Have you ever wondered what a real life hero looks like? Then look no further than Doctors Without Borders' own heroine and Monday night’s academic speaker, Mary Lightfine. Growing up in New Jersey and rural Ohio, Lightfine’s interest in other countries began while watching Tarzan on TV. She would watch Tarzan swing from branches in the jungle and wonder if that was what Africa was really like. This show planted a seed in her mind that would continue to grow bigger as she grew older.

After becoming a nurse, Lightfine worked in emergency rooms in Georgia, Ohio, Florida and California. Once the seed Tarzan planted had burst, her next step was to join the medical relief organization Doctors Without Borders. This would be a decision that would take the self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie to more than a dozen countries across the world.

Lightfine’s first trip with Doctors Without Borders was to Nairobi, Kenya. Here she learned that the Africa shown in Tarzan wasn’t quite true to life. She arrived in Nairobi and instead of finding lions, jungles and men in loin cloths, she was greeted by a big city complete with traffic jams, airports and cell phones.

After this trip to Kenya, Lightfine’s first mission was to war-torn Somalia. Lightfine informed the audience that when war breaks out in a country, all basic services stop. Unfortunately this means things like trash pickup and medical care are hard to find.

Most doctors had left the country when the war first started, so there were only a handful of doctors still working at the hospital where she was placed. Because there were 400 beds and only six doctors, volunteers were asked to help. These volunteers included zoo keepers, administrators, and store clerks.

There were some people who came to the hospital just so that they would have a place to stay for the night. Lightfine found a man who was begging for medical attention, even though there was nothing physically wrong with him. Because she couldn’t give him any medicine, she gave him what she could: a bath. She and a few other nurses filled a tub in the middle of the emergency room and began to wash the man and his clothes. She did whatever she could do to give the man some dignity. He thanked her by saying, “Long life, Mary” every time he saw her.

During her presentation, Lightfine showed how men and women traditionally dress in Africa and Asia. She dressed the male and female volunteer in clothes including a scarf, tunic, dashiki and burkah. The scarf is used to cover a woman’s hair because for the men there that is the sexiest thing a woman has; the only time a woman doesn’t cover her hair is before puberty and to her husband. According to Lightfine, the women have to cover the curves of their body because men are lustful and can’t control themselves.

One of the funniest things that has happened to Lightfine on her many trips to foreign countries occurred while she was on her way to Camp Madhu. she was stopped at a checkpoint while her bags were searched. When the soldiers came to her box of tampons, they asked her what these things could possibly be used for. Thinking quickly, she told the soldier that they were used to stop the bleeding from bullet wounds. The soldiers were so amazed that they passed around the box and each took some of them. Because she was left with only three, Lightfine now knows how to make her own.

Lightfine told a story about one invention that changed a whole half of Sudan. Southern Sudan was known as the world’s largest petri dish because of the bugs that inhabited the country. There is little to no water on tap anywhere in southern Sudan, so people have to get water any way they could. This means that most of people’s water comes from mud puddles. One adverse side effect of getting your drinking, cooking and bathing water from mud puddles is that you come into contact with whatever is in the water. Because of this, millions of people become infected with the Guinea worm, which gets inside of the person’s stomach and then grows to up to three feet long. When the worm migrates to the skin, a blister forms and the worm begins to emerge. Once this happens, it can only be pulled out a few centimeters at a time, which means that it could take months for the entire worm to be removed from the person’s body.

The invention that has dramatically cut the number of people infected is as simple as putting some cloth around a pvc pipe, which filters out the Guinea worm. And the inventor of this life-saving tool is none other than our 38th president, Jimmy Carter.

When asked by a member of the audience what the biggest role of nurses is today, Lightfine said, “Giving people dignity.” She went on to say that nurses today are given so many patients that it’s hard for them to take the time to remember that they are treating human beings, not just cases. But nurses need to remember that they need to show the patients that they care because this is what will help them heal faster. Lightfine’s main goal of the night was to show how we can affect the community and world that we live in by doing simple things like helping people, sharing with people, and treating everyone with dignity and respect.

The program was followed by a reception where Lightfine continued to answer questions. You can get more information about Mary Lightfine at www.marylightfine.com