Dan O'Neill gathers an army of compassion with Mercy Corps
He and the corps battle a world of hurt with guts and tender mercies.
By Dan O'Neill
Special to The Seattle Times
WASHINGTON — "There are some stories that can never be told. This is
one of them." So began a gut-wrenching report from Goma, Zaire, by
correspondent Jim Wooten on ABC-TV's "Nightline" in 1994. "It is all
too much," Wooten said, "a calamity of such epic proportions, so
massive in size and scope that the truth of it is far beyond
journalism's reach." Perhaps. Still, a question arises: Difficult as
the Rwanda story is to tell, has network news done all it can to tell
it?

BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
In the Seattle office of Mercy Corps, founder Dan O'Neill pauses next
to a poster showing a volunteer at a center the corps started to help
train and support women in Pakistan.

REMY DE LA MAUVINIERE / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rwandan refugees line up to cross the border between Goma, Zaire, and
Rwanda in 1997. United Nations and Zairian rebels were sending
thousands of the refugees back home three years after the mass
killings in Rwanda.

JEAN MARC BOUJU / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rwandan refugee children plead with Zairian soldiers to let them cross
a bridge to rejoin their mothers who had crossed the bridge moments
before the soldiers closed the border in August 1994 in Bukavu, Zaire.
For years, majority Hutus and minority Tutsis lived peaceably, side by
side, only to explode in homicidal violence in which 500,000 people,
most of them Tutsi, were massacred. Millions of other Rwandans fled as
refugees.

AMIR SHAH / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Afghan children play on a wing of a crippled passenger plane near
Kabul airport in 1999. Dozens of planes were destroyed during war
between factions of Afghan leaders.

Brennan linsley / The Associated Press
In 1999, Jean-Paul showed the deep scars on his head where machete
blows nearly killed him during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Jean-Paul,
14, whose Hutu attackers left him for dead beneath the corpses of his
parents, said he wants to be a soldier so he can hunt down the men who
killed his parents.

COURTESY OF Mercy Corps
Dan O'Neill comforts 2-year-old Habimana at Central Kigali Hospital in
1994, just after the genocidal rampage that left at least half a
million people dead, as many as 20 percent of the country's
population.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
In 1979, Cambodian orphans suffering from malnutrition and disease
huddle in a hospital in the provincial town of Kompong Speu. Years of
war and political upheaval left millions of Cambodians starving and
homeless.

COURTESY OF Mercy Corps
In 1987, Dan O'Neill drives an ambulance in Gaza — the first ambulance
successfully imported into Gaza City.

ALAN BERNER / Seattle Times File
A nutritionist makes her way through a sea of hungry Ethiopian
children during the famine of 1985.

RICARDO MAZALAN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bags containing the remains of massacred Rwandans lie in the Nyamata
Church outside of Kigali, Rwanda, in late 1996. Nyamata, a mostly
Tutsi town, was the scene of some of the most notorious massacres that
swept the country after April 1994, when President Juvenal
Habyarimana, a Hutu, was killed when his plane was shot down. An
estimated 500,000 to 1 million people perished in the systematic
slaughter.

ALAN BERNER / Seattle Times File
Row upon row of photographs of the victims of Cambodian tyrant Pol Pot
line the walls of Tuol Sleng, the Museum of Crime, in Phnom Penh.
Formerly a high school, the building was turned into a detention and
interrogation center by the Khmer Rouge regime. Of 20,000 who entered,
seven survived.

Jerry Gay / courtesy of Mercy Corps
In 1992, Dan O'Neill and wife Cherry share hugs and smiles with their
five children, clockwise from left: Casey, Brittany, Brendan, Kevyn
and baby Kylie.

ALAN BERNER / Seattle Times File
A lone acacia tree accompanies a landscape of shallow graves of famine
victims from Alamata, Ethiopia, in 1985. This area was covered with
trees 15 years earlier.

MELANIE STETSON / THE Christian Science Monitor
A Nicaraguan woman stands near her home in a Honduras refugee camp.

COURTESY OF Mercy Corps
Dan O'Neill, left, and Ellsworth Culver in the Mesa Grande refugee
camp housing El Salvadoran refugees in Honduras, April 22, 1982.
Culver, co-founder of Mercy Corps, served as an executive of the
organization until his death in 2005.
DAN O'NEILL TO BE HONORED
The World Affairs Council will honor Dan O'Neill with its 2014 World
Citizen Award on March 4 at Town Hall in Seattle. The annual award
recognizes an outstanding Washington state citizen who has contributed
to solving a global problem, shown leadership in promoting
international understanding in our community, and provided
inspirational international service. The program begins at 7 p.m. For
more information and tickets, see the World Affairs Council website:
www.world-affairs.org.
IT HAS BEEN nearly 20 years since my chartered Cessna touched down in
Goma, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. I was among aid
workers joining the frantic effort to assist Rwandan refugees in one
of the worst human catastrophes I had ever witnessed. I had seen more
than my share of wars, famines, refugee crises and other disasters
since founding Mercy Corps in 1979, but the word through the aid
grapevine was that this one rivaled them all.
The immense human tide of refugees had fled Rwanda's genocidal civil
war into Goma. I was making this trip to determine how Mercy Corps
could help. What I saw in those few days was almost beyond description
— a sea of humanity, naked, exhausted, sick, hungry and dying en
masse. Twin specters, dysentery and cholera, had broken out in the
sweltering, dusty land, littering corpses as far as the eye could see.
Making matters worse, water ran short, not only in the camp but in the
overwhelmed city itself, where restive Hutu refugee soldiers roamed
about with AK-47s.
The next day I faxed reports back to Mercy Corps headquarters, and a
CBS reporter offered me his satellite phone for radio updates to
Seattle and Portland stations. Armed groups were now hijacking
vehicles, and most foreigners were looking for a way out.
I knew I would get out, but thousands of desperate refugees stood
little chance of surviving on their own. I carried with me a drawing
my daughter Casey had made of God watching over me and the refugee
children. I felt a frightening sense of hopelessness thinking about
all the children I had met who might not live to see another day.
I wondered, "How did I get here?"
IT WAS AUG. 7, 1994. I'd snagged the last seat on a U.N. flight that
landed at Rwanda's nearly deserted airport in the capital city of
Kigali. A hot, stiff wind carried the distinctive stench of human
bodies. I ran into Ken Issacs of Samaritan's Purse, a U.S. aid
organization, who gave me a lift as well as a bunk for the night.
Their situation report was brief: no power, no phones, no commerce, no
banking.
Over the next few days I met with officials and gathered a more
complete picture: Dazed survivors wandering in search of food,
shelter, medical help; bodies lying helter-skelter on blood-covered
streets.
Perhaps most moving was my visit to the Central Kigali Hospital where,
in nearly every room, I saw bullet holes and shell casings as well as
signs that patients had been hacked to death in their beds. At the end
of the compound, a nurse rushed up, holding a small, naked boy.
"Please hold him. His mother is now dying in the next room."
Two-year-old Habimana, a machete wound on his face, was severely
dehydrated and malnourished. I washed him, made a diaper from a gauze
hospital pad, found some rehydration fluid, and held him for the
longest time. I will never know what became of him, but at that moment
he seemed a ray of hope in a sea of death.
It was a couple of years after that trip when the dreams started.
WHEN I THINK back to that question of how I ended up in Goma and
Rwanda, it was not the founding of Mercy Corps. It was a war more than
two decades earlier.
After graduating from the University of Washington in 1972, I launched
my "search for the church," a journey to discover the true roots of my
faith. As a way to record my travels and learning, I vowed to keep a
daily journal, which, with rare exceptions, I've kept to this day.
I set my sights on Jerusalem, where I planned to study, pray and
recalibrate my spiritual compass. I arrived in the spring of 1973.
Days later, while camped near the biblical Sea of Galilee, I
celebrated my 25th birthday.
I volunteered at Kibbutz Ginosar, a cooperative farming community,
where I worked in the orchards, studied Jewish and church history,
learned Hebrew with a smattering of Arabic and swam often in that
sparkling sea. I loved the simple, communal lifestyle.
Then on Oct. 6, 1973, the morning of the Jewish high holy day of Yom
Kippur, the earth shook as ambushing Syrian artillery and rockets
pounded the nearby Golan.
Most of the men from the kibbutz set out for the battle front while I
stayed behind to maintain the banana and grapefruit irrigation
systems. I reeled to the din of war filling the air for weeks. Once, I
watched an Israeli fighter jet detach its fuel tank while battling a
Syrian MiG. The tank fell directly into the kibbutz preschool
playground. I raced to the scene, where children, soaked in jet fuel,
were screaming and crying. Incredibly, all survived, but we knew the
situation was rapidly deteriorating. The U.S. Embassy urged all
Americans to evacuate. As Syrians advanced, it became clear the
legendary Israeli war machine was buckling.
But the tide began to turn when the U.S. rushed supplies and weapons
into Israel. Though Israel prevailed, OPEC cut oil supplies to the
West in retaliation for its backing of Israel.
On Oct. 29, day six of a shaky cease-fire, I hitched a ride to the
Golan battlefield with a press team. There, the splayed bodies of
Syrian soldiers lay scattered among burned-out tanks, wrecked trucks
and downed aircraft.
After five months in the beautiful quiet of Galilee, reading about the
three great monotheistic faiths that emerged from this region, the war
had shattered my reverie. While Jews, Christians and Muslims all look
to Abraham as their spiritual father, enmity, violence and destruction
seem to have been their tragic heritage.
RETURNING HOME in September 1974, I stopped to visit friends in Los
Angeles, who introduced me to my future wife, Cherry Boone. Over the
next few years I worked for a communications company coordinating
religious pilgrimages across Europe and the Middle East.
Between 1977 and 1979, I became increasingly concerned about the
radical Khmer Rouge and its murderous rampage in Cambodia. Torrents of
beleaguered refugees flooded across the border into Thailand. So
horrific were the tales of torture and systematic killing, I told
Cherry, "We have to do something." Cherry's parents, Pat and Shirley
Boone, shared our concerns and offered to host a fundraising event in
their Beverly Hills mansion. The "Thanksgiving Dinner for Cambodia"
would draw celebrities, religious figures, media and humanitarian
leaders.
I knew First Lady Rosalynn Carter was interested in Cambodia and had
visited refugee camps in Thailand. On a whim, I called the White House
and asked for her endorsement. To my utter amazement, she called me
back.
When the day came, the Rev. Dr. Robert Maddox, special assistant to
President Carter, gave a strong challenge from Mrs. Carter to get to
work. The question arose, "Who will lead the task force?" All eyes
turned my way. My heart pounding, I agreed to lead us and asked a core
team to meet the next morning.
My journey toward making a difference had begun.
SOON, AID agencies were flooding me with offers of free resources. I
accepted the help of the Rev. Art Beals, a friend and executive
director of Seattle-based World Concern, who provided an office,
part-time assistant and a chance to return to my Northwest roots. I
called this new venture Save the Refugees Fund.
Nine days later I was in the White House with Rosalynn Carter, the
first of numerous White House visits. I was raising money to support
multiple humanitarian organizations working with Cambodian refugees in
Thailand. My first tour of the refugee camps was in March 1980, at the
Cambodian "settlements" of Sa Kaeo and Khao I Dang. There I witnessed
vast seas of suffering, but it was always the children who moved me
most.
As the months passed, a major crossroad loomed. The Save the Refugees
mandate would end soon. I had learned a great deal about fundraising
and emergency-relief strategies but longed to work more directly on
the factors underlying hunger, extreme poverty and conflict. Not
everyone thought I could succeed.
By 1981, my life course took some clear directions. On July 1, I filed
incorporation papers for Mercy Corps International in Olympia. That
same year, I joined the Roman Catholic Church, which had impressed me
with its peace and social-justice teachings. I also became a father,
after six years of doctors telling Cherry she could not conceive.
Brittany would be the eldest of five. We were blessed.
"NETWORKING, DAN! It's all about networking," exclaimed Ellsworth
Culver. Ells and I had met in 1980 at a humanitarian conference and
hit it off. Formerly a vice president at World Vision and Food for the
Hungry, Ells had seemingly seen it all. In 1982, I asked him to join
Mercy Corps as our international director, and eventually he would
assume my title as president while I continued as board chairman.
Our first international trip together was in 1982, to a refugee camp
in Honduras. There we met Dr. Oscar "Tito" Giron, the pediatrician we
had hired to help us run a new health program in the camp. Tito worked
at great risk in the era of death squads and political assassinations.
I asked him once why he persevered, and he answered simply, "Because
of the children; they are our future." Weeks later, a death squad
tortured and killed Tito.
In June that year, while Ells and I were on a fact-finding mission in
Lebanon, we were shocked to hear bombs exploding and Israeli jets
roaring. This was the launch of Israel's "Peace for Galilee" invasion
of Lebanon. The bombing continued for days, and I remember visiting a
hospital just as an air raid nearby killed 30 students on a school
bus. Our study tours expanded to include Palestine (West Bank/Gaza),
Jordan, Syria and Israel.
By 1984, Ells and I were debating whether to remain a boutique
organization or expand and take on "the big stuff." The question all
but answered itself when later that year we landed a major USAID grant
to provide emergency food aid during the infamous Ethiopian famine. We
launched a cross-border program based in Khartoum, Sudan,
orchestrating countless shipments of food through the desert.
In 1994 we were in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, the former Soviet
Union, the Gulf War, the Balkans War, Kosovo and numerous other
countries in crisis. As Ells turned his attention toward Asia, I again
became president of Mercy Corps (a title I would hold for 10 more
years). I had one proviso: I would need a CEO.
We hired Neal Keny-Guyer, and he proved to be the right leader for the
next two decades. It was Neal who convinced us it was time for Mercy
Corps to shift from being a faith-based to a nonsectarian organization
— still embracing the moral imperative to help people but from under a
bigger tent.
Today Mercy Corps works in more than 40 countries and has about 4,000
staff globally, nearly all of whom are from the countries where we
work. From a Western-dominated, "truck and chuck" response to
disasters, where food would literally be dumped off trucks into needy
communities, today's relief efforts are meticulously organized, and
address a wide range of challenges, from complex emergencies to
entrenched market failures.
FRIENDS OFTEN asked me how I handled the repeated exposure to the
carnage of war and disaster. I explained that the emotional pain could
be used as fuel to increase our determination to save and improve
lives. If only it were that easy.
In 1997, the dreams began. Having my own family intensified my empathy
for children, and often I saw in my sleep the faces of kids caught up
in terrible situations. I began to experience insomnia, and when I did
fall asleep, I frequently woke drenched in sweat.
One day in 2006, I remember standing up in my office, feeling dizzy
and short of breath. Seemingly minutes later, I opened my eyes in a
hospital emergency room. What I took to be a heart attack turned out
to be a panic attack; the first of many.
Intermingled with the other symptoms, a cloud of depression slowly
grew around me. When I was finally diagnosed with post-traumatic
stress disorder in 2007, my mental state was such that I found it hard
to imagine surviving each day. But after six months of therapy and my
family's support, I began to see a ray of light in the spring of 2008.
Increasingly, PTSD is being discussed among first-responders, law
enforcement and the military as well as the aid community. More effort
will be needed to ensure front-line workers receive support.
The bad news continues: natural catastrophes, famine, political and
financial upheaval, wars.
How do we keep hope alive? As Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist and
Holocaust survivor, shares in his book, "Man's Search for Meaning," we
can choose how we respond to any situation. For me, facing my demons
ultimately empowered me to let them go and recognize the redemptive
turns in the journey I'm on. I periodically recall the words of Helen
Keller, "The world is full of suffering. But it is also full of the
overcoming of it."
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