Conflict abroad or virus outbreak at home? A Liberian aid worker’s dilemma
When Ebola broke out in my country Liberia, I was coordinating an Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) project in the hot, dusty, remote South Sudanese town of Gogrial. I was in the middle of the desert, surviving on a diet of little more than chickpeas and rice, with a team of first-time MSFers – and an even more demanding bunch of militia leaders – who were running me ragged.
My first thought was that I had to resign and go home. Yes, the humanitarian needs in Gogrial were huge; but my family and friends were in trouble, and I wanted to help.
I spoke to my contacts at MSF headquarters in Brussels. They assured me that they had a good team in Liberia and who were doing their best to clamp down on the virus, which had taken my country’s healthcare infrastructure by surprise. But if I wanted to be close to my loved ones, they told me, I had that option too.
So I rang my Dad. I asked him, “How are things going there?”
“It’s not so good,” he replied.
Our job is to respond to the needs where they are greatest
“Should I come and join the fight?” I asked, hoping he’d make my mind up for me.
“Even if we all die from Ebola, at least you won’t,” he said, hesitating. It’s not as if working in South Sudan is zero-risk: health centres are routinely attacked and humanitarian workers have been kidnapped and killed.
“You will still be alive to keep the family going,” he continued. “So you just stay there and keep doing what it is you’re doing; and do it like you’re doing it for your own people.”
In the end, I stayed on in South Sudan – and to be honest, I didn’t give it much more thought. Yes, Ebola is a gruesome disease, one that’s already taken thousands of lives. It’s an outrage that the death toll is still rising and it’s unbelievable the stigma that people from the worst-hit countries – Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia – now have to live with. I obviously have a personal connection to Liberia: that’s where my family is, where my friends are, and where I hope, one day, to return. There really is no place like home.
When based in South Sudan, Alfred Davies lost his sister to Ebola in Liberia. Photograph: Alfred Davies
But Dad was right: Liberia doesn’t have a monopoly on suffering. In Gogrial, I was seeing hundreds of children, pale and febrile with severe anaemia and malaria, die quiet deaths in our clinic. Here in Masisi, North Kivu, there are dozens more in the MSF-supported hospital being fed through tubes to fend off malnutrition. Totally disenfranchised and repeatedly displaced, the people in these two places need as much help as those in Monrovia do. Until Ebola struck, Liberia had a more or less functioning health system, so they probably need it even more.
By the very emotional character of our work, we may be tempted to become personally involved in crises, to stop suffering that we personally find unbearable. But the fact is that that is not our job. We are humanitarian workers. We are professionals. Our job is to respond to the needs where they are greatest and where our skills can be of the greatest utility. My skills were needed most away from home.
A few months after my phone call with my father, my older sister caught the virus. It took hold of her quickly and sadly, she died. I received a huge amount of support from my colleagues around the world, and that helped; but still, it was incredibly painful.
The experience reminded me of my mother’s death in 2004, which came as I was working with MSF in a refugee camp in the remote forest region of Guinea. By the time I could arrange a trip home, her body was too far gone for me to view it. She was just buried, and I never got to see her. It is an awful thing to have loved ones fall sick or dies when you’re not around. Though I know that my presence at home wouldn’t have saved them, sometimes it has a big impact – not only on the family, but also with a view to keeping one’s conscience clean.
Liberia confirmed its first two cases of Ebola in March 2014. Photograph: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images
I’m not regretful of the time I’ve spent away from home in places like Afghanistan, Georgia, Ivory Coast and Ethiopia, among others. The needs were there and I could see the positive consequences of our work. No matter how tough the living conditions; no matter how many weddings, births and deaths I miss back home; no matter how difficult the dilemmas thrown up, both personal and professional; seeing a young cholera patient come back from the brink, get up and walk around again – that makes it all worthwhile.
Sierra Leone fieldpost: 'I believe Ebola victims deserve respect to the grave'
Read more
My late mother and I started on this humanitarian adventure together back in 2001, as the civil war in our country pushed thousands to flee into neighbouring countries. She began working as an MSF midwife in the camps housing Liberian refugees in Guinea, and I was hired as a laboratory technician soon afterward. I wish she was around to share these experiences with, and I know she’d understand why I’ve made the decisions I’ve made.
Not only that – I think she’d be proud.
Alfred Davies is a medical biologist and project coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.