Gutwein routinely questioned himself: “How can I live here?”

“To this day, I can’t really describe the sights, sounds and smells of that place,” Gutwein confesses. “I was immersed in a sea of humanity where thousands of people had absolutely nothing.”

In his first assignment for MSF, a six-month tour of duty that was stretched to eight, Gutwein lived in a lean-to when it was dry and a grass hut during the rainy season. He lost 30 pounds. Not because there was nothing to eat, but because the work was never far enough away to allow him time for a single selfish thought, such as “I’m hungry.”

He dug new wells and fixed old ones, chlorinated murky waters, hauled medical supplies in helicopters and boats that were little more than bundles of sticks strapped to empty steel drums. He built a hospital operating room out of mud, assisted doctors who lost more patients in a week than they had in their entire careers prior to coming to Africa, and did any of a thousand daily duties to deny death a little longer.

“To observe people surviving on virtually nothing at this most remote and timeless of places was overwhelming,” Gutwein admits.

He certainly never expected to thrive under such circumstances.

The endless blanket of darkness overhead, broken only by the stars and the streaking satellites, bathed Gutwein in a calm he had never experienced stateside.

“This is where I am supposed to be,” he thought. “This is what I am supposed to be doing, my life’s mission.”

It had taken 53 years on the planet, many spent on an Indiana farm, for Gutwein to reach a moment that was equal parts enlightenment and personal tranquility. He helped raise four children (now ages 19, 22, 23 and 26), earned three college degrees, spent a couple of years working in Africa, and had operated a successful family farm and birdseed business.

But the kids were all out on their own now. And he was, too. Separated from his wife who had moved out east, Gutwein was free to use his agricultural engineering degrees to benefit humanity, without feeling that he was endangering a family at the same time.

So he sold the business and his interest in the farm, hired on full-time with MSF, and learned the simplicity of living out of a backpack.

“There is no way I could have done this when I was younger. You just cannot raise a family in this environment,” he says. Sure, he was in Africa in 1987, working on an educational project for the University of Florida in Cameroon. And Gutwein admits the experience made his young children better citizens of the world.

“They learned about diversity, what it was like to grow up as the minority, and I think they are better now for the experience,” Gutwein says.

But this? This refugee camp is a different Africa than the Gutweins ever experienced.

This is where a shower is rainwater warmed by the sun and trickled through a coffee can peppered with nail holes. Food is prepared over a charcoal pit. Twenty people share a common latrine. There is only occasional access to electricity to power a computer. A kerosene-powered cooler keeps temperature-sensitive medical supplies viable. The main mode of transportation is camel or donkey. And the man who owns the most cows is the richest in the village. This is life stripped down to the bare wood, no fancy stains or polish here.

Struggle never ends

“Nothing here is easy,” Gutwein learned. “You can’t just get in your car and drive to the hardware store and pick up some screws. In fact, there are no screws anywhere. You have to do the best with what you have.”

A steady six-day cycle of working all day and talking about work all night becomes a grind for even the most optimistic of people.

“One of the biggest challenges was just maintaining a good attitude,” Gutwein says. “It can be very difficult to simply get up every morning and go out and do what you can with what you have in situations that might be impossible. It is a contradiction: You must never accept the unacceptable. Yet you have to accept your limits, while at the same time fighting against those limits.”

Gutwein accompanied a medical team to what remained of a small village near one of the MSF aid stations. Most of its 1,500 inhabitants were sick. Two hand pumps used to draw water from an underground aquifer were broken, unused for over a year. Residents were drinking foul water left in the potholes of a drying stream.

Using local labor, it took Gutwein a couple of days to get the water to again run out of the well, clear and life-affirming.

“There is nothing more exciting than getting clean water out of a fixed pump,” Gutwein says. “The kids just went nuts.”

They surrounded him, pressing against him, wanting to thank him with the only currency they had, a touch and a smile. He had given the villagers what they needed to survive. And the villagers had done the same for Gutwein.

“Children are everywhere,” Gutwein says. “They are Africa’s greatest resource. The touches and the smiles will be with me always.”

And the man who had asked himself so often, “How can I live here?” again questioned himself.

“How can I ever leave here?”

Contact Gutwein at gutweinrus@sugardog.com

Editor’s Note: Gutwein started his second assignment for MSF in January in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, setting up emergency water supplies and improving sanitation.