A little history behind my job with Northwest Medical Teams

In Dec. of 2005:
My family and I were on vacation and sitting in a beautiful delux hotel room near Palm Beach Florida watching T.V. I was thinking "How fortunate I was!!" (That is actually a common thought of mine)., A few minutes later on the news there was a live feed of a tsunami hitting the Phillipines and Sri Lanka. In Sri LAnka over 40,000 people were killed, and 2 million people were displaced from their homes. The teenage kids in our and our friends family, like everyone else who heard of this disaster wanted to give money immediately or to just be able to do "something". I cautioned my son and daughter not respond too emotionally but to wait and see what was really needed. I told them that beside the tremendous devastation from the tsunami the people of Sri Lanka were also recovering from another and even larger tragedy, a civil war. This had lasted over 20 years had killed almost two times as many people as the tsunami. There would still be a tremendous need for help in a year or so from now when the rest of the world would cirtainly have forgotten all about what had just happened on T.V., perhaps we would do something then......

Segway to Sept. 2005:
Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast of the U.S. This time I tried with some other paramedic friends to go to offer help. Because we were not allready "plugged in" with a organization it just wasn't in the cards despite our best efforts to offer assisatance. At this time I did a little reserch on the "net" and decided the non-profit organization Northwest Medical Teams would be a good group to work with. I mailed in my application, expecting to maybe put in a 2 week stint at some point. After some e-mails, phone calls, and a meeting in Oregon with Paul Bollinger, (Northwest Medical Team's director of International Emergency Medical Services), I was asked if I would be willing to volunteer 3 months to help to set up an EMS system in Sri Lanka, a country of 20 million people. NWMT was to pay my plane fair and all expenses, and I was to offer my expertice... Of course I had to say yes.