Whatever happened to...

Dr. Magdalena Heller?

Hrynyava, April 8th, 2006

Doctors are known to have a burning desire to help people in need. Our Flying Doctors are no exception. And even when they leave the Service, they might move on to other places: places that make you realize that our Coopers Crossing is actually a paradise...

Such is the case for Dr. Magdalena Heller, who worked at the RFDS-base in Coopers Crossing for about six months in 1990-1991. And it has been a real challenge to trace her; even more since very little seems to be known about her. The main thing people remember about her, was that she was good friends with Dr. David Ratcliffe. But he died early 1991, so he couldn´t help us anymore with information on her whereabouts. Nor could Dr. Magda´s former landlady, Mrs. Beryl Grey, since she died a couple of years ago, too. Her former colleagues (mainly the Standishes, Johnno Johnson, Annie Rogers, and Jackie Crane) were able to tell me that she returned to Germany autumn 1991, and some people suggested that she left because of her impossible love for Dr. Guy Reid. But exactly where she went or what her plans were seems to have been totally obscure. All they could tell me was that Dr. Magdalena Heller came from a town called Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria, the southern mountainous part of Germany. Fortunately, the RFDS-headoffice was able to provide me with a little more information on her background: she was born in Immenstadt, Germany; graduated summa cum laude from Munich University in 1983; and before she came to Australia, she had worked in the Academic Hospital in Munich, and later in the general hospital in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. With these facts I hit the Internet. With no useful results. Heller appears to be quite a common surname in Germany, and since there are some 80 million Germans... Once I jumped in the air with joy, having found a Magda Heller. But on contacting her, it appeared that she had never heard of a little town called Coopers Crossing, and had never even set foot in Australia... But in the end, just when I was about to give up the search, I received an email from a young man named Michael Heller, who claimed to have an aunt named Magdalena Heller, a doctor indeed, and he did recall having heard once that she had been working in Australia for a while, too. He couldn´t give me any information on where to find her though; he had hardly ever met her. But his father, Mr. Martin Heller, could. He appeared indeed to be our Dr. Magda´s brother. And thanks to his information, I could with reasonable certainty take the plane to... the Ukraine, the southwest corner of the former Soviet Union. Magda hadn´t stayed long in Germany after her returning from Australia, her brother told me. "She was very quiet and uncommunicative. She didn´t really want to talk about her time in Australia, even though people were eager to hear all about her experiences. There was something sad over her. An overall sadness. She was staying at our mother´s place at the time, and I remember our mother worrying about Magda. She went on long solitary walks in the woods and the mountains nearly every day, and rebuffed any effort from our side to get through to her. She has never been extremely outgoing, but this... this wasn´t like her at all. We suspect that she witnessed something dreadful in Australia. Something that shocked her, that wounded her deeply. But we have no idea what that might have been." The suggestion about her impossible love for her colleague Dr. Reid was a novelty to him, but he doubted whether a thing like that would upset his sister the way he had seen her. "She was restless when she came back," Mr. Heller told me. "She never even looked for a job in Germany; she just wanted to get out as soon as possible." So within two months of her return she left to work in rural Romania. Then in Russia, somewhere north of Moscow. Then in Zambia, Africa. And since a couple of years she lives and works in the outskirts of the Ukraine. "We don´t have much contact, but I do have her address," Mr. Heller said. And with that, I undertook a long and difficult journey to the peripheral mountains in the southwestern Ukraine, to a small town called Hrynyava. In trains and busses that any western historical museum would be proud to include in its collection, by roads that hardly deserve the name. But finally, I arrived in Hrynyava, and was able to secure a room at the local inn. Not without any trouble though, for no one in the establishment spoke any other language than Ukrainian or Russian. (Not that I hear the difference between those...) On going out in the town, I soon discovered that this part of the Ukraine would probably qualify as an under- developed area. No one seemed to speak or understand English, and neither showing people the written down address helped a lot, since - as I heard later - most of the population is illiterate. By simply asking "Magda Heller?" to all the passers-by, in the end I was as lucky as to find an elderly man who recognized the name. With a lot of gesturing and incomprehensible talk, he guided me to the edge of the town. To a large, dark grey house of worn concrete. "Magda Heller!" the man announced triumphantly as he pointed to the house. I thanked him and turned to face the building. If it hadn´t been for some thirty preschoolers playing in the wilderness that was probably meant as the garden, I would have thought the place deserted. An extremely rusty fence, on the brink of falling apart; window-panes that hadn´t seen a paintbrush for at least half a century; two of the windows blocked out with softboard; heaps of broken bricks in the garden; a gutter swaying loose in the breeze; a clearly visible hole in the roof, covered with plastic...

Nevertheless, I went up to the house and knocked. The door was opened by a young girl, and when I asked after Magda Heller, she showed me in and gestured that I should wait here in the hall. I looked around. The hall was dark, and decay was falling in here as well as it was outside. Still, the place was far cleaner than one would expect on seeing the outside, and I noticed several things being fairly recently repaired. After a few minutes one of the doors opened again, and the young girl, together with a little bald boy, came out. The girl motioned that I should go in. So I did. I entered into a small, modestly furnished consulting-room. Behind the desk a small, tawny, middle-aged lady sat writing. She looked up and asked something in Russian or Ukrainian. For a moment I was tonguetied by the natural authority I met. But when I recovered enough to be able to account for my coming here, a warm smile came over her face. "You really came all that way to interview me?" she wondered with some astonishment. And as I acknowledged that, she shook her head and added modestly: "I don´t think there is much to write about me. But I would appreciate it very much if you could write a little about the children here." Since she had a lot to do, we agreed to meet for an interview in the evening. In the meantime I was invited to get acquainted with the life in a post-communist children´s home. "The children will be happy to show you around," Dr. Heller said. Indeed, the children were very happy to show me around. With excited chattering they showed me every corner of the house and the surrounding garden. And even though I couldn´t understand one word of all they were telling me, their enthusiasm enabled me to overlook the overall state of decay, to see a place where people with all their might are trying to give these children a good and stable home, despite the unfavourable circumstances. Both the children and dr. Heller invited me to join them for dinner, too. A middle-aged nun presided the table, and after a general prayer, everyone enjoyed the meal: a bowl of bean-soup and a lump of dark, coarse bread. It tasted better than I had expected. There were now some seventy children, aged from toddler to ± 12-year-olds. A few teenage-girls were sitting next to the youngest infants, helping them with their food. I counted five adults. And that was including myself. Notably was the number of children with a missing fore-arm, with facial deformations, or bald heads. "The still ongoing consequences of the Czernobyl-accident in 1986," Dr. Heller explained to me. "Deformations, an extremely high rate of leukemia... Add a couple of cases of hepatitis, hemofilia, alcoholic syndromes and HIV, and you´ll understand why an inliving physician is necessary here." As I nodded, the girl sitting next to her tried to get her attention by pulling Dr. Magda´s face in her direction. They exchanged a few lines: the girl in sign language, Dr. Heller in sign language plus a few very clearly pronounced words. Then she turned back to me: "This is Davita. She is deaf, and lately we´ve been trying to teach her to read people´s lips. And she´s wondering why she can´t understand what you are saying." The girl looked at me inquisitively, and I smiled at her. A few more signs were made at Dr. Heller, and the next thing I knew I was asked to be introduced to the girl. And then I got to hear little Davita´s story. "Davita is about eight years old. We don´t know exactly, for she was a foundling. As are several of the children here. But whereas most foundlings are left on our doorstep, ready to be found, this little girl was found on an icy February-evening by the wayside, five years ago. In a carton box, with two broken legs, and already half frozen. As if she wasn´t meant to be found... I brought her here and nursed her constantly for two weeks. Many times it seemed she was going to lose the battle, but she´s a real fighter, and always managed to survive yet another setback. After fifteen days she smiled at me. A triumphant smile. That smile convinced me that she was going to make it. And she did, as you can see. Very soon we discovered that she is completely deaf. And since I was the only one here with some basic knowledge on sign language, it stood to reason that she remained my special responsibility. I love all our children here, but Davita has a special place in my heart. She´s kind of the daughter I´ve always dreamt of, but that I never had." The way Davita cuddled up to her after having finished her soup, as well as the way Magda hugged her tight, confirmed the warm relationship between the two of them. After dinner a very busy time followed. The younger children were to be bathed and put to bed; the older ones had chores and some homework to attend to before going off to bed. And finally, as the clock approached nine, Dr. Magda found the time to sit down with a cup of tea for a little interview. She began by enquiring after her former colleagues and acquaintances at the Crossing. After having satisfied her curiosity, she admitted that she hasn´t had any contact with them since she left Australia fifteen years ago. Still, she remembers her time there with mainly pleasant memories, recalling a few anecdotes that still make her chuckle: staying the night at a driller´s camp; Johnno the pilot taking her on a scary

stuntflight in his little red airplane; celebrating Christmas with a barbecue; her own astonishment about having to operate on a patient in an ordinary kitchen; David´s disgusted expression upon tasting sauerkraut for the first time in his life... A pensive silence followed before she continued: "David and I were very good friends. Actually, his parents are the only Australians I´m still in touch with. Two years ago, for example, they have been here. And it´s them we´ve got to thank for these freshly, sunny painted rooms. Not only did they dedicate their vacation to the painting-job, they bought the paint and the necessary equipment as well. According to western standards, everything is incredibly cheap here. But to the Ukrainians, one´s wages hardly make for a living. For us, a gallon of paint and a paintbrush are unattainable treasures. The children´s home is mainly run on charity, with the local church as its main benefactor. But since the whole parish, the whole community is as poor as a churchmouse, we can´t expect any extra´s from them either. It´s a constant struggle, but we´ll survive..." "The difference with the Academic Hospital in Munich is gigantic. A surgeon there is so high... Almost like living in an ivory tower. A doctor in an academic hospital in Germany has a top-rate salary, with a continuous rat-race to keep up his status among his colleagues. I know what I´m talking about; I´ve been part of it. That has been one of the first things I learned in Coopers Crossing: I had forgotten that your patients aren´t just patients, they are people. People to care about. That´s why I couldn´t go back to the status-dominated medical circles in Germany. I´ve wanted to become a doctor ever since I was a little girl... since I was about Davita´s age. Not for the sake of status or money, but to help people in need. Working for the RFDS helped me to get back on the right track. So that´s how I ended up working in children´s homes and hospitals in the poorest parts of the world." "This isn´t exactly a job you do to get well paid. On the contrary: it´s practically pro Deo. The people working here have board and lodging; we hardly ever get paid in money. But what else does one need? Daily meals, a bed to sleep in, a roof over one´s head... It´s like being a parent. A non-paid 24-hour job. The only difference is that we´ve got 74 kids living in this house. We try to bring them up as best as we can. To give them an education, medical care where necessary, a place where they belong... And that´s ever so important for children who either lost their parents in death, or have been abandoned by their very own relatives." "The children attend the local elementary school. There is no secondary school for miles around, so when they leave school at the age of thirteen, fourteen, we try to place them as resident-apprentices, so that they may learn a trade to be able to eventually provide for themselves. Mostly that seems to go pretty well, but we do have reports on apprentice-girls having been sold to foreign prostitution. That really infuriates us. That´s not the kind of life we try to give these children." "Some girls decide to stay here though, to help out with the children and the housekeeping. After all, we are only four responsible adults here: sister Evguenia the matron, Natasja the governess/ domestic help, Elena the housekeeper/ cook, and me for the medical side. So we all have to help out with everything; we´ve got our hands more than full in just taking care of the children and the necessary housekeeping and cleaning. We don´t have the time - nor the money for that matter, not to mention the necessary materials or expert-knowledge - to look after the house as well as we ought to. So that´s why it´s so run down, especially outside. We tend to reason that the inside, where we are actually living, is more important." "It´s a hard life. But a good one. Hard work, dedication, faith, lots and lots of love... It´s a miracle to see an abandoned child cautiously starting to trust and love people again. There is a lot of grief behind those happy faces you saw today. Each of them is the living proof of a dramatic experience. It makes you feel so rich when you´ve had a happy and secure, and pretty much carefree childhood yourself. And it helps you to see your own grief in its true proportions. Sooner or later everyone gets to deal with grief in his or her life. Theirs is mainly that they have lost their parents at a very early age, or that they have been abandoned by their own family. Mine is that I have been denied the felicity of sharing my life with the one and only man I have ever loved. But it´s easier to bear one´s own grief when surrounded by people - children in particular - who are actually much worse off. It helps me to stay conscious of all the other blessings I still enjoy. So actually I am grateful to be working here." During the two more days that I had to wait for the buss to pass through Hrynyava again, my only wish became to help out at the children´s home to the best of my ability. So the garden has been cleaned up, and the knee-high grass has been cut. With an old-fashioned scythe. And by the time I left, with seventy-four children, six teenage-girls and four adults waving goodbye, I was certain of one thing. Namely that I would never, ever again have the heart to be discontented with anything...

Taken from The Coopers Crossing Guardian, April 8th, 2006.

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Stories about Magda´s life after her leaving the RFDS

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