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Fred Papali ’95 PA
Fred Papali is a senior fellow in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland. Now in his 12th (and final!) year of medical training, he plans to pursue an academic career with a focus in global health. After spending fourth through ninth grades at Park, he attended Phillips Academy, Andover. He graduated magna cum laude in political science from Union College, and then attended medical school at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He currently lives in Baltimore with his wife, Tanu, and their 16-month-old son, Liam.
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o mmuni ty y initialcimpression of A.W. was pretty servi c e I assumed, a unexciting. He was, 30-something year-old Eritrean man seeking asylum due to political persecution, a common theme amongst asylum seekers from East Africa. This was to be my fourth forensic medical evaluation as a volunteer with Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a New York-based non-profit whose Asylum Network pairs physicians with victims of torture applying for asylum in the United States. As part of their asylum applications, applicants typically undergo a thorough medical evaluation to document any physical scars or psychological ailments stemming from their alleged torture.
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Previously, I hadinprepared medical affidavits c o mmuni ty for a Cameroonian man abused by the police servi c e due to his involvement in opposition politics, a Rwandan woman physically and sexually assaulted by several family members for marrying the man that she loved, and a young, gay man from Burkina Faso starved by his own father nearly to the point of death when his sexual orientation was discovered. As I talked with A.W., I quickly realized that his story was in no way typical. In fact, it was unlike anything I ever could have imagined. Due to years of government harassment after converting to Pentecostal Christianity, A.W. decided to flee his native country of
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I learned the importance of citizenship in my community. Before I could read it on a bumper sticker, my experiences at Park taught me to think globally while acting locally.
Eritrea so that he could practice his religion freely. In the mountains separating Eritrea and Sudan, he was abducted for ransom by nomads, tortured for three weeks with burning hot iron rods, had his throat slit after trying to escape and was left for dead in the desert. He was found and resuscitated in a remote village, spent time in a refugee camp, then worked under the table for two years in various cities in East Africa to save up enough money for a flight to the Americas. After landing in Bolivia, he literally walked over the course of five months — almost drowning in Panama and being abducted again, this time by narcotraffickers in Columbia — to the Texas border. While A.W.’s story demonstrates the bravery and sometimes inconceivable difficulties that asylees face during their journeys to the United States, it also elucidates a theme common amongst most of the torture survivors
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The Park Bulletin | Fall 2014