IT was the victims of torture that most haunt her, said Rosanne Symons, a doctor who has specialised in emergency medicine and who makes her services available to humanitarian organisations.
The petite, softly spoken mother of five children (including a set of triplets) might not look like the average superhero but, as she spoke to Tuesday Rostrum her listeners soon realised something about her. As well as being passionately devoted to using her skills to help those in dire need, their May guest speaker was incredibly brave.
Rosanne has volunteered her professional skills and time to go on missions to Syria and Brazzaville in the Congo with a South African organisation called Gift of the Givers. She explained that this was a neutral humanitarian organisation and was not affiliated to any government. Funded mostly by donations from South Africans it was founded in 1992 by Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, a man Rosanne described as truly wonderful and inspired solely by God.
Speaking in her personal capacity and not as a representative of any organisation, Rosanne concentrated her talk on her two-week stint with a team of medical personnel at the Darkoush Hospital in northern Syria, two years ago. She started with a short explanation of the complex political situation in that war-torn, tragic country, explaining how what she described as a “cry for freedom” had escalated, with its strategic position and the involvement by other powerful nations, into a vicious proxy war.
With the violence, the displacement of huge sections of the population and the many other miseries that usually accompanied war, the situation in Syria was desperate she said. However, Rosanne had still fallen in love with the country and its beautiful people. She was determined to return to help them, she said.
Rosanne described how Dr Sooliman had transformed a small derelict building into a working hospital in a very short time. Two years on and this hospital was now a fully equipped, state-of-the-art medical facility of which any first world country would be proud. It was to this fledgling hospital that she and the rest of the multi-disciplinary, multicultural and interdenominational medical team had made their long, convoluted and dangerous journey, This was an adventure in itself. Rosanne described how the team had been divided into small groups to cross the border from Turkey into Syria illegally. Her adventure had included travelling in a trailer pulled by a tractor over almost non-existent roads and a river crossing into Syria in a makeshift ferry created from ropes and a metal drum.
Rosanne tended to brush over the trauma she must have experienced as she devoted her hours to helping the victims of bombings and shootings. Instead, she spoke glowingly about the local people who assisted the team. Many of them had been undergoing some training as doctors and other medical personnel but the war had interrupted their studies. She also spoke about the “beautiful people” who lived in the Darkoush area and how, in the event of a bombing, they would rush to the hospital to donate units of blood. Their small kindnesses, friendship and warm hospitality had been powerful antidotes to the daily horrors of working in such a desperate country.
It wasn’t only victims of war that they had been called upon to treat. Many of the local residents had not been able to see doctors and dentists for many years and the team was often able to assist with chronic conditions. Sometimes all the patient needed was kindness and someone who would listen to their woes. Then there was the collateral damage. In a country where AK 47 rifles were available from the equivalent of the corner cafe and where these were routinely handled by people with no training, there were many accidental discharges, One of Rosanne’s saddest memories was the death of a young boy, an only child, who had been accidentally shot by his father.
Most chilling of all, though, was her description of the victims of the endemic torture in that country, of a certain look in the eyes of the thousands of people who had endured unspeakable horrors at the hands of their fellow men.
By the end of Rosanne’s talk, every listener was filled with admiration for this fearless woman who not only braved the horrors of Syria but who deemed it a privilege to have been there.
