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Quite simply, if you haven’t heard of him – you haven’t actually been to Timor. The Pierre Iowa native has been here since 1998. I have met a lot of activists, a lot of NGO healthcare workers but I have never met someone like Dan Murphy.

Doctor Dan received his MD from the University of Iowa. He spent 6 years working with Ceasar Chavez at a clinic for farm workers. He was a doctor in Mozambique, another former Portuguese colony, Laos and Nicaragua. Doctor Dan has worked in East Timor since September 1998, although the Indonesians forced him out in early 1999 during the post-independence ballot destruction of the country. He returned in September 1999 and had been steadfastly working since to provide health care though the Bairo Pite Clinic.

You hear a lot of Doctor Dan stories. When you’re one of the ten overseas volunteers in the Bairo Pite area everyone lines up to tell you their stories, or ones they were told when they first arrived.

I have heard some wild stories.

Many of them grow bigger each time you hear them, retold to a new wide eyed medical student and then passed on to the next. However, some needed no furnishing, they were the stories which identified the nexus between the Dr. Dan you’ve heard about and the Dr. Dan you saw everyday at the clinic – these stories play out so naturally and so clearly in your mind.

There is the story I heard about him storming out in front of the clinic in 1999, when the Indonesian military were reportedly burning Dili to the ground. I am told that he stood outside unarmed while scolding the militia and threatening the heavily armed men not to touch his clinic. Then there was the story of his deportation and blacklisted status in 1998, only to sneak back in on a tourist visa every 30 days. There are the countless stories of him doing the medically incredible – with very little. The story that I tell people about him is not one that has three acts – it doesn’t have a resolution or a fixed point of conflict or obstacles. My stories are of the doctor I met who after so many years has no empathy fatigue, personally  finances the surgeries of his patients through his own savings account, and who never tires. I am sure the last part is incorrect, I am sure he tires, but his patients and his students don’t see it.

One day he tells me he had to fly his administrative manager to accompany a patient to the Mayo Clinic in the US for surgery that he’d arranged to be free of charge – except the patient had to pay for accomodation and airfare – so ofcourse this is what Dan paid for himself. Another day, he talks to the medical students and I about his plan to start a haematological ward, as he just cannot lose any more children to haematological cancers. Another time, usually over trivia fundraisers he frequently got  into chats about Australian and US foreign aid policies  - you can always tell when he agrees with you, he is a type of person who gets overexcited in coversation, particularly when he senses ‘you get it’. One day I left the clinic at around 6pm, scuffing my feet along the gravel drive way near the ambulance bay – everyone is going home. I look up and I see him walking to the maternity hospital for a full night shift – not only does he not look exhausted – he looks determined and revitalised.

I think all BPC volunteers remembers the conversations  in the open air near the ambulance bay in between rounds. I remember thinking one day this was my 3rd or 4th time on rounds – I thought for a moment how many times must he have done this? Walked through these doors to confront something overwhelming? At that moment he sat on the end of the bed where a woman from the foho, (mountains/villages) lay, she was so frail, maybe thirty kilograms – she was scared to be here, not sure of what would happen.The local nurse came over and touched her shoulder gently “botarde tia, ita naran dotor dan” – she heard his name and smiled a little and her posture settled like a person a little more relaxed. As I said before, if you haven’t heard of him – you haven’t been to Timor.

It’s been a lot of planning, organisation and anticipation. Through AFAP I was able to raise just over $3000 for medical supplies, drugs and operation costs at the clinic who takes care of the poorest of the poor in Dili, East Timor. These donations were received from as far away as Peru, from as local as Brisbane and Sydney, Australia – I was simply overwhelmed by the generosity of those who have listened and those who have helped.

I had landed in Dili and the air is dense with humidity, it felt like I am breathing in air that I borrowed an hour before. The dust has already started settling on my skin and mixing with the sweat caused by the 41 degree heat, which I was standing in. I was standing near twenty bemused taxi drivers practicing the phrase ‘Hello Uncle I would like to go to the Bairo Pite Clinic, it is near the Presidential palace”. The answer to this was “Where in Australia are you from?” in English. They saw me coming a mile off.

I was so relieved that our medical supplies had gone through customs without any complications. It is difficult to look relaxed in an airport when you are carrying scalpels, vials of Diazepam and heavy pain killers and nothing to protect you but a doctor’s note. However, it seemed to be far less of an anxiety inducing experience in Dili – the mere utterance of Dr. Dan makes even the most peevish customs officer submit to the country’s adoration of the clinic and particularly, the man who started it all.

BPC looked like the many pictures I had seen The clinic consists of five buildings, which are the maternity ward, TB ward, general medical, administration building, emergency ward. There are families waiting patiently outside the emergency room, nurses running from between buildings and expat medical staff and students walking around the wards trying to not be completely overwhelmed. I walk in feeling superfluous – or at least out of place. I am carrying 2 boxes of supplies and a suitcase packed with laboratory and clinical equipment. There is a common moment of initiation to anyone who has done NGO or volunteer work abroad – it goes like this: “who and why are you here?” When this happened to me at BPC heart stopped. Funny thing, it seems odd, but when you think about it: for you it is the biggest day, for some organisation who go through as many volunteers as BPC, this is another day – and I could be just another volunteer who walks away thinking I’ve changed the world forever, and never thinking about them again.

After 2pm, everything works out – I meet the amazing team from BPC who had been working with me from the beginning . Supplies are immediately dispersed throughout the clinic – it seemed to only take about 20 mins for everything to allocated and completely absorbed. The gloves, pippettes and laboratory supplies have been consumed by the TB and general laboratories, the stationary is restocked and medications are in the pharmacy. There was a part of my imagination which I tried to supress, which still allowed me to daydream that once this was done, everything would be fixed. I never genuinely had that kind of naivety but wandering in to a Utopian fantasy happens easily to minds stuck with the alternative reality here.

Next: Ita Nia Naran Dotor Dan