Dame Claire Bertschinger

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Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

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My castaway this week is the nurse and humanitarian Dane Claire Birchinger.

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She's worked for the Red Cross in over a dozen countries, including Sudan, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Liberia, amid the sort of raw human suffering that most of us find, even on the T V virtually unbearable to witness.

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In fact, it was through Michael Burke's landmark news reports on the Ethiopian famine thirty years ago that she first grabbed our attention. We saw her as a young nurse surrounded by thousands of starving people and forced daily

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to make the truly terrible decision of choosing who to feed.

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Throughout the years she's won numerous plaudits and awards, but her Florence Nightingale Medal pretty much says it all, given to honour those who've distinguished themselves in times of war by exceptional courage and devotion to the wounded, sick, or disabled. She says I don't just live to eat and sleep and get money to have a nice house.

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I have to create value. I have to do something in life.

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Let's talk first of all then, Claire, about this impulse to do something. For you it has meant devoting your life to being in parts of the world where people are really suffering. No, I think that's much too serious. That is I just in my life I just like to get up and do things rather than just I can't I'm not very good at sitting down reading a book, let's put it that way.

Dame Claire Bertschinger1:44

Are you suffering?

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Right.

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I'm going to get a little bit serious with you, and you're going to have to bear with me on this, because this year is the 150th anniversary of the Geneva Convention.

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Something that's been a sort of guiding principle for you in a very real way. Why is it important to you? It's the one flash of humanity in all wars. So this flash of red, you see, is the Red Cross. And the first Geneva Convention was about care of the sick and the wounded and prisoners and not to shoot the nurses and doctors.

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And if you think about now, in Syria, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, there's been thirty four nurses that have been, or volunteers that have died.

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And many more have been detained or have gone missing. And these are volunteers.

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Humanities and the Red Cross and the Congenio Conventions is just as important now as it ever was. Well, talk about handbrake turns. I'm about to ask you to introduce a piece of music that people will not be expecting. Tell us about this first choice this morning and what is it and why have you chosen it? Okay, it's a bitsy teeny weeny yellow poker stop bikini. In my childhood I was brought up very much in the countryside and during the summer holidays we often all piled into a car. I've got two other brothers and a sister. And we travelled across Europe via Switzerland because we've got relatives in Switzerland down to the south of France and spend our summer holidays on a beach and just lived in our bikinis.

Dame Claire Bertschinger2:59

Okay.

Dame Claire Bertschinger3:24

It was an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka-daughter kinie that she wore for the first time

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Hey Mitsy Bitsy Keeny Weeny Yellow Pokemony

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Uh

Dame Claire Bertschinger3:37

So in

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The blanket she wanted to stay

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Yeah.

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Now she's afraid to come out of the water And I wonder what she's gonna do.

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Brian Hyman singing Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini and memories for you, Claire, of being on the beach in France for all those happy summers with your family, camping under the stars and enjoying the life outdoors. You said that you would drive through Switzerland because you'd Swiss relatives. Yes. Were both your parents Swiss? No, my father was Swiss. In fact, my grandparents came over here. They met over here. They were Swiss. So although my father was born here, he did a lot of his education in Switzerland. So tell me, first of all, then a little bit more about your mother. What was she like?

Dame Claire Bertschinger4:09

Yeah.

Dame Claire Bertschinger4:15

We miss

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My mommy was lovely. My mother was from the East End of London and she was really great fun to be with and always she used to tell us about, you know, I can't be doing housework all the time because the house is always going to be dirty and as soon as I've cleaned it up it's going to be dirty again. So come on, let's go outside and have fun and she used to call it flying the kites because you have to fly the kites when there's wind. So you have to pick the right moment. Tell me about your dad then. What was his background? He was Swiss nationality, although he was born here in Britain. He joined the Swiss Army which was obligatory for Swiss nationals and then war broke out and so he came back to Britain and joined up with the British Army and served throughout the war. He was very strict, loved teaching us to be self-sufficient, to be prepared, to be loyal. It was very important.

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My mother used to preserve a lot of vegetables and fruit in the old kilner jars, very old, and th th his vegetable patch was very um regimented, typical Swiss. I remember we we were very different as other families, and I don't quite couldn't really put my finger on it, but I know we did things very differently, and we were seen as foreign. In terms of being prepared, I mean, what did he want you to be prepared for?

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Be prepared for everything in life, be self-sufficient. I think the main thing when I first realized what he was in Verticom was training me for is when I joined the Red Cross. And I remember him saying,

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We know quietly too much now.

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You can't rely on people. You've got to be able to stand on your own two feet, Claire, when you're in war. And he he made sure that you had Anglo Swiss citizenship, and actually that was crucial to what you would end up doing.

Dame Claire Bertschinger6:04

But actually that

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It was because I joined the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is the Swiss branch of the Red Cross, who's very proud of being Swiss, which I am as well.

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Time for some more music, Claire Barchinger. Tell me about what we're going to hear now. It's your second choice. Second choice is the Song of Hiawatha. I used to carry this in a little booklet around with me.

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And it brings back to me all what my life was about as a child. It's about calmness and happiness. And it's about Hiawatha, who comes out of his tent, and the sun is rising and streaming through the trees, and he's got bare feet on the ground and the dew, and he can smell the moisture in the air, and he can hear the bees and the humming and the birds singing. And when I read it, I don't actually read the words.

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These pictures pop up, and I'm home again. I'm home at the end of the garden in the woods.

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Oh, and the other main thing is, I was Hiawatha. I didn't know Hiawatha was a man when I was reading it. So I was Hiawatha and I was standing there and I was immediately back home and calm.

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By the shore of Gitche Gumi, By the shining big sea water, At the doorway of his wigwam, In the pleasant summer morning, Hiawatha stood and waited. All the air was full of freshness, All the earth was bright and joyous, And before him through the sunshine, Westward toward the neighbouring forest, Passed in golden swarms the Amo, Passed the bees, the honeymakers, Burning, singing in the sunshine. Bright above him shone the heavens, Level spread the lake before him, From its bosom leapt the sturgeon, Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine On its margin the great forest Stood reflected in the water Every tree top had its shadow, Motionless beneath the water.

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That was part of Hiawatha, written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, read there by Peter Yearsley. And you said, Clear, as we went into that, that you.

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When you're enjoying that piece of porter, you're not reading it, you're you're seeing it and feeling the sensations.

Dame Claire Bertschinger8:11

And feeling the sensation.

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You're dyslexic. Now, when you were at school, there wasn't that much at that point that was understood or known about dyslexia. How did you get on?

Dame Claire Bertschinger8:19

Slacks, yeah.

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I was bought on my class, and I was put in a class a year younger than me, and I was still pretty near the bottom of that one, and when I looked back at it, the words didn't really make sense at all. So I was given the title as a late developer.

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And when I was 16, 15, 16, I knew I wanted to be a nurse, and then I suggested to do a pre-nursing course at Loughton College of Further Education.

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That allowed me to be more practical and spend one day a week in a hospital. And at that time, also, the O-levels were put as projects. So I used to do a project perhaps on health visiting and go and take photographs, and I could write a sentence under the photographs of what I'd seen. So I managed to get enough exams to get into nursing. And you said you knew you wanted to be a nurse. When did you know?

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All my life I always knew I wanted to be a nurse. When I was bandaging my teddies, I knew I was going to be a nurse and I knew I was going to work in Africa. You did your training at it was St Mary's Hospital in Paddington in London. I wonder what it was. You said I knew I I wanted to work abroad, I knew I wanted to be a nurse.

Dame Claire Bertschinger9:20

Uh

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Where

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Where was the motivation?

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I I didn't want to put myself in danger. I just enjoyed nursing. I was good at accident and emergency.

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Type of work.

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I

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Got quite depressed with long-term care of people. That really upset me. So I didn't want to do that. I wanted to do trauma.

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And I was good at it in war zones because it was a lot of first aid. I want to talk about your time in Lebanon. Crossing the front lines. You were meeting people who they called themselves freedom fighters. There were people who had killed, there were people who were using armoury. Tell me what it was like when you met them. When I was in Lebanon, I was based in Saida, which was south of Beirut. It was controlled by the Israelis at the time. And in any one day, I used to take the car and or some ambulances and cross the front lines into a Shiite-held area, Sunni-held area, a Druze militia area, a Christian-held village, and a Palestinian camp. And every time you had to arrange ceasefires. So I can remember getting out of the Red Cross vehicle and going up to them just to talk to them. And they're covered in Klashnikovs and grenades and bullets. And I'm thinking, gosh, and I knew they killed and tortured people. And then when I started talking to them,

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What surprised me was they started talking about their families their mothers, their children, where they were going to go to school, their houses. And I suddenly realised that these weren't killers, as the title so called we called them, these were human beings, and they wanted peace. And eventually I managed to arrange a ceasefire for a certain time and cross over into the next fighting factions to these killers over here in trepidation. And um what do I meet? Again I meet these human people who worry about their families and say they're the ones that rate my sister. We we want peace. We're fighting for peace.

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And I just said this is bizarre and every fighting factions I went between it was like this, whatever religion they were. And I thought there has to be an alternative. And that's what sar started me on my quest to look for an alternative.

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Let's get some more music, then. We're on your uh third choice of the morning. Tell me about this, Claire Barchinger. What are we going to hear now?

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Now we're going to hear the Rose of No Man's Land.

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This, the music, was given to me by my mother when I came back from my first mission with the Red Cross in Lebanon in the eighties. And she gave it to me and said, Here, Claire, my friends and I decided this is you and her friends were from her Keep Fit group. She did Keep Fit all all her life, right up until the the year she died, which was when she was ninety four.

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And um so gigglingly they sang this song to me.

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I have seen some beautiful but are in my darling

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I spent some wonderful love Locking the Praise Rover

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But I have found a world one that beyond control.

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Uh Uh

Dame Claire Bertschinger12:44

Uh

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Uh

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For the Lord and Lord Hill and Lamb.

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And let the one not avoid those things For all its prayer with kill, It will live for years In my world and on them all.

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Uh

Dame Claire Bertschinger13:08

The one red road called Tolgamor in the world In the water of the red corridor

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Here's a role of no man's mind.

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Um

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That was recorded in nineteen sixteen, William Thomas, and Orchestra and The Rose in No Man's Land. And you said, of course, going into that, Clear, it was so important to you, that piece of music. It was composed during the the First World War. Yes. And um

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You know when you're in war you are shot at and you've got shells flying all over the place.

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And when I hear that, I can feel myself back in in the battlefield.

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And I can remember actually one person I can remember loads of times, but there's one in during the coup d'etat in Sierra Leone. I was there when this guy got shot on the streets, this young man.

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And

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and he said to me, Oh he looked down and saw his stomach open and he said, Oh, no, look oh, look, what's happened Am I going to die? I'm going to die And I remember saying, It's all right, don't mind, we'll be all right, we'll sort you out and it's an awful feeling.

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knowing some was going to die and still having to reassure them.

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And you've also got to remember that in the world today, there are thousands of Red Cross nurses and doctors and volunteers in war zones just like me doing the similar things. Tell me what we're going to hear next, your fourth disc. The fourth one is another poem, and it's called The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God. Now, I went very fortunate enough to go on expeditions called Operation Drake, and it was Lieutenant Colonel John Blashford Snell, an amazing motivational character who's given the opportunities to thousands of youth to challenge themselves. I went with them in Panama, Papua New Guinea, and Sulawesi in Indonesia. When I went for my interview, they said, you know, you'll be filthy, dirty, and you won't be able to wash, and you know, it'll be really difficult spiders and snakes everywhere. And are you sure you want to want to go? And I said, Yes, that's just what I want. I do.

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Anyway, I can remember the f the first week we went there I was with one other girl.

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called Caroline and me and about thirty men to build a runway.

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so that we could land at Small Plain if necessary. And they said, Right, you girls, the cooking's over there, and you um put got the food in the tins over there. And I said, I don't want to cook, I want to help. I want to use a machete and cut down trees and they said, Oh, no, no, you can't do that and I thought, Blow this for a lot.

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So we went and cooked, but I forgot inverted commas the salt, and um things got burned. So after a week we were doing a rotor system and I was allowed out to

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to have fun cutting down trees and clearing the runway. And we didn't have electricity, we didn't have iPods or radios, so we used to sit round the camp fire at night and often talk and chat and sing and sometimes read a monologue. And this particular monologue was said by one of the Royal Engineers, and he was with the expedition to build a jungle walkway a hundred feet up in the jungle canopy.

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And I got a bit bored waiting down below in camp, waiting for somebody to be sick or to have a cold or need a headache tablet. So I used to actually join him up the jungle and helped him build the walkway, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Dame Claire Bertschinger16:44

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Katmundoom. There's a little marble cross below the town.

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There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew.

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Matt

Dame Claire Bertschinger16:57

And that yellow God for ever gazes down

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He was known as Mad Carew By the subs at Chathmandoo. He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell. But for all his foolish pranks, He was worshipped in the ranks.

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And the colonel's daughter smiled on him as well.

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He'd loved her from the start. P'raps she knew it in her heart. The fact that she loved him was plain to all.

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She was nearly twenty-one, and arrangements had begun To celebrate her birthday with a ball.

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He wrote to ask what present she would like from Mad Carew. They met next day as he dismissed a squad.

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But

Dame Claire Bertschinger17:41

And jestingly she told him that nothing else would do but the green eye of the little yellow god.

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That was Bransby Williams, reading part of The Green Eye of the Yellow God, written by J. Milton Hayes.

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You'd been working in Lebanon for a year then, Claire Berchinger, when you were moved in nineteen eighty four to the Tigray province in Ethiopia.

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You were running a a feeding station there, as I understand it, and the numbers grew and grew and grew by hundreds each day.

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Um you only had enough food for maybe feeding fifty, sixty people in a day, and there were days that were designated selection days. That's right. Can you explain to me what would happen on a selection day? On a selection day, somebody had to go out and select whatever place we had. We might have 50 or 60 places in one day, and there would be hundreds outside. I can remember one day counting 10 rows of children, and in each row there was over 100 children, and I had 60 or 70 places. I thought, how on earth am I going to do this?

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The locals couldn't do it because they said that's our cousins, that's our sisters, our brothers. We can't do it. You've got to go and do it. So we decided between us that I would go up and down the lines and look at every child and then just put a little mark on them if I chose them. We didn't choose the ones who were the worst because we knew they would die within the first few days.

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So I choose the ones which sort of have a spark of life in their eyes.

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They were all extremely malnourished, and they were all I knew they would die within the next couple of weeks. So, and that was the most horrendous thing is.

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Knowing the ones you didn't choose wouldn't survive because there was no food at all.

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In the midst of all of this suddenly lands upon the doorstep, if I can call it that, a a television reporter called Michael Burke and a cameraman. What did you think when they arrive?

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I was told they were coming, and they came in the door and they said, Right, um, let's get some filming, stand over there, um, let's get some really sick children, Claire, would you like to hold that one?

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And then he started asking me questions, and I can remember him asking me, So, Claire, what's it feel like choosing those who can live? He said, Does it do anything to you? I think was. Does it do anything? There you go.

Dame Claire Bertschinger19:54

Specific

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Ridiculous and I just well, what do you expect? It breaks my heart. And I just couldn't get rid of them fast enough, because I just thought this is ridiculous. I don't want these people around me.

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And of course Michael Burke, even at that point in nineteen eighty four, a hugely experienced journalist and television reporter, he was doing exactly what he needed to do, which was to get that information as stark and revolting as it was out there to the millions of people who were sitting at home who had no idea that the crisis was happening.

Dame Claire Bertschinger20:14

He was

Dame Claire Bertschinger20:17

Which was to

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Absolutely. And we know the effect that his reports had. And we are going to you're smiling now. We're going to talk about the the effect that his reports had as they were broadcast to millions on the BBC in just a moment. But I'm going to ask you to fit in your next choice of disc. Tell me what we're going to hear now.

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We're going to hear now the theme from Out of Africa, the flying theme.

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Now, because I knew I wanted to work abroad, I thought I had to do midwifery if I was going to work abroad.

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And I spent three months in the obstetric unit when I was a student nurse. And I thought, this is, I couldn't stand it. So I thought, oh, I'm never going to be able to go abroad. What am I going to do? So I had read an article about the Flying Doctor Service and I thought, right, I'll learn to fly. Then I can join the Flying Doctor Service. So I managed, out of my nurse's pay, to be able to afford just about one hour's flying a month. And when I was with the Red Cross, particularly in Ethiopia and Kenya, we flew at 500 feet above the grounds and snuck up on the animals. I mean, Africa is such a beautiful country.

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The theme from the film Out of Africa, composed by John Barry. So, Claire Birchinger, it was on october twenty third that the first of Michael Burke's films was shown in Britain on the nine o'clock news. The impact of those reports, of course, was enormous.

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Not long after those reports were shown, the first plane carrying aid that was generated by people's donations was on its way to where you were.

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Tell me about that plane's arrival. What do you remember of that?

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I can remember being told that a British Hercules plane was going to be arrive, and would I go out and meet it?

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And there was a building which was used as an air traffic control, which was all broken down and there was no windows in it. And there was a few herders with some goats and cows on the runway walking around. And I stood there and I just enjoyed the morning and watched the sunrise. And then far, far in the distance, I could see hear noise and see this black spot sort of jump over the mountains and come towards me and get bigger and bigger and bigger. And it was this massive plane and it landed in a hail of stones and shingles and dust. And they opened the back doors and it was just full of food. And I thought, wow, we're saved. It was just amazing.

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Those reports not just inspired people to begin giving, the giving continued and was solidified by Bob Geldof and Mid Ewar setting up Live Aid and the big concerts that happened both here and in the United States. They created Band Aid, of course. There was the single Do They Know It's Christmas. What did you think of all of that? How much did you know about all of that? I didn't really know at all about it. I did hear several weeks down the line this song on the radio, shortwave radio, and it was Feed the World, Do They Know It's Christmas Time, by Band Aid. And I thought we need more and a bloody band aid to feed this place. All the money was going to Ethiopia, and I thought, well, where's the money? It hasn't come here. How dare they? And they don't know it's Christmas because Ethiopia has a completely different calendar, so it's not Christmas here anyway. So I got completely the wrong end of the stick because I didn't understand what was going to go on. And so when did you realise the true effect that Michael Burke's television reports had had at the time that they had been broadcast here? I spent a year in Ethiopia and when I came back I can remember to Britain, I had two weeks holiday and I remember people telling me what a wonderful job I'd done and how wonderful saving all those thousands of lives and I was explaining to them actually I didn't do a good job. There were thousands of children who had died and I couldn't help them. And people kept on saying, no, no, you did a wonderful job Claire, you know. And I just thought, well, no, you're not listening to me. You've got to listen to me. That's not the case out there. It's a horrendous situation. And so after about ten days, I thought, well, if you're not going to listen to me, I won't talk about it. So I didn't talk about it. And I kept quiet for twenty years.

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And the BBC asked me to go back in 2003 to make an anniversary programme.

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And so when they rang me up and asked me to go back with Michael Burke, I was horrified, because I felt responsible for those I wasn't able to help, and I thought I'd be vilified when I went back. The people you hadn't chosen.

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The sisters and the brothers and that, yes.

Dame Claire Bertschinger25:18

The sisters and the brothers and the

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Mm-hmm.

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So you did go back, and what happened? I did. It was amazing. I was welcomed with open arms, which surprised me. And I remember Michael taking me to we actually found the feeding centre, which was overgrown, and we climbed in over the fence and stood there, and he interviewed me.

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and started talking to me about my experience, and I told him the example about the plane arriving, and as I was being filmed telling him, he started to cry.

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And I thought, wow, he's crying.

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I have thought he understands. This is amazing.

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And then they started talking about Bob Geldoff, and they showed me a film. They showed me Bob Geldoff talking about his experience of seeing me being filmed.

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By Michael Burke, and he started to get emotional and cry w when he was talking about it. And again, I thought.

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Wow, this person, he really understands. So, for all those years, you'd kept all of those feelings, just you'd put them away.

Dame Claire Bertschinger26:14

Don't

Presenter26:20

Was it life I mean, I don't want to get cliched about it, but w was it literally a life changing event to go back and to understand that other people did understand? Did it change you that much?

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Yeah.

Dame Claire Bertschinger26:32

Uh

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Let's take a break and have your next choice then. We're on your sixth of the day. Tell me about this. This one is If by Rodjard Kipling.

Presenter26:42

It just means something very special. And when I was in Afghanistan I had it translated into Dari, and just a couple of years ago I heard on the BBC that one of my Afghani nurses was actually reciting if, and he said he'd received it back in the wartime from a nurse.

Speaker 327:03

If

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Rudyard Kipling

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If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.

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If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too.

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If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating.

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And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.

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If you can dream and not make dreams your master

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If you can think and not make thought your aim

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If you can meet with triumph and disaster.

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And treat those two impostors just the same.

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If you can bear to hear the truths you've spoken, Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken.

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and stoop and build them up with worn out tools.

Presenter28:01

Michael Caine reading Rudyard Kipling's If.

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At one point on your travels, Claire Berchinger, you contracted malaria, which meant that you had to give up travelling to malarial areas for good. I'm wondering.

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How much that affected you? That must have been a real pain in the neck. Oh, it was awful.

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I was cassievak back to Geneva and I got a job in the health division as training officer in Geneva, and I was thought, this is awful. I used to have a flat overlooking this beautiful park in Geneva, and these mothers used to go round there and have picnics for their children, and I just thought, this life is so boring here, what's life all about?

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And I thought, you know, what can I do here? You know, I just didn't feel I belonged there at all.

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For me, life was about at the front line, picking up the wounded, healing them.

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And I can do that, that's great. Now, all of a sudden, I couldn't go and do the work which I thought I was good at. Given then, that so much of your impulse is to make your life matter and your contribution matter, what did you do to make it feel like actually this was a life that had some importance to it? I spent a lot of my time in the mountains. I had a cousin who had a chalet in the mountains. It was an old cow shed, no running water, no electricity. And I used to go up into the mountains by myself and just enjoyed being in the open.

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I think it just gave me.

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Time to heal.

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Right. Mm. And then.

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Somebody suggested that perhaps I should look into a religion. I had been brought up a Christian, and after my experiences of war, and half the time it's all about religion, and I thought, I can't deal with a religion that has an outside deity telling me what to do, or people telling me what to do.

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And then somebody said, Why don't you look into Buddhism?

Presenter29:48

And I said, I don't want to be Buddhists, that's a bit weird they are, you know, they sing funny songs and have to wear special colours and don't eat meat. And they said, No, no, no, there's hundreds of different types of groups. And I suggest, why don't you look at the lay organisation called the Zokogakai International?

Presenter30:04

And I was given a book and I went to some of their meetings and I thought, wow, this is for me. And then I s sort of slowly come to realise that actually, yes, I had to somehow find peace from within sneaky before I could let it blossom out from me. Would you say that your work throughout the decades has left you as a a more optimistic human being or less? More.

Presenter30:26

But that's through my Buddhist practice. Right. So that's the best. Absolutely. That's why I met Buddhism. One time I suddenly thought, wow, we can make a difference. This is how to do it.

Dame Claire Bertschinger30:28

So that's the thing.

Presenter30:35

It doesn't matter what religion you are, you can do it. And it's by transcending, rising above our differences, finding something we've got in common together.

Presenter30:44

and working on that rather than arguing about what we haven't got in common.

Presenter30:49

They talk about um chaos theory. The fluttering of a butterfly wing can affect a hurricane on the other side of the world. And I believe very much now, when I'm doing my Buddhist practice, I can affect wars in the other side of the world through what I'm doing here and now.

Presenter31:03

We're going to have your penultimate choice then. Tell me about the seventh disc of the morning. Why have you chosen this? This is Dare to Believe and actually it's the Zokagakai International, my Buddhist group. They did a show called Alice, based on Alice in Wonderland, and it was sung with 300 people on the stage. And it's saying that we all can stand up and make a difference. Just dare to believe you can do it. Believe in your dreams and just go for it.

Presenter31:34

Bill Fire

Speaker 331:35

When they should be reaching out Too many people on the wrong track Lettersplace by a seed us out We don't have to Uh

Dame Claire Bertschinger31:48

Uh

Dame Claire Bertschinger31:50

Money's only on a brand new day And there's a feeling

Presenter31:58

Uh

Speaker 331:59

Uh

Dame Claire Bertschinger31:59

Uh

Presenter31:59

Uh I took it leave.

Dame Claire Bertschinger32:01

Yeah.

Presenter32:03

That was Dare to Believe sung by the Sokogakai Choir, conducted by Peter Osborne.

Presenter32:08

So, Claire Berchinger, earthquakes, tsunamis, civil wars, all of those horrors that are visited upon the world, um, it's easy for us to to feel overwhelmed, to feel that we can

Presenter32:19

Do nothing, given what you were just talking about.

Presenter32:23

What do you think each of us can do to make a difference? Because mostly we feel all we can do is, you know, send some money to a charity. There's so much you can do. You can send some money to a charity, but choose the charity you want. Check them up on the charity commission site. You can get involved. And you can give your old clothes good clothes. You can go and buy things from the shop. So we can all do it in our little way at home and have a knock-on effect. And it might be just helping somebody in your own community, but just helping and supporting this compassion has a knock-on effect.

Dame Claire Bertschinger32:29

This

Presenter32:57

We know how busy your life has been and how purposeful. Has there been much room for a personal life through all of this? You know, my priority in life was not to get married and have children. It was never put on the back burner. It just didn't happen. I've had such a full and rich and exciting life, and it doesn't seem to stop. I suppose it's this dare to believe and grab in your dreams, and something pops up. And I think, well, why not? I'll try that. And every year something exciting happens. You're now a tutor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. You teach students how to deal with caring in what's known as resource-poor areas. These are students who are already highly trained as nurses. If you could just pick one bit of advice that you were going to give them before they went, given your experience, what would it be?

Presenter33:42

Goodness me.

Presenter33:43

I think when they go there

Presenter33:46

Listen to the people. Sit down, listen, have a cup of tea. Before you start telling them what they should do, find out why they're doing what they're doing. Sound advice. Let's go to your last choice of the morning then. Tell me about this, Clear. What's your name? This is a fun one. It's Call Me Owl from Gracelands by Paul Simon. I play it on the first day of the course. I have it at top blast as all the students come in and I think they don't know what's hit them because I can tell you I'm not like a normal nursing tutor. I'm really.

Dame Claire Bertschinger33:57

This is a fun

Presenter34:12

Try to motivate them to be self-sufficient, just like I was taught to be, because once they're in a resource poor area.

Presenter34:20

As nurses, they're probably going to be the only medical person for hundreds of miles of line.

Presenter34:37

All along long there were incidents and accidents, there were hints and allegations.

Presenter34:45

If you Me my body go hard, I can be a long lost pet

Presenter34:53

I can call you daddy, and daddy when you call me out.

Presenter35:02

Paul Simon, call me Al. So, Claire Berchinger, I'm going to give you the books now. Traditionally people get the complete works of Shakespeare and also the Bible. Do you want to replace the Bible? I'd like to replace it with Nitra and I Shonen, the writings of Nitra and Daishonen, please. Rice, for your Buddhist text.

Dame Claire Bertschinger35:10

I'd like to

Dame Claire Bertschinger35:15

For your Buddhist tech.

Presenter35:16

You get to take another book as well. What book are you going to take? A book of monologues, please. Ah right, I'll find you one. And a luxury, too. Something that might make life alone on this island a little better. Can I take my little dog with me?

Dame Claire Bertschinger35:18

Looks like

Presenter35:29

You absolutely cannot. It's got to be an inanimate object. You can't take a living.

Dame Claire Bertschinger35:33

Yeah.

Presenter35:35

You can, actually. Can I? Yes. Right, that's yours. And if you were to have to save one of these eight tracks from the waves, which one would you save?

Presenter35:45

Call Me Al by Paul Simon. Okay, that's yours. Dame Claire Berchinger, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. You're welcome, thank you.

Presenter36:09

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter36:12

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.