1 00:00:09,771 --> 00:00:13,187 In Malakal, in a settlement of displaced people in South Sudan, 2 00:00:13,187 --> 00:00:16,092 I met Achuei soon after arriving to my mission, 3 00:00:16,092 --> 00:00:20,064 when I was accompanying one of the nurses in their daily round. 4 00:00:20,684 --> 00:00:23,747 Achuei was admitted with acute malnutrition 5 00:00:23,747 --> 00:00:25,280 to our field hospital. 6 00:00:26,250 --> 00:00:30,342 She was 9 years old, but due to her size I thought she was 4 or 5. 7 00:00:31,532 --> 00:00:35,415 From the first time I saw her, she was almost always alone in her bed, 8 00:00:35,415 --> 00:00:37,600 crying but with no tears. 9 00:00:38,480 --> 00:00:41,175 Her father had recently died in the war. 10 00:00:41,175 --> 00:00:44,425 And her mom was admitted with tuberculosis 11 00:00:44,425 --> 00:00:46,304 to the tent-hospital next door. 12 00:00:46,844 --> 00:00:49,464 Her grandmother took care of her when possible. 13 00:00:49,844 --> 00:00:53,342 We treat kids like Achuei, with malnutrition, 14 00:00:53,342 --> 00:00:57,125 with a therapeutic food, a peanut-based paste 15 00:00:57,125 --> 00:00:58,637 which has a lot of calories. 16 00:00:59,657 --> 00:01:03,697 The thing is, even though Achuei had to get this food 17 00:01:03,697 --> 00:01:06,956 we noticed that her grandmother was just giving her rice and bread. 18 00:01:06,956 --> 00:01:08,655 That's why weeks went by, 19 00:01:08,655 --> 00:01:11,621 in which I visited almost every night to wrap her up, 20 00:01:11,621 --> 00:01:13,621 and wait for her to fall asleep, 21 00:01:13,621 --> 00:01:15,220 and Achuei didn't gain weight. 22 00:01:15,220 --> 00:01:18,801 Her grandmother wasn't giving her the key food 23 00:01:18,801 --> 00:01:20,291 to treat her malnutrition. 24 00:01:21,451 --> 00:01:23,886 When I found out that her grandmother 25 00:01:23,886 --> 00:01:26,807 was selling this food on the field I was outraged. 26 00:01:27,767 --> 00:01:31,465 How could it be that this lady was denying her granddaughter 27 00:01:31,465 --> 00:01:33,459 her only chance of recovering? 28 00:01:33,999 --> 00:01:37,404 We organized a meeting with hospital caregivers and patients 29 00:01:37,404 --> 00:01:38,775 along with a translator, 30 00:01:38,775 --> 00:01:41,930 because the grandma just talked Linka, a local dialect. 31 00:01:42,610 --> 00:01:46,625 There she told us she was selling the food in the fields 32 00:01:46,625 --> 00:01:51,059 to buy rice and bread to feed the whole family. 33 00:01:51,909 --> 00:01:53,689 How wrong we were! 34 00:01:54,159 --> 00:01:57,456 She was doing what she believed was the best way to feed everyone, 35 00:01:58,416 --> 00:02:02,128 but rice and bread don't work to mitigate acute malnutrition. 36 00:02:02,958 --> 00:02:07,840 So we told her why her granddaughter needed that sticky paste, 37 00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:09,436 which is a therapeutic food. 38 00:02:10,456 --> 00:02:14,104 After that, we started to see her visiting Achuei 39 00:02:14,104 --> 00:02:18,748 with a plastic bowl filled with rice along with peanut paste. 40 00:02:19,038 --> 00:02:20,178 Apart from South Sudan, 41 00:02:20,178 --> 00:02:23,293 I've been working for several years with Doctors Without Borders 42 00:02:23,293 --> 00:02:27,787 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Niger, and in Central African Republic. 43 00:02:28,117 --> 00:02:32,232 Almost all of them are among the countries with lesser resources 44 00:02:32,232 --> 00:02:35,832 where people are constantly affected by poverty, 45 00:02:35,832 --> 00:02:40,371 malnutrition, malaria, among many other problems. 46 00:02:40,831 --> 00:02:42,731 I'm an economist, 47 00:02:42,731 --> 00:02:46,245 so my main function was to financially coordinate 48 00:02:46,245 --> 00:02:47,936 the missions I was involved with. 49 00:02:47,936 --> 00:02:51,462 I had to make sure that all the processes and procedures were fulfilled, 50 00:02:51,462 --> 00:02:53,876 the approved budget was respected, 51 00:02:53,876 --> 00:02:56,546 that all the bills were paid in a timely maner. 52 00:02:56,976 --> 00:02:59,327 And maybe it would have been more comfortable, 53 00:02:59,327 --> 00:03:03,542 easier and less weary for me to stay behind the desk, 54 00:03:03,542 --> 00:03:05,615 to just fulfill the tasks of my position. 55 00:03:05,615 --> 00:03:08,440 But I had entered this humanitarian organization 56 00:03:08,440 --> 00:03:10,388 because I wanted to be close to people. 57 00:03:10,388 --> 00:03:13,083 So since my first mission I started looking for excuses 58 00:03:13,083 --> 00:03:14,788 to get this proximity. 59 00:03:15,678 --> 00:03:18,271 I still remember like today, 60 00:03:18,271 --> 00:03:20,700 those mornings at the clinics packed with people, 61 00:03:20,700 --> 00:03:23,171 with the patients' little brothers playing around, 62 00:03:23,171 --> 00:03:26,552 mothers chatting, preparing the food, 63 00:03:26,552 --> 00:03:30,991 part of our staff making the round, the tears, 64 00:03:30,991 --> 00:03:33,348 snot and other bodily fluids everywhere. 65 00:03:33,668 --> 00:03:36,797 While I wondered how effective 66 00:03:36,797 --> 00:03:39,860 that piece of soap hung from a rope really was. 67 00:03:40,067 --> 00:03:43,798 And I see myself lifting a little boy too short to be reached, 68 00:03:43,798 --> 00:03:47,680 and later ask myself if that was the only real humanitarian action 69 00:03:47,680 --> 00:03:49,000 I had done in the day. 70 00:03:49,680 --> 00:03:53,612 When I was in Niger, we had changed the approach 71 00:03:53,612 --> 00:03:56,139 to malaria in children under the age of five 72 00:03:56,139 --> 00:03:59,373 after the past year which had been tragic for the population. 73 00:03:59,693 --> 00:04:04,642 A lot of people had died, especially boys and girls 74 00:04:04,642 --> 00:04:07,501 due to malaria combined with malnutrition. 75 00:04:08,841 --> 00:04:12,177 So, we decided to get closer to the communities. 76 00:04:12,957 --> 00:04:17,523 Trying to be closer to people and bring them a prevention tool 77 00:04:17,523 --> 00:04:21,554 instead of waiting for them to reach out to our hospitals and health centers, 78 00:04:21,554 --> 00:04:24,184 almost always collapsing the health system. 79 00:04:25,054 --> 00:04:28,070 We started prevention campaign called 80 00:04:28,070 --> 00:04:30,703 "Seasonal malaria chemoprevention" 81 00:04:30,703 --> 00:04:35,651 consisting of an oral vaccine that had to be administered to kids 82 00:04:35,651 --> 00:04:38,557 for three days a month for several months. 83 00:04:39,567 --> 00:04:43,566 But at first, because the communities knew nothing 84 00:04:43,566 --> 00:04:45,482 and it was a new tool, 85 00:04:45,482 --> 00:04:48,387 they didn't want to be involved with this new treatment. 86 00:04:49,297 --> 00:04:53,097 They preferred to be treated traditionally once they got infected, 87 00:04:53,097 --> 00:04:55,310 which had worked until then. 88 00:04:56,230 --> 00:05:01,527 So we approached the communities, we talked with them, 89 00:05:01,527 --> 00:05:05,193 we told them what this campaign of chemoprevention was about, 90 00:05:05,193 --> 00:05:07,236 we answered their questions, their doubts, 91 00:05:07,236 --> 00:05:10,482 we talked with the mothers and with the leaders of the villages. 92 00:05:11,802 --> 00:05:14,841 That day in the car we were: the driver, 93 00:05:14,841 --> 00:05:18,746 the project logistics manager, Abdulaziz, and me. 94 00:05:18,746 --> 00:05:20,552 I was mostly going to pay salaries 95 00:05:20,552 --> 00:05:22,502 but also to help in any way I can. 96 00:05:22,502 --> 00:05:24,555 We had to deliver the doses 97 00:05:24,555 --> 00:05:28,306 and we feared that very few people would attend the place of vaccination. 98 00:05:29,476 --> 00:05:33,254 After many hours of traveling roads and dirt roads 99 00:05:33,254 --> 00:05:35,869 until the roads end, 100 00:05:35,869 --> 00:05:38,201 and we kept going through the hills with the van 101 00:05:38,201 --> 00:05:40,857 in the middle of the Sahel Desert, we arrived. 102 00:05:41,467 --> 00:05:43,033 To our surprise, 103 00:05:43,033 --> 00:05:46,526 we saw long lines of mothers, we didn't get to see where they ended. 104 00:05:47,216 --> 00:05:50,449 They were holding their children tight 105 00:05:50,449 --> 00:05:53,554 trying to get a shadow under a burning sun. 106 00:05:54,114 --> 00:05:57,014 The kids were scared, 107 00:05:57,014 --> 00:05:59,613 or overwhelmed by the heat or impatient. 108 00:05:59,813 --> 00:06:03,685 But that day of vaccination was just the end of a long road. 109 00:06:04,195 --> 00:06:08,978 It had been possible because we had approached the communities, 110 00:06:08,978 --> 00:06:10,694 we had talked to people, 111 00:06:10,694 --> 00:06:13,272 we had spent long days in the desert. 112 00:06:13,842 --> 00:06:17,325 That day I felt that I was part of something larger. 113 00:06:17,325 --> 00:06:19,818 Our paths had crossed and united. 114 00:06:20,128 --> 00:06:22,475 But there's so much to do in these communities 115 00:06:22,475 --> 00:06:24,991 that I often wondered if it was worth it. 116 00:06:25,371 --> 00:06:29,805 For the more than 184,000 children in Niger 117 00:06:29,805 --> 00:06:33,977 who were able to get the treatment that year, no doubt it was worth it. 118 00:06:34,287 --> 00:06:38,285 I'll never forget the hug with Abdulaziz 119 00:06:38,285 --> 00:06:40,793 when the team deliver the last dose. 120 00:06:40,793 --> 00:06:43,201 The satisfaction in our eyes, 121 00:06:43,201 --> 00:06:45,438 the feeling of joy of a mission accomplished. 122 00:06:47,468 --> 00:06:51,350 A similar joy I felt again in Kikamba, 123 00:06:51,350 --> 00:06:53,643 at the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. 124 00:06:54,183 --> 00:06:56,312 When it rains there, the sky falls. 125 00:06:57,142 --> 00:07:01,363 And as the roads, if they exist, are dirt roads, 126 00:07:01,363 --> 00:07:02,964 transportation get complicated. 127 00:07:03,197 --> 00:07:06,928 I had to go with one of our nurses 128 00:07:06,928 --> 00:07:09,062 to the health center on the periphery. 129 00:07:09,462 --> 00:07:14,393 We had to travel for more than four hours just to cover over the 50 km 130 00:07:14,393 --> 00:07:16,234 that separated them from our base 131 00:07:16,234 --> 00:07:18,522 and get to do the weekly consultations. 132 00:07:19,492 --> 00:07:22,209 People from nearby populations were waiting for us. 133 00:07:22,659 --> 00:07:24,581 Some had walked more than three hours 134 00:07:24,581 --> 00:07:26,981 to get to this place in the middle of the jungle. 135 00:07:27,191 --> 00:07:29,901 They knew that every Wednesday 136 00:07:29,901 --> 00:07:33,339 our team came by for consultations of all kinds, 137 00:07:33,339 --> 00:07:35,286 so that day they would come en masse. 138 00:07:36,054 --> 00:07:39,522 When the medical team finished to treat all the people of the day, 139 00:07:39,522 --> 00:07:41,697 we set out on our way back to base. 140 00:07:42,737 --> 00:07:44,169 But in the middle of the road 141 00:07:44,169 --> 00:07:47,385 the van got bogged down in a crater in the road 142 00:07:47,385 --> 00:07:50,151 flooded for days and days of constant rain. 143 00:07:51,101 --> 00:07:55,317 Eastern Congo is one of most conflictive places on the planet. 144 00:07:55,317 --> 00:07:58,949 Several armed groups dispute the territory, 145 00:07:58,949 --> 00:08:02,018 looting and burning villages, chasing after rival groups. 146 00:08:02,398 --> 00:08:06,727 And it also has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world. 147 00:08:07,497 --> 00:08:12,056 That's why it's very dangerous and it's totally discouraged 148 00:08:12,056 --> 00:08:14,209 to travel after the sun goes down, 149 00:08:14,209 --> 00:08:16,107 which was approaching at that moment. 150 00:08:17,147 --> 00:08:20,493 The driver, the nurse and I tried to free the van. 151 00:08:20,493 --> 00:08:23,769 But such a machine is extremely difficult to move for three people. 152 00:08:24,109 --> 00:08:28,425 Before long, we observed several people showing up 153 00:08:28,425 --> 00:08:29,862 from both sides of the road. 154 00:08:30,062 --> 00:08:32,459 We couldn't see who they were for the darkness. 155 00:08:32,939 --> 00:08:35,086 And the first thing I felt was fear. 156 00:08:35,956 --> 00:08:38,613 But right away I realized that many of them knew us. 157 00:08:38,773 --> 00:08:41,705 And even I recognized a lot of men, 158 00:08:41,705 --> 00:08:45,234 women and children we had been at the office earlier that day. 159 00:08:45,704 --> 00:08:48,438 They didn't hesitate to get their hands in the mud 160 00:08:48,438 --> 00:08:50,695 and help us dig up the van. 161 00:08:51,815 --> 00:08:57,108 That day I could really feel what it was to be accepted in a community. 162 00:08:57,318 --> 00:08:59,592 We weren't just allowed to work there. 163 00:08:59,882 --> 00:09:02,484 They also helped and valued us. 164 00:09:03,224 --> 00:09:06,684 And thanks to them I felt safe. 165 00:09:08,864 --> 00:09:13,801 Today I'm in Argentina working again behind a desk. 166 00:09:14,451 --> 00:09:17,312 But I don't forget all the years I spent on the territory. 167 00:09:17,962 --> 00:09:21,961 It's all those experiences, my experiences, 168 00:09:21,961 --> 00:09:25,959 the ones that shaped me and the ones that turned into who I am. 169 00:09:27,599 --> 00:09:30,367 It's Achuei's smile at Malakal's hospital. 170 00:09:31,737 --> 00:09:35,839 It's the hug with Abdulaziz at the end of the vaccination campaign. 171 00:09:36,579 --> 00:09:39,272 It's the goodbye smile of that child in Kikamba 172 00:09:39,272 --> 00:09:41,255 after helping us dig up the van. 173 00:09:41,955 --> 00:09:46,487 It's these memories and hundreds more that keep pushing me forward, 174 00:09:46,487 --> 00:09:49,540 giving me a reason to be and to do. 175 00:09:50,871 --> 00:09:57,665 Today, being thousands of miles away those people are still present in me, 176 00:09:57,665 --> 00:10:01,330 reminding me that it's not about individual work, 177 00:10:01,330 --> 00:10:03,295 or about imposing our help. 178 00:10:04,065 --> 00:10:07,285 It's mostly about working together with the community. 179 00:10:07,965 --> 00:10:11,829 To be able to learn from each other and build together 180 00:10:11,829 --> 00:10:13,865 the paths we want to tread.