From the Serbian-Hungarian border; to the Syrian border region; into the devastating natural disaster on Sulawesi-Island; through war-torn Iraq; into disaster shaken Beira, Mozambique. From the Balkans, through the Middle East to South-East-Africa; my finger runs across the map, all the way; equals thousands of km travelled, multiple hours of transiting at international airports, countless hours worked; revealing tremendous doubts about the state of this world; about right or wrong; about justice and fairness; about killing and surviving; about life and death; about you and about myself. What is it that makes our world the way it is? How big is the difference we create with our work? What is left, once we leave?
Does witnessing make us complicit?
If you expect me to answer those questions I have to disappoint you – right away. I don’t have any answers and by times I doubt I will ever find them. With every new mission I add new questions to my list. I remember that as a child, I once got told, I am asking too many questions and this will lead to a very difficult life. I sometimes wonder how my life would have looked like without all those question marks, keeping me awake at night, from time to time. I can’t really imagine another life; but I am certain that it would not suit me. I can tell you that pain and suffering are real – BUT so is hope.
The hope you see in the eyes of a 16 year old teenager standing barefoot in front of you after having walked thousands of miles coming from Afghanistan, to reach a better future. Yet stranded and caught in a vicious cycle of violent push-backs, surrounded by metallic wires cutting deep into skin and dreams.
The hope you see in the eyes of a Syrian mother stranded in the Jordanian desert, eager to learn about First Aid, about how to keep her children safe for a future, for a life, after the war is over; a life to return back to; to look forward to, despite the shelling and the bombing echoing in close distance.
The hope you see in the eyes of the elderly man offering you a coconut while waiting for aid deliveries, since more than seven days without food or water; after the earthquake turned up side down his entire village, leaving hardly any survivors but thousands of dead.
The hope you see in the eyes of a woman of Iraq, who escaped captivity, when she tells you, what does it feel like to be a woman, for her.
The hope you see in the eyes of Beira’s children competing with their self-made kites trying to tame the wind, right after the cyclone took away their homes, houses and families.
It fills me with humbleness and gratefulness, that people are willing to share some of those moments with me. Moments of sadness and desperation but also of joy and happiness. In front of my eyes, I can see so many pieces of lives, after being shattered on the ground and still, people never getting tired of putting them back together. The strength revealed in this mosaic is what I call: Resilience.
When I sometimes feel I lose my mind or I get upset about all the injustice I witness and I feel powerless and too small to bring significant change to it, I do remember what each and every person, I had the honor to meet on my way, taught me impressively:
Pain and suffering are real, but so is hope.
– what working as humanitarian teaches me about life
Lisa Macheiner 