By Sujin Thomas

AS A boy, Mr Kevjn Lim got into so many scrapes that he landed up in Boys' Town, a home for delinquents.

Now 29, Mr Lim is still involved in scrapes - other people's. More specifically, between the Israelis and Palestinians in the disputed West Bank.

He also speaks Mandarin now - a language he used to flunk - as well as Hebrew and at least eight other tongues.

Mr Lim is the only Singaporean war zone delegate of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). His transformation from a monolingual to a multilingual Singaporean is what clinched him the job with the humanitarian organisation in June last year.

After two days of interviews and tests on languages like Arabic and French, he got his first posting: the West Bank. 'Most applicants are from Europe so I was thankful to get the job as I wanted to do humanitarian work,' he said.

His turnaround came in early 2001, when an 8.1-magnitude quake struck the Indian state of Gujarat, killing more than 20,000 people.

The tragedy moved the third-year mass communications student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic so much that he co-organised a collection for clothes and rice with a schoolmate. He liked the experience so much that he wanted to do it as a profession.

The ICRC is an independent, non-political organisation which ensures humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of war and armed violence.

It has operations in over 60 countries such as Sierra Leone, Sudan, Afghanistan and Colombia and employs about 1,500 expatriate war zone delegates.

Delegates visit prisoners of war and detainees to check if they are humanely treated, attempt to re-establish contact between families split by war and trace missing people.

During his stint in the West Bank, which ended in July, Mr Lim was in charge of a district of about 300,000 people and worked together with a Palestinian team member.

For work, they wore civilian attire and went out into the field in his four-wheel drive car. He said: 'We wear the Red Cross vest only if there are hostile forces in the area so they can recognise us.'

He found himself in some hairy situations in the course of duty. 'I've been caught in a couple of stone-throwing clashes between Israelis and Palestinians,' he said. 'I just happened to be there. We don't put ourselves in harm's way though.'

He had a taste of the conflict which he had only watched on TV and read about in books not long after arriving in the West Bank. Barely a week into the job, he was tasked to interview the family of a teenage boy who had been killed by gunfire.

He was asked to document what had happened.

'I was feeling tense,' he said, having never dealt with grieving family members before.

What happened next took him by surprise. Shortly after meeting him, the boy's father began cracking jokes. 'He had a sense of humour even though his son had died the day before. People live in this kind of reality and have strength in the midst of a tragedy,' said Mr Lim.

He believes that the media depiction of the West Bank as an extremely dangerous place is not completely true. 'Sometimes people get caught in crossfire. Even then, it is rare,' he said.

He has a degree in political science and Jewish studies from the University of Melbourne and studied French at the Alliance Francaise here. He picked up other languages, including Mandarin, through online material, books and conversing with friends.

In fact, the first thing one notices about him is that his English is tinged with a French accent.

He said with a laugh: 'I think I need a bit of lead time to sound Singaporean again.' This is his first trip back to Singapore since he started work.

Mr Lim is third in a family of three sons and a daughter. His retired father, 60, and mother, 54, an administrative assistant in a school, live in a five-room HDB flat in Yio Chu Kang. They have no qualms about his job, despite the risk.

His father David said: 'It's the desire of his heart to do this...He is not there to fight a war. If he were a soldier, it would be a different thing.'

Mr Lim's next posting is the civil-war-stricken Darfur in the Sudan. The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died and over 2.2 million have fled their homes since war erupted in 2003.

He will head there next week after being briefed in Geneva.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Sept 9, 2008.

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