Mark Timlin, a British-trained physician, and his wife Vicki, an Australian financial specialist, crossed the border at Torkham Sunday with 83 boxes of medicine, drugs, and immunization kits tucked into the back of a red Hace van.

Timlin, who ran three mother and daughter clinics in Kabul for eight months until the American bombing forced him to leave, said that when he crossed the Pakistan border no customs officials on either side asked him about the parcels which are usually under restrictions from both sides.

Even in relatively good times, Timlin said, "the problems are usually on the Pakistan side."

He said that under the Taliban he faced relatively few difficulties importing drugs, but "in Pakistan, to register as an NGO takes at least a year, sometimes two."

"If you are not registered the taxes on imported medicines make their importation not worthwhile," he said.

To avoid these problems, Timlin said, he usually works with the World Food Program (WFP) which brought drugs into Kabul for him for use in his free clinics before the bombing began. But in this case, he said, he thought the need was so urgent that he packed the red van with what he could and drove into Jalalabad with the requisite translator and armed guard.

Timlin, and his wife who looks after financial affairs for the formerly four expatriate group in Kabul, inspected several clinics and hospitals in the Jalalabad area for potential cooperation, dropping off some medicines; and sent the van to their clinics in Kabul. The driver was briefly detained - and beaten by soldiers en route, but was freed when an English speaking soldier read a Hope Worldwide letter explaining his mission, Timlin said.

Tomlin visited the Hesharshi refugee camp just outside of Jalalabad, and found that although conditions were grim; open sided cloth tents that would not stand a single rainstorm, and food deliveries once a month for the 3,000 persons who had mostly walked for weeks to escape the bombing around Kabul, the Japanese government had supplied the makeshift clinic with enough medicine and drugs for the single doctor's requirements.

Further down the road to the east, at the Meshware Health Clinic where 900 long time refugees returned to from Pakistan last year, he found a clinic that had almost no drugs, and no foreign sponsor, and a doctor who makes less than $30 a month.

"This is a clinic we would consider sponsoring," he told the Earth Times in the dusty courtyard of the clay-colored building.

"First we would have to increase the salaries," he said. "When the salaries are abysmally low we find the drugs get sold right out of the front office."

And, he said, ""We would have to send someone, or find someone local to help monitor the supplies," he said.

Timlin said he joined Hope, which has aid stations in 75 countries, because "I always wanted to work somewhere like Afghanistan, somewhere in the third world."

"I am a hands on person," he said.

Vicki Timlin said she had seen the rich side of the world as a financial expert specializing in imports and exports, and " I wanted to do something for the poor."