David Shanks – Dr Dan Murphy is at his most passionate when describing the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on the resilient people of East Timor.
To get through the brutal 24 year occupation by the Indonesian military, a person had to develop a coping mechanism to avoid becoming a "blathering idiot on the streets". At any time, anywhere, they could be taken, tortured, raped, killed.
But that mechanism meant an attitude of "not planning for the future, living for the moment and not taking difficult decisions. It was as if someone had told you " you have got terminal cancer. You will be dead anytime soon."
This live for the moment approach to life persists and now they are being asked to take responsibility for their own country and make it all work.
But the new East Timor has a chance to be a shining example of "due process" and democracy, "and not like every other country in south-east Asia."
Dr Murphy (58), a native of Iowa whose great grandfather was from Co. Cork, is a workaholic legend of medical service to the people of East Timor. He is in Dublin as part of a busman's holiday which will take him to the US, Singapore and Australia because funding for his Baro Pite clinic has run out.
This is because East Timor is no longer seen as an emergency. He will be explaining his work to a meeting today at 6pm at the Royal college of Surgeons. The clinic needs constant $3000 a month and "we are behind on salaries". He is the only doctor there and has a staff of 31 Timorese.
He sees medical care as a right and not a privilege for those with resources." He also hopes that this philosophy will be part of the ideals of the new East Timor "but the big players in the world may have different ideas." He refers here to the World Bank/IMF model of development
He eschews the top down "pre-packaged approach of the World Health Organisation and now the health ministry in Dili and now the health ministry in Dili. He is inspired by the Brazilian model of Paolo Freire, author of The Pedagogy of the Oppressed which relies on empowering and training mainly strong women in the village. One of the drawbacks of the WHO model is that "nurses do not want to leave the capital." He says "it is not they who are going to take the pulse of the villages."
Far better to "sit under a tree with the women and listen to what they see the problems-and pay them respect."
Dr Murphy worked for six years with the United Farmworkers Union in California and as a medical officer in Mozambique. He visited Dublin in 1999 when East Timor was "falling to pieces" following an orgy of punitive burning and murder for the Timorese decision to opt for independence from Indonesia.
Since then the Baro Pite has treated 350,000 poor patients. That is 300 a day. The emphasis is now on preventable diseases like TB, malaria and diarrhoea.
The good thing about Timor is that it is so small. His vision is possible if the model can be got right early on, he says. The downside of that could be Indonesia, with its troublesome regions of West Papua, Ambon, Aceh and Kalimantan, might be see it as a threat of a good example.