Please donate to RISC (Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues)

(All photographs in this post by James Lawler Duggan)

A couple weeks ago, I was incredibly lucky to be able to attend the third and most recent Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues (RISC) training in New York. During this course, freelance journalists learn battlefield first aid over the course of several days. To encourage freelancers' participation, the course and accommodations are entirely free, and each trainee receives a full medical kit to take with him/her into the field. To my knowledge, RISC is the only FREE formal course of its kind, entirely devoted to battlefield/wilderness medical response for freelance journalists. Two more RISC sessions are scheduled for 2013, but there still aren't enough spots for the hundreds of freelancers on a waiting list to receive this critical and potentially life-saving training.

All of which brings me to the real reason for this post. RISC relies on charitable donations from organizations and individuals to keep going. The next group of RISC participants needs your financial support. Each of the previous trainees has set up a fundraising page here. Anything, even $10, can help. With even a small donation, you may help train the person who saves my life on my next assignment.

Below are some additional photographs (shot by James Lawler Duggan), links, and information about the course:

Above, Ben Solomon (who also happens to be one of my Istanbul roommates) applies a pressure bandage to a dummy during a battlefield first aid drill at RISC training.

With 23 of my colleagues, I learned how to assess patients, how to address the three critical systems of the body, how to stop bleeding, how to open and maintain a person's airway, how to do CPR, how to splint broken bones, how to prepare a patient for evacuation, and a ton of other stuff. We did numerous practice drills, in between lectures and demonstrations, everyday for four days.

The instructors, from a company called Wilderness Medical Associates, included a National Guard flight and combat medic who had been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, a paramedic and guide with 15 years of rural and urban experience, and a wilderness EMT who has worked in the South African bushveld. They were amazing.

Here I am helping to "package" a patient for transport with Mike Shum, another trainee, during the battlefield drill on the last day of training. (Did you know that one of the top four preventable deaths on the battlefield is from hypothermia?)

I attended a hostile environment training (with thanks to financial support from Rory Peck Trust and my agency Redux Pictures) in Lebanon last year. It was great, but only half of it was devoted to medical training. And I think it's something you have to practice over and over, throughout the years, updating your skills and training your mind and muscles to act.

Robert Nickelsberg, Carol Dysinger, and Michael Kirby Smith practice stopping bleeding using chicken carcasses and fake blood. It may seem macabre or gory, but they use fake blood to try to get us used to real blood, if, god forbid, we ever need to use these skills in a real situation.

Jonathan Saruk, Michael Kirby Smith, and Ben Solomon finish the documentation and packaging of their battlefield patient.

There's Sawyer, one of the amazing trainers, in the briefing session after a mass casualty drill.

The trainees, instructors, and RISC directors outside the Bronx Documentary Center, where the training was held, on our last day of training, March 29, 2013.

Everyday Africa Portraits

 "She's my girl," said the young man proudly, in Dembara, Senegal.

I can hear the voice of Dan Pelle, one of my mentors from my years at The Spokesman-Review newspaper, as he edits over my shoulder: "I like seeing all these faces."

A funny thing happened while I was in Senegal. I started to use my phone to take portraits of people. It was kind of a whim decision, like, sure why not? I have this tool, why not experiment a bit? But, it turns out, these are some of my favorite photographs that I took while I was in West Africa.

Believe me when I say this was a shock for me. Unlike some of my colleagues, I was reluctant to use my phone's camera to take serious pictures, the kind with some weight to them, the kind that I would want to share with the world. I worried about the quality of the images, and the "Hipstamatic" filters bothered me. (In fact with the first set of portraits I took, I spent a lot of time in Photoshop trying--for the most part unsucessfully--to remove the filter, until I found a "lens" and "film" that was truer to my style, and started using that instead.)

I still don't think camera phones are perfect for every situation, but for some subjects and the right light conditions, they can work really well. People are not so afraid of a little phone camera.

Gniana, Fafacourou, Senegal.

Mai Mona, 12, Near Kolda, Senegal.

Fafacourou, Senegal.

Dembara, Senegal.

Elizabeth, 19, university student, Fafacourou, Senegal.

Obama fan, Kolda, Senegal.

Dembara, Senegal.

Maly, Fafacourou, Senegal.

Aminata, vegetable vendor in the market, Kolda, Senegal.

Samba, Fafacourou, Senegal.

Fatoumata, 20, university student, Fafacourou, Senegal.

Young laborer wearing hand-me-down hospital scrubs, Dembara, Senegal.

Bailo, bissap (hibiscus) vendor in the market, Kolda, Senegal.

Dembara, Senegal.

In Mabella Quarter, Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Mariama, 10, and her pet monkey, with a re-purposed electrical cord for a leash, Bolama, Guinea-Bissau.

Noé, 21, Bandim district, Bissau, Guinea-Bissau.

Alai, 21, refugee from Mali, Mentao Refugee Camp, Burkina Faso.

Sidi Ag Muhammad, 60, refugee from Mali and shepherd, Mentao Refugee Camp, Burkina Faso.

Ali, a 7-year-old refugee from Mali, is covered in dust from the walk to school, Mentao Refugee Camp, Burkina Faso.

Fatma, 8-year-old refugee from Mali, Mentao Refugee Camp, Burkina Faso.

Agali Ag Hamaduh, refugee from Mali and the camp's school director, Mentao Refugee Camp, Burkina Faso. 

Fati, 13, refugee from Mali, wearing a t-shirt with the Bollywood star Vaidehi on it, Mentao Refugee Camp, Burkina Faso.

Lala, 8 months old, refugee from Mali with her mother, Mentao Refugee Camp, Burkina Faso.

An extraordinary woman: my grandmother

 Yvonne "Bonnie" Bost Pickett, a.k.a. Grandma, in her living room, Bozeman Mont., Dec. 25, 2012.

Warning: this post contains extensive amounts of bragging. I hope you don't mind.

My grandmother, Bonnie (Bost) Pickett, is 97. Which, to me, is in itself kind of amazing.

Right around Thanksgiving last year, with the help of her son and daughter, she published a memoir about her time in Honolulu during World War II. Grandma's adventurous spirit brought her to Hawaii in April of 1941, where she was working as a Queen's Hospital nurse when Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941. She continued to work in Hawaii until 1945, when she received an engagement ring in the mail from my grandfather, a doctor with the Army Air Corps in the European theater.

Frank Pickett and Bonnie Bost were married on June 8, 1945, moved to Montana, raised three children, and the rest is history.

The cover of "Our War: My Life as a Nurse in Hawaii 1941-45" is graced by a stunning portrait of Bonnie in her nurse's uniform, back in the day. There are tons of cool historical photos inside, too.

Most authors have at least one book signing--Grandma is no exception. Here she is with my Aunt Mary Pickett, inscribing books that she'll give as gifts to her many fans. Aunt Mary, a journalist at the Billings (Mont.) Gazette, edited the book. (See everyone? I come by my chosen career path honestly, inspired by world travelers and journalists on all sides.)

I can't wait to see what else you've got up your sleeve. Love you, Grandma!