on the border with Darfur in Sudan. The little village of Abyei is caught between the North and South armies and is full of refugees and disease. For the duration of his experience with MSF, Maskalyk kept an online blog journaling his experiences, and when he returned, he turned his blog into this book. The blog is show more available at www.sixmonthsinsudan.com.

I think Médecins Sans Frontières is an amazing organization, and I respect the work that Maskalyk did. As opposed to the view that foreign aid is another form of oppression that brings no long term solutions, Maskalyk writes that "The people I left behind in Sudan don't need us to help them towards a health system that can offer immunizations--they need the vaccine. Fucking yesterday." The urgency to save a life today, now, again and again drives his work. Every minute, every dollar wasted is another life lost. His blog makes the work he did on the ground real and personal. Over time, Maskalyk becomes muted, exhausted by lack of sleep, temperatures over 120 F, and the relentless death he faces. His blog, and book, continue after his mission is over, to describe the difficulties in relating his experiences to friends and family and in reassimilation.

I appreciated the book for its honest look at his experience in Sudan. Yet I was aware too of the self-censorship which constrained him. Both MSF and the militias in Sudan restricted either what he could write or what he could photograph. I wonder what he would have written about the other NGOs in Sudan and the UN peacekeepers (off-limit topics). What would he have said about the conflict and the two sides fighting it?

The other nagging distraction as I read was the impression that I probably wouldn't like Maskalyk all that well if we met. I wanted to empathize with him and admire him for his work, but I couldn't help feeling he was a bit of a player, very aware of his image, and coolness factor. That said, what he has to say about the need for people, for us, to narrow the distance between out comfortable lives and the lives of people in the developing world is very true and real. show less

Life on the Ground Floor by James Maskalyk is a 2019 Canada Reads Nominee. It is memoir of an emergency doctor who practices both at a large hospital in Toronto , as well as in a hospital in Addis Ababa. It was interesting to get an emergency doctors perspective of working in the ER, and comparing a Toronto Hospital to a very basic hospital in Ethiopia. The memoir seemed very impersonal . I felt it really lacked in detail about Dr Maskalyk, as well as the patients he treated. It was a dry, show more distant read, and I certainly was not moved by it, which is the theme of Canada Reads for 2019. Perhaps an emergency doctor has to remain quite detached from his patients and that is the cause of the problem I found with this memoir. I can't see it progressing to the Canada Reads short list. I did watch Dr Maskalyk on you tube to get an idea of what he is like in person and he seemed more personable when speaking to a group of people.

3 stars. show less

This book covers the six months of the author’s commitment to Doctors Without Borders, an organization which goes to various needy areas worldwide, including Sudan, and provides medical care. I liked the construction of the book which switches between a chapter of prose about his experience and then a chapter from the blog which he kept while in the Sudan. I enjoyed the immediacy and rawness of the blog, which took the place of a diary as would have been used by a doctor in similar bygone show more times (i.e., the [U.S.] Civil War). I’m sure he found the blog cathartic and that it provided a necessary release for him during such stressful days. Dr. Maskalyk obviously loved the people he treated and the people he worked with and elegantly imparts that to the reader. I will be haunted for some time by many of his experiences. He also does an excellent job of explaining the complexities of the world view of humanitarian aid. This is not a book for everyone, but for those brave enough to read it they will be richly rewarded. show less

This book was not what it seems. Not only is it stories from the ER at St. Mike's in TO but it is also stories from ER in Ethiopia and a very poignant telling of his time with his ailing grandfather. For a physician Jim Maskalyk is a very good writer, heck not even for a physician. His writing, at time, almost reads like poetry. Thoroughly enjoyable reading. Hopefully this is a trend for 2018.