BETWEEN ROUTINE AND CATASTROPHE
Daily life in the field shifts between improvisation and precision: morning briefings, then ward rounds, surgeries, emergencies. “Depending on the project, training and mentoring local nurses and doctors is also part of the work,” Eva explains. Sometimes it feels like routine, sometimes like catastrophe. “Often, one emergency follows the next.” A bright spot, she says, is the first smile of a badly injured patient slowly recovering.
What gives her strength is above all the team: “The shared effort to treat severe cases at any hour of the day or night. And also the shared laughter despite the often very difficult situations—these are invaluable moments that connect us.”
The teams are international, with people from every continent. But the backbone of the projects are the local colleagues. They are the ones who remain when international staff cannot enter the country or have to be evacuated. Many of them live in the conflict themselves, affected by insecurity or personal loss—yet they return to the clinics every day to care for patients.
For international staff, missions also mean living in close quarters, often cut off from everyday freedoms. “Of course, that can be challenging. We all come from different backgrounds,” says Eva. “But it also makes the experience so much richer.”
Conditions are demanding. In many places, reliable electricity is non-existent. Doctors Without Borders provides generators or solar systems where possible. Yet headlamps and flashlights remain indispensable. “Light at all times of day and night is not a given in many regions of the world,” Eva says. “And yet it is essential to be able to work medically.”
