DRILLING for wells in Sudanese villages, re-building an outpatients’ department in storm-ravaged Somalia and helping survivors of the Kashmir earthquake.

It’s not quite how everyone spends their spare time, but it’s all in a day’s work for a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) volunteer.

Garrod Cooper has been working with the international medical charity since 2000 and has just returned from a mission in South Africa to help refugees fleeing Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe.

The 58-year-old, from Chalbury near Wimborne, spent three months in Johannesburg and nearby Musina, at the border with Zimbabwe, helping thousands of migrants seeking refuge from their country.

Garrod first decided he wanted to help after seeing scenes of the conflict in Serbia and Bosnia in the 1990s.

“That really brought it home, that it’s right on the doorstep,” he said. “I felt I would like to do something about it.”

At about the same time, Garrod gave up full-time employment after fearing his job as a contracts manager for a construction company was driving him into an early grave.

He has recently slowed down his involvement with MSF and also works as a freelance engineer between missions, but was just about to contact the charity again when they phoned with news of the South Africa trip.

He spent much of his time working at a clinic set up next to a Methodist Church in Johannesburg where 2,000 to 3,000 people were seeking refuge.

“This was the first time I’ve been in a big city,” he said. “Normally I’m way out in the bush. I’ve been in Darfur in the desert, in the bush in Somalia and in Afghanistan, so it was a bit of a shock being in the middle of a city.

“Johannesburg has got its own problems. It can be quite a dangerous city but it’s much better than it was. So you’re trying to do the work in that sort of environment.

“MSF is all about providing medical care. I’m not a medical person so I go to support the logistics and sort out water supply, sanitation and providing support to the medical people so that they can do their work.”

Garrod helped MSF to persuade the local government to set up toilets and the charity also erected tap stands, hand washing facilities, laundry areas and a drainage system.

They are also lobbying the South African government to do more as the Zimbabweans are only currently recognised as economic migrants, not refugees, meaning they are entitled to nothing.

“Up at the border, Musina, it was much different,” said Garrod. “There’s nothing. There you see the people really struggling. There’s stories of people coming across the river and then they get beaten up by these robbers called Guma Gumas.

“It’s horrendous, some of the stories. They rape all the women. They will even tear babies off a woman’s back, throw it in the river and then rape them.

“We’ve now set up a clinic to deal with just rape victims or people who’ve been abused. MSF has been doing cholera prevention and providing medical care, but also doing counselling, which is becoming quite a big part of it now.”

Garrod is keen to encourage others to volunteers for MSF and stressed medical experience was not a necessity.

“They do admin and finances and there’s other things like logistics where people do back-up and construction,” he explained. “They have quite a lot of journalists involved, as well, doing reports, because a lot of it is advocacy, particularly when you’re trying to bring to light what’s going on.

“Things are not going to get better in these places until the international community gets together and does something about it.”

Garrod admits the work can be emotionally tough, but he also finds it rewarding.

“It can be very frustrating because you feel you want to be able to do more and you can’t do as much as you’d like to,” he said. “But even if you’ve just saved one life, you’ve done something.”

To find out more about donating or volunteering for Medecins Sans Frontieres, visit msf.org.uk.