Pakistan duty changes woman's outlook
SHEET HARBOUR - When Ordinary Seaman Kim Beaver was approached to join Canada's DART Team in their mission in providing aid to earthquake victims in Pakistan in October, she was quick to agree to go. Beaver, 28, originally a native of Sheet Harbour, is presently a member of the navy and is stationed in Petawawa. She has been in the Canadian Forces for three years and her trade is that of medic. Once she accepted the invitation to join the Disaster Assistance Response Team, made up of 200 people from infantry to medical personnel and engineers, she had three days to prepare to go.
The earthquake, a 7.6 on the Richter scale, killed over 80,000 and left millions homeless. "The most distributing part for me," says Beaver, "was driving by and seeing so many fresh graves." The DART team's mission was to provide medical attention and to provide purification of the water. The mission, that took 48 days, accomplished the goal of seeing 10,000 patients. Four babies were also born at the makeshift hospital set up on the grounds of a school. There was a triage room, a major and minor treatment room and an emergency room. A lab, x-ray and pharmacy were also part of the facility set up in canvas tents. The medical staff tended to broken bones, cuts, bruises and amputations. Beaver worked in the pharmacy and the medical stores replenishing the hospital and day-trip medical teams with equipment and supplies.
Beaver participated in one day trip and two three-day trips into the mountains with a doctor, nurse, three medics, an interpreter, an army escort from Pakistan and two security people of their own. Every other day there was a day trip and every four days there was a three-day trip to provide medical care to the people in the mountains who could not travel to where the hospital facility was set up.
Beaver spent two years waiting to get into the forces and to be accepted into the trade of her choice. She worked at a local garage out of high school and volunteered with the Sheet Harbour and Area Volunteer Fire Department and took the First Responders Course, all in preparation for her life's work. She participated in the application process which included personal interviews, an aptitude test and a fitness test…all of which she successfully completed. Then came the waiting game. They offered her the trade of cook and she said no thanks. Eventually she was offered the position of medic in the army, which she accepted realizing that she could eventually transfer to navy, her first choice. Beaver explains her dream of being a medic on the sea, "When you have grown up on the water, as I have, on the east coast, you want to do what you do on a ship...".
Beaver has now been in the navy for one-and-a-half years and anticipates being part of future missions. In the meantime she has returned to Petawawa where she is helping prepare the next group destined for Afghanistan in February. "I am ready to go whereever, whatever happens," she states. "This experience has given me a whole new appreciation for where I come from. Materially we take our technology of television, DVD players and telephones for granted. Over there (Pakistan) there is a whole different lifestyle. Their houses are made of rough rock, stones and wood. They have dirt floors and a flat pan over coals on the ground is their stove. Tents that we go camping in for a weekend are now their homes…sleeping six or eight people. It makes me grateful for what I have and grateful to be able to help in other parts of the world."
