There is an intimacy about living on the boat with the people you have rescued that isn’t present in other projects or jobs. We live with, feed, care for, and hang out with our passengers and patients. When something terrible happens, it hurts all the more.
It's the rainy season in South Sudan. Amy blogs . . .
Daan blogs from Haiti, where he and the team provide the most advanced emergency care for pregnant women in the country. He blogs about the fight to save mothers' lives, and the obstacles that mean this isn't always possible...
Life and death are naturally intertwined throughout the world. Especially in hospitals where the birth of a new baby may be accompanied by the passing of another person’s loved one. It is perhaps life’s most influential and most basic system of checks and balances. This relationship is woven even closer here in South Sudan where each day might bring some of each.
"I will not let this woman die."
The maternal child health project, where MSF will be supporting a district in Sierra Leone, has not begun yet. We are due to commence activities later in January. Currently we are preparing; but as a team of humanitarian workers it is very difficult to be present and not clinically active. We are in an uncomfortable state of limbo, where we are here but without the usual MSF machine in full throttle behind us.
We have all seen the faded photographs depicting the success of the “Big Game Hunter” of the Victorian era: well dressed, well fed, often mustached; a shotgun in the crook of the arm and one leg flexed at the knee with a foot on the head of the trophy: lion, tiger, elephant; certainly a creature that warranted the adjective “big” and, by implication, the more sizable the game, the greater the courage and therefore the prestige of the hunter.
Chris blogs from the MSF paediatric hospital in Quetta, Pakistan
