← This Is Actually Happening
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- [00:00]
Wit Misseldine
Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of this Is Actually Happening ad free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the Show Notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. Hi listeners, Today I'm excited to announce that I'm launching a substack called the Story. On the Substack, I'll be sharing personal reflections on the deeper themes that emerge from each episode and across the conversations I've been immersed in for years, including the psychology of radical transformation, the power of storytelling, the lessons of trauma and healing, and how we die to an old self and are reborn. I'll share behind the scenes glimpses into the making of the show and my own personal journey in creating it. As the substack evolves, we'll also explore healing practices mentioned on the show, therapeutic modalities and approaches to transformation. We'll give updates on past guests and where their journeys have taken them, as well as listener Q and A and eventually occasional live gatherings. Beyond the Story will be a space where you can hear more from me and from the team, as well as a space to share in community reflection and continue the spirit of empathetic connection we've cultivated here on the show together over the last 400 episodes. To subscribe, find beyond the Story on Substack by going to witmisteldine.substack.com you can also find the link in the show notes. I look forward to this next chapter in the show and to engaging more directly with you all there. And now on to today's episode. What if you witnessed the best and the worst of humanity?
- [01:43]
Gray Doyle
You go into a place where they've lost everything, including hope. That's a pretty dark place to be in, and I found with a little bit of compassion, a little bit of empathy, a little bit of trying to understand, that's all people ask for.
- [02:09]
Wit Misseldine
From Wondery. I'm Wit misseldine. You're listening to this Is Actually Happening, Episode 398. What if you witnessed the best and the worst of humanity?
- [02:34]
Jennifer Garner
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- [03:21]
Gray Doyle
I was born in 1964 in Sub Saharan Africa, little town called Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. I was born before my parents were married, so I really don't know a lot about them. I do know my parents wouldn't win any prize for parenting. I was probably 6 or 7. My mother had left, she was chasing her career. I was being raised by my dad and the multitude of partners that he had through the house, some of them abusive then staying out while me being in the house with an abusive partner and their frustrations with him were taken out on me. On the weekends I would go to Hugh's place. He was a friend of my dad's and this most amazing man who lost his family some years before, he had lost his wife and his daughter in a car accident. He had never taken the pictures of them down in the house. He never got remarried, never had another partner. I got all of his love. He would notice things and he was angry at what was happening with me as I was angry with what was happening with me. I would have nightmares and things like that and I would wonder what I had done wrong to. To be where I was, to have this kind of parent. Where was my mother? You know, why don't my parents love me? Why don't my parents care about me? Why don't they want me? And he would always sit and talk to me. He was the one who said, you did nothing wrong. It's their loss. They're the ones who are losing out on a great kid. As I got older, I found myself spending weekends first and then the odd nights. And then know as things progressed, my life ended up at this wonderful person's house. He always made me feel special. And I think if my dad had allowed it, he would have adopted me and that would have been the end of it. But my dad kept reappearing in my life. You know, any major sporting event that I did well at or won a squash tournament, my dad would be there. But not in a very pleasant way. Sort of if I lost a game by three points or something like that, there would always be the dig. And it was always, why didn't I do better? And I really couldn't figure out why, because I didn't think I was a bad person. And I think part of it made me a little bit stronger. It was that I'm going to show you guys. So I was the straight A student, you know, maybe if I did a little bit more, you'd come back, but that was never going to happen. What they chose to chase in their life meant more than me. Hugh was a man of many, many sayings, and wonderful sayings at that. One of his lovely sayings was that God blessed us with two ears and one mouth so that we listened twice as much as we speak. So when we were playing chess, he would just listen to me talking about my fears, my anxieties, my hopes, my dreams. And he never pushed for anything. He listened. The anger that I had inside of being abandoned sometimes came out in ways it shouldn't have. But he never got angry with me. He just understood. And I think that's what we can ask for in life is to be understood and to be loved and to be cared for. You don't need much more in life than that. I was raised on a private game farm, which is wonderful. I wake up every morning, wildlife wandering around. But life was strange in sub Saharan Africa in those days. I grew up in colonial Africa. Being in colonial Africa, you go to an all white school, but all my friends were the staff's children. So all your friends are black. You know, these are things that troubled me because I tried to figure out, why is this so odd that your friends can't come to the same school as you can go to. So I think I learned at a very young age that birthright is a lottery. And I hit the lottery. I was born white, I was born male. And I think that was the beginning of me realizing that we lived in a very unjust world. So as I said, I was on a private game farm. You know, we had guests coming in and going, and I'm home from school and I'm swimming in this 75,000 gallon freshwater swimming pool, as you do when you're a privileged white boy with a glass of coke and a slice of lemon. And across the front of the property, here comes a woman with 25 liters of fresh water on her head in a bucket carrying all the laundry that she has just walked 2km down to the river to fend off hippos and crocodiles. And not to mention the giardia, Baharzia, typhoid, cholera, all the other usual suspects. And I'm swimming in 75,000 gallons of fresh water. And I'm thinking, there is something terribly wrong here. I don't think I would have ever thought like that if it wasn't for Hugh. That evening over dinner, I said, you know what's going on up at the village there, Hugh? We've got a well in our property. Could they not drill a well there? He said, well, it costs money to drill a well. I said, well, can we not put a well in? He said, well, I haven't paid you for your summer's work here, so if you want, you can use that money and your Christmas money and next birthday's money and we'll put a well in. I said, okay. So we put a well in there. And that was Hugh. That was the man who waited for me to see with my eyes the juxtaposition of my life and those that aren't quite so privileged aren't quite so lucky. That's who he was. That was the man who raised me. This is why I did what I did. I continued living with Hugh, which was great. By 16 years old, I had my private pilot's license. Very excited. I graduated from high school very eager to pursue a career in flying. By now I'm 18 years old. I am now flying freight, flying tourists into national parks throughout Tanzania. So I flew into Ngora, Gora Crater, Tsavu, out to Zanzibar, and basically doing the safari circuit up there and flying a lot of very wealthy people around who could afford to fly into these places. And again, watching the local people unloading these bags and taking them to the hotel. And yes, they've got jobs, and we can argue that point, but it just didn't seem right. I was applying to go to flight schools in United States so I could become a commercial airline pilot is what my goal was. Enrolled into flight school there, did my bachelor's degree, and when I came out of that, I was 24. I promptly marched up with my fresh degree and went up to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and where Piedmont Airlines was and got a job with them starting the following year. And at the time, there was a lot of companies that owned private jets that had gone out of business, and I had learned about fractional jet ownership while I was at school. So we marched into a couple of banks and gave them our business plan, and all of a sudden we had a fractional jet ownership company that did quite well. In 1994, I was 30 years old. I had just returned on vacation to Tanzania to visit some friends of mine that I used to fly with. And I said, you know, where's Andy? Andy was a great friend of mine, and he said, oh, he's in Rwanda. I said, what's he doing up in Rwanda? The genocide. I said, what genocide? I was living in the States in that time, and very little was being said about what was happening in Rwanda in 94. He said, yeah, so you want to go and help and I went, yeah, sure. So I flew up to Kigali, met a couple of the guys that I used to fly with, and we were flying mission supplies out to the rural outpost. So the big planes would fly into Kigali and then we would fly whatever medical supplies, et cetera, et cetera, out to these outposts and basically evacuate missionaries, some of the NGOs, expats. I was in the air the whole time. I wasn't really on the ground, but there was a moment that really stuck with me. I was taking off out of this really remote place and I was evacuating white missionaries expats and I was not allowed to fly anybody else out of there. I couldn't fly anybody of color out of there. These people were left to die. The Tutsis were left to die that had been working for these NGOs and working for these missionaries. And there was one time I was sitting on the Runway and this guy came running up to the plane, a Tootsie fella with his baby. And he said, take my child. And I said, I can't. He said, take my child. They are coming, Houthis are coming and I will get killed and my child will get killed. I know you can't save me. Take my child. And he's handing me his kid. And I couldn't take that child. I abandoned those people. Even though I had room in my airplane, I could not take the locals and remove them from imminent death, but I could take a 55 year old missionary. I said, I don't think I'll ever let this happen again because I had left a child to die for me. Going back to my abandonment, that is really what got me like, okay, I'm going to make this a habit. I'm going to come out every year and I'm going to do something and try and make a difference. I returned to the States and continued flying. I was 33 years old, had a pocket full of cash and decided I was going to go and see what I can do if I can help anywhere. And that led me to Uganda. I ended up in a little town with a refugee camp called Arua. It was right on the border with Sudan to the north and drc, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and refugees pouring in like crazy. People are crossing the borders and, you know, getting lost, et cetera, et cetera. I started driving out to regions close to the border and seeing these refugees coming across, mostly dehydrated. I kind of gave them water and pointed them to Rhino refugee camp and Said, that's where they can look after you. Then I ran into a couple of pilots and they were going to Goma, which is in the drc. All sorts of stuff's happening there.
- [14:24]
Narrator/Contextual Historian
You know, we can always use pilots.
- [14:26]
Gray Doyle
And I said, what are you guys flying? They told me what they're flying. I told them I was qualified on those planes and they said, come. I don't know what possessed me. I just jumped on an airplane and next minute I'm in Goma working for this aviation company, flying air ambulances to mass casualty incidences, to road accidents, to gunshot places. I mean, every day was so different. While flying air ambulances, quite often we'd end up in a mass casualty incident where there's been a village being shot up. You know, they're busy patching people together and trying to airlift people and get people out. We'd come across villages that had been raided, warlords basically destroying a village. Completely stayed out there for three months flying in those areas. I felt for the first time in a very long time, I was making a difference. It wasn't a big difference, but I was making some difference. But I was lacking in a lot of skills. I could fly an airplane, but they needed medical help as well. And quite often doing the air ambulance work. I was completely underqualified and out of my depth and I wanted to do more. When you start seeing a mass casualty incident where the M23 rebels have come through a village and have slaughtered anybody, that's no good to them. The women being brutally raped and there are no children because the children have been taken to work in the mines and the girls were taken as child brides or prizes for the officers and soldiers. It does something to you. And I think that's when something switched in me while I was there. Everything is moving so fast. You're on the ground, you've seen all these horrific things that you're seeing and your heart goes out to them, but you don't process it while you're there. You start talking like everything's normal, but you get on the plane to come home and you lose it. I remember boarding a flight. I flew from Goma to Entebbe and I don't remember anything until I got to Amsterdam except for that I was crying. Apparently I was saying things while I was asleep. The flight attendant woke me up basically and said, are you okay? And my shirt was wet. I was so mentally and physically drained and emotionally raw. You cannot believe what you've seen, you cannot believe what you've gone through. And More importantly, you cannot believe that you've survived it. I was standing in Skipole Airport waiting for my flight back to Boston. I don't know how this came about. It's many years ago now, but all I realized was I need to do something to help. It's the strangest feeling because I want to run away from it because it's so painful, but I also want to run towards it to make a difference. I knew at that point I was going to do this every year. I was going to go out every year until I ran out of money. I feel I was rescued as a kid and I think maybe that's what it was that made me want to do this, made me want to save somebody else or make somebody else's life a little bit better. Because I know sure as I'm sitting here right now, my life was made infinitely better by one person. In 97, I got back, I started calling a few aid agencies and I decided, well, I'm going to go and do my two year EMT course. And that's sort of your basic bottom line entry level to working on an ambulance. Well, early 98, I fly back back to Uganda and I'm making my way up north. I've run across a couple of people. They were telling me that they had been working at this camp called Lubadji and people need help there. And I said, okay, well, that's where I'm going. So armed with my 25 boxes of mosquito nets, I head up towards Lubaji. I'm in another small rural town and I'm at a hotel. I'm busy writing my journals and keeping notes of what was going on. And this waiter comes up and starts talking to me. Just a gregarious, outgoing young waiter. Must have been 22. It was just something about him. And he said he was finished his shift. I said, well, let's go for a walk and you could show me around the town. So he said, sure. So anyway, we go outside and he's showing me around. And I said, where are you from? And he said, I'm from Rubai. And I said, I'm going to Lubaji tomorrow. And he sort of went a little bit quiet. He said, I'm ashamed. I said, why are you ashamed, Patrick? And he went into his story. He was a child soldier from the Lord's Resistance Army, Joseph Coney. He said, they came to our village just before Christmas. I was nine years old. My brother was 12 years old, my sister was eight years old. They burnt our village. They collected the Children. All the huts were burning. My father begged that he'd leave us alone. And they shot him. They raped my mother. I had to pass by a woman that had her breasts cut off while she was being raped. And we were tied hand to hand. And then when I looked back at my village that was burning, I was beaten and said, there's nothing left in Uganda for you. You are now in the Lord's Resistance Army. And he was marched into Sudan. These are days and days, and if you fell down, they beat you. If you couldn't get up, they killed you. And when they got to Sudan, he had a feeling something was going to happen to his sister. And his sister's name was Joyce, knew something was going to happen to Joyce. When the soldiers had been drinking, he and his brother cut Joyce free and told her to run back to Uganda and don't look back. They thought she got away, but a few hours later, they dragged her back into the crowd and said, is anybody a relation to her? And he and his brother said, yes, that's my sister. And they gave him an AK47 and said he had to kill his sister. And he killed his sister because her life being dead was better than what she was going to have when she was with these people. He fought in the Lord's Resistance army for a few years. His brother got killed. He was injured. When he was 16 or 17 years old, he pretended he was dead, and they left him. And he made his way back. And he got to Labadji Camp. He didn't tell them what had happened. He just said he was shot. He didn't say he was in the Lord's Resistance army because he thought he might get killed. And they raised him at this camp. And then he started his own life again working at this hotel. He spent seven years of his life killing people. And he was only 17 years old. It gave me a whole new look. And, you know, they don't choose to become child soldiers. They're forced to become child soldiers. I got to Labadji, checked into a hotel, and I remember having such a hot shower, and I could not get myself clean until the water ran cold. And then I sat in the cold water. That really drove me to want to do more, to want the world to know more.
- [22:25]
Indra Varma
I'm Indra Varma, and in the latest season of the Spy who, we open the file on Larry Chin, the spy who outplayed Nixon. For decades, Chin was embedded deep inside US Intelligence. Then comes an opportunity. Richard Nixon's secret plan to reopen relations with China information Chin can place directly into Mao's hands. But the CIA has a weapon of their own, a Chinese mole ready to defect. How long until Qin's gig is up? Follow the spy who now wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [23:04]
Gray Doyle
So over the next number of years, I had been married, I had a child, got divorced, continued doing aid work, and that took me back to Uganda, and that was where I ended up working again, near Rhino refugee camp up in Arua. This time it was different. I had a little bit more time under my belt. I had my medical training, so I volunteered in the little hospital there doing triage work, setting up IVs, sitting, talking to patients, malnutrition. People have walked hundreds of miles across the desert. And that's when it struck me. How bad was your life that you had to walk upwards of 2, 300 km through a desert, fending off wild animals to cross into another person's country to live in a tent? Rhino refugee camp at that time housed 125,000 refugees, both from the Congo and and from Sudan. To put that in perspective, a city of 125,000 people in the United States would have upwards of 2,000 medically trained people, two or three hospitals, 600 maybe doctors. This camp would have maybe a couple of paramedics, maybe a nurse and a doctor once a month to look after 125,000 people. I ended up going to Congo. A village had been raided. Children again were taken. Soldiers had come in and so they said, secured the place, but they'd found a girl that had been hidden and they were going to have their way with her. And I pretty much lost it. Here's a village of peasants, of people that just want to go about their lives. Subsistence farmers, mud huts. They have nothing, but they're happy, they're kind, most beautiful people. But they just suffered so much with their village being raided, their women being raped, their men being beaten up, their children being taken. And then the soldiers come in, who are the good guys, apparently? And they're there to protect the village. And they. Yet they do the same atrocities as the rebels. I'm going into rage, rage at the injustices. I don't know what possessed me. I come rushing in and then beaten severely and then sort of in and out of consciousness. I wasn't in prison. I was in a army barracks where they keep bad soldiers, I guess, locked up. There was anything between 14 and 16 of us in this very small cell, no toilet. You basically defecated and urinated where you slept. The food was thrown in There in tin plates, and half of it fell on the floor in amongst everything else. So not only was my physical injuries, I ended up contracting typhoid and cholera at the same time. Most of the time I was unconscious, thank God, But I do remember the kindness of the people that were surrounding me, the prisoners. I don't know why they were kind to me, but they were the guys that looked after me. But I was not getting any better. That's when they, they said, you know, was carrying an Irish passport and they think, yeah, this is the guy that would want to be here and cause an international stink. I think someone's going to miss him one day. So, well, let's dump him out of the border. And that's what they did. Late in 2007, I found myself going back to DRC and I met this doctor there, a French doctor. He had come to the Congo to do some medical work at some point in his life. He was quite a bit younger, and he had fallen in love with the country. It was really hard not to. And he started looking after children that had come out of the Colton mines. They had been brutally, brutally treated and he looked after them. He was loved by everybody in the community and hated by the warlords. These rebels had come through and had done what they had usually did, pillaging, torture. And I was working. There was a couple of local nurses, him as the doctor, myself as an emt. And most of these people were women coming in and they had been brutally, brutally raped. I remember one that was walking in there and her legs covered in blood, her dress was ripped, and she was carrying a child, and the child was bleeding exactly like the mother was bleeding. So I was doing some suture work, putting hemostatic dressing on, and this woman sort of half came round, looked at me and she kicked me in the face. I staggered back, knocked everything over, everything all over the place. They tried to hold her down, telling her it was okay, that I was a doctor. Of course I wasn't a doctor, just that I was in scrubs. And I walked out of the clinic and I was sitting behind the cook area, and Pierre came and sat next to me and told me it was, it was okay. And I said, no, it wasn't okay. Nothing's okay. He said to me, you're not going to save everybody. If you can make a difference in one person's life, you're doing a good thing. You lasted longer than most and you've seen the worst of everything. A few years later, he was killed in an ambush by the Warlords. He was a good man. I thought that you needed to go out and fix everything. Everything that was broken and everything that was wrong and everything that needed to be fixed needed to be fixed by me. And those words that Pierre told me kind of made sense. I couldn't save the world. I just needed to do what I can with what I had, where I was, and that needs to be good enough. So that's what I did. My next missions were Latin America, you know, a couple of other places, natural disasters, a couple more refugee camps. And going forward into those, armed with that knowledge that I'm not going to save everybody, my whole message became different. Originally, I'd go in there and say, okay, you need this and you want mosquito nets and you need this. How do I know what they need? I'm not them. I don't know what they need. So I'd go. And my whole message changed was, what is it that you need? How can I help? I found that I could focus a lot more on one task at hand. I've delivered three children, all three under emergency situations in crazy locations sometimes. Nothing else ever happened. But I brought a child into this world in a torrential downpour in the middle of Paulo in the Philippines, or delivered in the back of my Land Rover. I didn't have to save the world anymore, and that felt good. So I spent the next few years mostly spending time with my children. My ex wife went away for a while and I looked after the kids. I also needed a break. I found coming back, reintroducing myself into a first world society. I think I struggled more than I admitted. I recall a time just coming back off from a mission and going into Tim Hortons coffee shop and listening to somebody complaining how long it was taking to get a cup of coffee. And I wasn't having a happy time in my head with this, because I'm thinking, you voluntarily walked into a shop. You saw how long the line was when you came into the shop. You stood in the line, and then you had the audacity to complain. I just come from a place where they spent three days standing on the side of the road with a empty plate waiting for a bowl of rice to show up in a truck. And all of a sudden I'm in an argument with somebody who I thought was being rude and complaining bitterly and loudly over a cup of coffee. And I found myself doing that more and more often. I left a lot of me on these sites when I came home. It's really interesting that you notice the people who have nothing, complain about nothing. And people who have everything tend to complain about everything. So I really wasn't a very nice person coming home because I couldn't handle first world problems because I didn't understand them. This person's problem, what problem does he have? His car won't start. He has a car, you know, he got laid off from work. He had a job, there's more. Turn on his light. His electricity came on. Really, what is your problem? And that was wrong of me, Very, very wrong. The nightmare started. Heavy smoking. Spent an awful lot of time crying, beating myself up. And I felt that I was not doing enough. I had gone back to work, doing some contract flying. I was making money, I was happy. Ish. But I needed more. And then I started itching to go back. Not sure if I wanted to run away from myself towards disaster, when maybe standing still might have served me better. Once you see the discrepancies between the haves and the have nots, and you are the have, it behooves you to go out to try and help. It's kind of a bug that gets you. And that took me to the next natural disaster, which was in Tacloban, the Philippines. In 2013. They had a storm, one of the biggest typhoons make landfall. Over a hundred thousand people were killed. It was a mess. I started off in a clinic actually just outside of Tacloban. Didn't speak a word of Tagalo nor wadai wadai which they speak in that area. And I had some madman at two o' clock in the morning banging on my door, yelling at me, couldn't figure out what he was saying. And finally one of the nuns had come out from the German nun next door said, he says that there's a woman who's pregnant, is having a baby and you have to come and help. So myself and the nun went down. Then we delivered this child in the middle of a pouring storm in a tin shack. Which then led me to spending some time there and working in the neighborhoods which had been devastated during the storm. Dengue was on the rise and people were still sick, not from the typhoons, but the aftermath, which is like the waterborne diseases like, you know, cholera and typhoid and chitin gunya. And I worked seven at night until seven o'clock in the morning. Friday nights were crazy. We had a lot of drunken drivers, a lot of accidents. So it got kind of busy. Then one night in particular, we had two ambulances show up. So we dragged them in and we start patching them up and we've got them in a couple of beds. They were fairly quiet that night. About an hour and a half later, I would say everybody's sort of all stitched up. And my shift ends and I go back to bed and I'm lying in bed and all hell breaks loose again. One ambulance, another ambulance, another ambulance. I'm like, what is going on? I hadn't fallen asleep yet. So I'm like, I better go back in the ER and walk back in. And the place is absolutely jam packed. So we have another motorcycle accident come in. As this guy gets wheeled in there, he's got head trauma and they call for this doctor and he starts dealing with this guy. And I go back to do my triage. About an hour later, he walks over to me, introduces himself as the chief neurosurgeon. I'm like, chief neurosurgeon? When did we get one of those? I said, I've been here two months. I didn't even know we had one. He wasn't arrogant, he was kind and he was sweet and he was brilliant. I came to find out and I say, guys, well, I think I'm done now. I think I'm gonna go and get some sleep. And just as I'm going to go get some sleep, an expat walks in there, this Dutch fellow that I had met a few weeks ago. Hey, what are you doing? Great. And then, oh, you've got to come tonight. Radio Abonte is having a gathering and it's a reggae night and come on, you got to come, you got to come. And I said, okay, I'll come over and have a beer with you guys. So I go back and go have a shower. It's still busy in the er, so I end up helping in the ER a little bit longer. And by now it's four o' clock in the afternoon. There's no chance I'm going to get any sleep. The jeepney shows up about 7 o' clock and we go out to Radio Bunte and we get there and everybody's frantic. Someone tells me, oh, the little girl was shot in the head. Music's blaring. And I'm the only person who knows a neurosurgeon that doesn't need to get an airplane to go to. I go see this Irish fellow, his name is Paddy, and he is running Radio Bunting, no money. She was shot in Paola. She's at evrmc. That's where she's at, if she's alive. So I said, let's Go to evrmc. And I walk in there, and there's this frail woman standing there, and they're very religious. Then there's a little cutout in the wall, and there's a little Jesus statue there. And she's praying to the statue. And I walk in, she looks at me, and she runs up and she says, I've been praying that I would come and save her daughter. And I'm like, oh, nothing like putting a little bit of pressure on here. They've got her on dopamine, and they're keeping her comfortable. Anyone in this field will tell you keeping them comfortable means if we don't do anything, she's going to die. It was an accidental shooting. There was two men arguing in a shoe store. One shot the one in the chest. The bullet went into the chest, killed him instantly, but exited out of his back and hit the little girl in the back of the head where she was looking for shoes. I call our hospital. Our hospital calls the neurosurgeon. The neurosurgeon agrees to take the case. And we get this little girl in the back of the ambulance. He's driving. I'm doing the vitals, and we get her out of the ambulance, and in she goes to surgery. I stood at the glass watching the whole surgery. She died once on the table. They brought her back again, and they took out 27 bone fragments. But she pulled through. I watched her go into recovery, and her mother was standing there. Mother gave me a big hug. It was of those moments that felt right. But I walked out of there, and then all the emotions hit me. You know, what happens if I was wrong? I gave this woman false hope. All these doubts that I had just came rushing back. Plus being up for over 36 hours or 40 hours. I don't even know how long I'd been awake at this point. I literally slid down the wall and then just collapsed. She stayed at the hospital for about three weeks, and I went to talk to her every single day, but she was, of course, unconscious the whole time. So they kept her pretty well drugged up. And her family slept on the floor, and she slept in the bed. And so we bring them food up from the kitchen. And every time before I went on to shift, I would come up and see her, and then I would sit on the bed and talk to her. And then I had to go away for a week. By the time I got back to the hospital, the neck was discharged without me ever seeing her, without her ever seeing me. But she had heard my voice, and Through a couple of friends at the hospital that helped me track her down where she was. And we went out one Saturday morning to the village where she was living in. She was completely shocked, just staring at me, had no idea who I was. It was just this big white guy standing in her village with a big, beaming, stupid smile on my face, because I'd never seen her awake. Her mother was holding her hand, and her mother had this big, beaming smile on her face. And as soon as I started speaking, Ninette's face lit up. Apparently she could hear me while she was in recovery. Of course, she didn't understand the English, but she could understand my voice. And sometimes you just need to show that you care. It was a moment that Pierre's words had come back to me. You know, you can make a difference in one person's life. And that's what it was in the Philippines. That's what it was. It was little Nanette Lasello, who is now 20 years old, and she's okay. I left the Philippines shortly after that. By now I'm in Canada, splitting my time between my kids and doing some contract flying at the time, you know, spent some time working in the Middle East. Many years ago, I had done a motorcycle ride from London to Cape Town that took me through Turkey, Syria and Jordan. I always remembered how much I loved Syria, how wonderful the people were. Aleppo had the oldest souks in the world, and just a really friendly, amazing people that I ran into there.
- [40:21]
Narrator/Contextual Historian
Syria had been caught up in the Arab Spring, which had begun in 2010, 2011. People had pretty much grown tired of the oppressive dictatorships in the Middle east and North Africa. The uprising saw the fall of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Zin Al Abedin of Tunisia. And one of the most televised was the capture and the brutal assassination of Amum Al Gaddafi of Libya. Bashir Al Assad of Syria, of course, he was still holding on, but he had a lot of support from Russia, and they had built a naval station in an air base in Syria. And they were committed to seeing Bashir pretty much retain power.
- [40:57]
Gray Doyle
Aleppo had not really made the news at this point. They'd been. Of course, there had been some skirmishes and things happening in and around Syria. I don't know what drew me. I just. I just, for some reason, needed to go there. I flew into Istanbul and then drove down, and border crossing was fine. Anyway, I am now in downtown Aleppo, and I realized this is a lot more serious than I thought it was. You know, again, my tendency to leap before I look, I ended up going to this hospital and saying, you know, you guys need some help, blah, blah, this is who I am, this is what I've done. Sure. So anyway, I start again working triage desk. And then things start picking up. During the time I was there, there
- [41:43]
Narrator/Contextual Historian
were a lot of factions that were fighting to pretty much free Syria, including the Free Syrian Army. ISIS was another one. They all had different ideologies. They all wanted something different, but they didn't want Assad. Most of the bombing campaign came from Assad. The chemical bombs came from Assad. The bombings came from either the Russian military in the Russian air force or Assad. They were bombing their own people in the guise of trying to get rid of the people that wanted to get rid of him. It was a very, very complicated situation.
- [42:17]
Gray Doyle
And within a week of me being at this hotel, I decided I'm going to move into the hospital because I could be called anytime. There's more shellings, more bombings. I was thinking, you know, this is going to happen dodgy. I think I probably need to leave sometime soon. I recall one night I am working triage and I'm doing resps on this guy, I'm counting his rest and I'm looking at this clock and all of a sudden the building starts shaking. And I'm thinking, oh shoot, here it comes. I saw looking around the emergency room, the lights dim, they come back up. Everyone's putting their headlamps on. So we all get our headlamps ready. We know a bomb's gone off fairly close by. The closest hospital to us was destroyed a few weeks prior. So anyway, ambulance stop pulling in, lights are off, the flashes aren't on. This is how people start traveling around because you survive a bombing and then you get killed in an ambulance heading to get put back together again. Anyway, the ER is now jam packed. People are spilling out of the ambulances, cars, motorcycles, anything that carry people were coming into the error. We worked as hard as we can for as long as we could all night long. Just horrible mass casualty incident. Anyway, I finished work about seven o' clock in the morning. You were sliding on blood. You never had time to change your gloves. You would just sort of stabilize one turn, the next one dies. Arterial spray all over the place. You got the dead lying on the ground, they're covered in sheets. Or you got the dead just lying on the ground in a pile of blood, got other people bleeding out. It was a war zone inside the hospital. So I had a place on the second floor behind the pediatric room. I Would go in there to talk to the nurses. And I think it did a lot for me. It was like I went to a room where children were still breathing, There was still life, and there was still hope, because there was nothing in the ER Doing was very little hope. There was more dead than. Than alive.
- [44:20]
Narrator/Contextual Historian
One of the nurses that I got to know really well was a young woman called ar. She was an amazing young woman, super dedicated, well educated. She was a respected nurse, and she worked in the pediatric ward. Her English was fantastic. And she would often work with me on my Arabic. And I recall her having this. This incredible, incredible, infectious smile and a
- [44:42]
Gray Doyle
quick wit, Undying love for her work,
- [44:46]
Narrator/Contextual Historian
her country, and the kids in her care.
- [44:49]
Gray Doyle
So I would go upstairs and I would talk to them and practice my Arabic, and they would tease me because I spoke terrible Arabic. And I was just getting ready to go to bed, and so I'm busy talking to them. And an orderly called me, Greg, can you take this one down to Radiology? Said, okay, fine. What's another 10 minutes of my life? And I didn't realize those 10 minutes saved my life. You couldn't go down the elevator. There was an elevator, but you had to use ramps next to the stairs. And it was a little boy, and he was in a plaster cast. I'm taking him down to Radiology to get X rays. I get to the lower level. So I was at Radiology when the bomb hit. Basically hit the top of our building. I put myself over the kid, and then I remember hitting a wall. I don't remember much else after that. I came to. My ears were ringing, and I'm coughing and choking and spluttering glass everywhere, and I didn't know where I was. I was completely disorientated. So I was crawling on the ground and cutting my hands and my knees, and my scrubs were getting ripped. Finally, Fine. Found something to pull myself up with and kind of orientate myself, try to find a wall. Found a wall. Then I kicked something on the ground and it moaned and realized it was the little boy. And then I yelled out that I was in this place. They eventually came rushing through the door. I was standing there. I was holding the kid. They dragged me out. I was completely out of it. They patched me up outside it. Place was a absolute war zone. There was fires burning everywhere from the bombing. The hospital was pretty much gone. It was just one wall, major wall standing, and not much else was left of it. Maybe an hour and a half later, I've been drinking water. I'm Rehydrated. And now I think it was adrenaline. I got to get doing something now. And I saw white helmets pulling people out of the building and stuff. So I went over there and I said, I got to do something. What can I do? And he said, okay, come with me. And that was probably the hardest thing I'd ever had to do, was go back into a building that I just got bombed out of. People were still coming out. They were still dragging people out that were alive. We climbed up over the wreckage and everything and got to the second floor where I had just been standing two hours prior. And there was not one person alive in there. I would have been one of them if I didn't take this kid down to the radiology. There's rubble everywhere, people laid out on the floor. And I have to tell you, I'm claustrophobic as heck, And I'm going down through this collapsed tunnel, and it's getting narrower and narrower and narrower, and I'm getting more and more agitated. We come out into this opening, and there's one white helmet standing there and said, there's one here, and she's alive. Knelt down, didn't recognize her at first, and then realized it was Barij, the girl that I spent every day learning Arabic with, trapped in the rubble. She made a joke with me, told me I owed her cigarettes because we used to bump smokes from each other and breaks. I lay down there, and I just nodded. And I guess he knew that I was going to stay with her. And he went up through the rubble. And I can smell the spray paint. They spray a little marking that there's people trapped and alive so they mark where they can come back and find you. And I lay with her, talked with her, and I said, you know, don't worry. We'll. We'll get you out of here. And her words to me, she said, don't. Please don't lie to me. She knew what was happening. She didn't want any nonsense. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to make sure that she would be okay because she spent her life making sure everybody else was okay. And she was young, she was late 20s. She spent her time working in pediatrics, looking after children. She made sure everyone else was okay. She asked me to tell her a story about something beautiful. I realized that there was two of us down there talking to each other, and I was having a conversation with somebody I knew was going to die, and I was going to walk away. And she asked me to pray with her. I'm not religious at all. I prayed with her at that time. I had done it so many times. I could recite the Arabic death prayer. Her last words to me was great. You were always kind. Thank you. I stayed with her for a few more minutes and then really panicked when I crawled up the tunnel. I'd seen a lot of really horrible things, but I think that one was sort of the final nail in the coffin. I couldn't do much after that. In the first year after Aleppo, I was a jigsaw puzzle in the wrong box. I didn't fit into anybody's life. I didn't fit into my kids life. I didn't have a relationship, I couldn't have a relationship. I found fault with everything and it was everybody's fault. It was completely unfair. I only know that now. But then nightmares, waking up screaming. Nightmares of things I couldn't fix. For years and years I was able to compartmentalize things. I had my flying life, I had my life with my children. I had my aid work life after a lepa. I couldn't compartmentalize. I couldn't put things in the right files. Things that came from my aid work came into my gardening files, into my flying files, into my driving files, into my files for my children. These little files in my head were getting all mixed up. That led me down a very angry road. Cameron was with me one day when I kind of went off at somebody. He said, this is not you, dad. He was right. It wasn't me. Much to the point that I decided I'm going to get on my motorcycle and I'm going to go for a ride. And I wasn't going to ride around the block. I was just going to ride until. Till I could think straight again. That ride took me down through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica. And by the time I got to the Pacific coast in Costa Rica, I realized I still had these problems with me. They had come with me, I hadn't left them behind. I just had taken them on a beautiful joyride. I was running away from something that was inside of me. And the only way to deal with stuff that's inside of you is get that stuff out of you. And that's what led me to going to somebody eventually insane. I need help. It was a hard thing for me to say because I don't usually ask for help. I'm the guy giving the help. I was strong. I could shoot a rifle, I could hunt, I could fish, I could fly airplanes, I could ride motorcycles across deserts. I was a medic I was a pilot. I was a bush pilot. I made my own destiny. I didn't need to ask anybody for anything. I'm going to go fix everything. And maybe I was trying to fix everything because I was so broken. And I think I may have needed help from when I was a child. You go into a place where they've lost everything, including hope. That's a pretty dark place to be in. And I found with a little bit of compassion, a little bit of empathy, a little bit of trying to understand, that's all people ask for. I never asked for it myself, although I think I needed someone to understand me. I needed somebody to get me, Hugh, my son, and my partner now would be the three people that have really believed in me. I pretended to believe in me. I think I was like, yeah, I'm good, I'm good. But I don't think I was ever really good. But one thing I knew that I always could do in abundance was care. I cared, and I still care deeply and especially for those who are forgotten, those who have forgotten themselves after all these years of going and doing, you do tend to leave sometimes more of you there than you bring home. And I think I eventually hit rock bottom. When I was empty, I was completely depleted. What drove me to do the aid work was the passion to help, the caring, the understanding how blessed I was and feeling the emotions that of the people that I was trying to help. But after a while, I had no feelings. It was just like, yeah, okay, so you need four stitches here. And, oh, I'm sorry that your child got hurt. It wasn't me anymore. It was no passion, no feeling. My empathy had gone. I had left every part of me on the field. All these broken pieces of the globe. I had left enough of me in each of these places that when I was done, I was done. There was no more to give, no more to feel. When you realize that there's something completely broken in you is when you can't feel anymore. I've met a lot of aid workers out there in the field, and they come back and people go, well done. Well done, you. You've done an excellent job. Oh, my God, you're so brave for going out there. How are you doing? And they're going, yeah, no, I'm fine. It was great. I had a good time. They don't see what these people have left behind. When I first published my first book, which is about aid working, that was in 2005, at that point, 7,840 aid workers had either been killed Kidnapped, tortured, or disappeared or since 1997. According to the Aid Workers Security Database, these are 7,840 people who are our neighbors that have had their lives irrevocably, unquestionably destroyed for trying to help. There's a lot of people out there that carry scars that are invisible to everybody. You walk past them in the street and you wouldn't know these are just good people. When I finally realized I needed some help, I'd alienated friends. I had annoyed neighbors. I had done things that I usually wouldn't do, like yelling out of my car window at somebody who's just driving too slowly, and I was snapping at my kids. I swear I'd never yell at my children. And I realized I needed some help. When I first got help, I voluntarily went in and said, I need some help. I literally stayed in this clinic house. Group therapy with soldiers, frontline workers, things like that. I could get where they're coming from. When I sat with the soldiers, we talked in depth. Some of them had been physically badly injured. Others were mental trauma. And I went, yeah, I get that. Then they put you in a room full of people with problems because their mother didn't treat them right or something wasn't right. And I was resentful, and I really didn't like that. But over the weeks, I realized that first world people do have problems. They might not be the problems I've seen. Yes, they were first world problems, and yes, they appeared minor, but they weren't minor. They are real problems. They are real problems that affect them. And I've learned to be more empathetic and more caring. I don't have to be in a war zone. I don't have to be in a refugee camp. I don't have to be in a typhoon to realize that my neighbor is struggling. My friend's daughter has had a tough time at school. My son's had a tough time, and they need help. So I've had to realize that we all suffer, and there are different degrees of suffering. Had to work hard at having empathy for somebody that I thought in the beginning really didn't need to be in this session. They just needed to get on with their lives and just, you know, walk it off, girl. It ain't a big thing. Walk it off, man. But when I had to actually think about their problems and had to actually put myself in their shoes, that I started having feelings for these people, that I started feeling empathy for them, that I started becoming a little bit more compassionate, I started feeling again and when you have feeling, you start living again. Three days ago I turned 62. I've had a roller coaster of a life. I have seen the very best and the very worst in humanity. I have been in very, very dark places, physically and mentally. But I have found one of the hardest battles in the world I think I've ever fought, and one I think that we should all fight is saving ourselves. To care about yourself, to make sure that you're okay is the greatest battle that you are ever going to fight. You know, for all the adversities and all the crazy nonsense that happened on my journey, the hardest thing was saving me. I've learned to be more empathetic and more caring. I don't have to be in a war zone, I don't have to be in a refugee camp, I don't have to be in a typhoon to realize that my neighbor is struggling, my son's had a tough time and they need help. I'm not cured. I still am very short sometimes with people that I don't really see their problem. But I am a work in progress and I will get better. I'm grateful for having the life that I've had and I'm grateful for the people that have stayed with me. And I'm thankful for just being able to be where I am today. I can feel passion and love and compassion. I can feel it all again.
- [59:46]
Wit Misseldine
Today's episode featured Gray Doyle. Gray has authored a book entitled Meet Me in Zanzibar, a gripping tale of redemption, love and sacrifice set against the backdrop of the world's most dangerous and unpredictable areas. If you'd like to reach out to Gray, you can find his email in the show. Notes from Audible Originals. You're listening to this Is Actually Happening.
- [60:11]
Podcast Host/Producer
If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts Amazon Music to listen ad free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host Wit Misseldine. Today's episode was co produced by me, Jason Blaylock and Andrew Waits with special thanks to the this Is Actually Happening team including Ellen Westberg.
- [60:37]
Wit Misseldine
We'd also like to thank Head of Creative Development at Audible, Kate Navin, Head of Audible Originals North America Marshall Louie and Chief Content Officer Rachel Gyazza. Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC Sound Recording Copyright 2026 by Audible Originates LLC the opening music features the song Sleep Paralysis by Scott Velasquez.
- [61:02]
Podcast Host/Producer
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- [61:43]
Wit Misseldine
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