While most Americans caught only televised glimpses of the ruin left in Kosovo after the war, Eric L. Weiss '80, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Medical School, saw it firsthand. Working with the organization AmeriCares, Weiss visited clinics and doctors in the war-ravaged Serbian province last summer to determine what supplies and assistance they need and how to get it to them.
Stanford: What is it like in post-war Kosovo?
Weiss: The experience is one of contrasts. Need and sorrow and death with freedom and celebration and happiness. Probably the biggest contrast is in the evening. You spend the day working on infrastructure and realizing clinics aren't operating and physicians are unavailable and the power comes and goes -- and yet, in the evening, the streets are full of young people, they are dressed up, there is music blaring. They are really kind of celebrating their freedom.
What's the most striking thing you saw on your trip?
In Mitrovitza, we visited one of the mass graves that the NATO forces had come upon as evidence of atrocities. You just stand there -- it's very quiet and actually quite beautiful, the landscape and the view of the city -- and try to imagine what happened there just two months before. There is bloody clothing; the grass is kind of matted down. Without trying very hard, you can imagine just how grotesque a scene that was.
Did the visit shape your opinions about the political situation there?
Going gave me more of a perspective about how complicated these issues are. When you are there on the ground, making a point to try to explore the historical perspective, that differentiation between black and white, good and bad, blurs and grays significantly. I think it's important to appreciate that what is going on there is more complicated than anything we have read. We, as a culture, because of our geographic and spiritual isolation from so many parts of the world, tend to be quick to judge and quick to interpret. That's really unfair to all sides.
What do you bring back to Stanford?
This medical center offers the finest health care in the world and technology that is unsurpassed; and yet, over there, they are reusing rubber gloves -- if you are lucky -- and begging us for penicillin and tetanus immunizations. The gap is really quite striking on so many levels. It serves to remind me, and it should serve to remind all of us, of our good fortune.
