Three years of waiting have come to an end. It was in november 2010 that I started my Red Cross training and I have been a delegate, ready to be deployed as a surgeon for two and a half years. I have completed online courses, have lived through seven days of a simulated mission in the woods of Eidene, Norway, where we built up a field hospital and trained the practical aspects of being on a mission (ERU course). I have done the IMPACT course, another seven days of learning about the Red Cross movement, its structures and its goals and purpose. I was ready! Very, very ready to be deployed. But then, instead, came the long void: Luckily for planet earth, major disasters which would warrant deployment of a field hospital, just didn’t seem to happen anymore. ‘Well, great!’ the humanitarian in me thought and…