Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
February 22, 2007 issue
Mary Lightfine To Speak At ASU February 27
Story by Celeste von Mangan
A seasoned veteran of the Nobel Prize winning organization Doctors Without Borders, Mary Lightfine is an emergency room nurse, pilot and founder/president of Volunteers Without Boundaries. Lightfine will speak at Appalachian State University on Tuesday, February 27 at 7:00 p.m. in the Blue Ridge Ballroom, Room 201, in the Plemmons Student Union. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Lightfine’s presentation is a cultural lecture slated for Black History Month, and her mission is to show how one person can make a difference in the world. She has been profiled on ABC News, The History Channel and in LIFE Magazine. Lightfine is the author of the book Nurses, Nomads and Warlords.
“After sixteen years as an emergency room nurse, I packed my bags and moved from Straitsville, Ohio, to Mogadishu, Somalia,” wrote Lightfine about her book. “Why would any sane woman choose to live in a dangerous war zone voluntarily? Keep reading. This book is a story of the most exciting, most frightening and most enlightening thirteen months of my life. I hope that through my words, you will see the humor, feel the tragedy and discover you can make a difference in the world. Perhaps you will even be inspired.”
While serving in Mogadishu, Lightfine treated starved, maimed and dying patients amid a backdrop of machine gunfire and bombs exploding outside the Digfer Hospital. While in Somalia, she was ambushed and shot at. The time she spent in the country gave her the opportunity to experience starvation, war and desperation.
During the past 12 years, Lightfine has lived and worked in more than one dozen countries. She has delivered babies in the sultry jungles of Sri Lanka and has traveled by foot, donkey and jeep into the Afghani mountains—areas that are pocked with land mines. She brought food to remote villages by helicopter in Nicaragua and Louisiana following the hurricanes. While in the South Sudan, Lightfine carried food to starving refugees after their villages were ravaged by government alliances. Through Lightfine’s pioneering efforts, she became one of the first to provide medical aid to the Kosovar refugees—a community of people who had experienced untold horrors.
“I will bring a few books to sell after the lecture,” said Lightfine. “Also folks can buy books right from my Website or on Amazon.com and bring them for me to sign if they like.”
Nurses, Nomads and Warlords costs $15.95. For info, click to www.nursesnomadsandwarlords.com.
Doctors Without Borders and Volunteers Without Boundaries
Doctors Without Borders recruits more than 2,000 medical and nonmedical volunteers to assist in disasters and with development in more than 80 countries around the world. The assignments typically last for six-month periods. Those recruited include nurses, doctors, physician assistants, midwives, laboratory technicians, nutritionists, mental health technicians and others.
Mary Lightfine founded Volunteers Without Boundaries because many medical organizations helping people abroad only accept licensed professionals with a minimum of two years’ experience. In partnership with medical professionals, Lightfine is now able to provide the “opportunity of a lifetime” to people who may not be licensed medical professionals and personnel, but would like to volunteer. For more info, click to www.volunteerswithoutboundaries.com.