As the plane takes off, I can’t believe it. This brown dust is making it impossible to see the mountains surrounding Yemen’s capital Sana’a. You desperately try to concentrate, to focus on the landscape down there, just to catch a last glimpse of that place, you feel you have become so familiar with. Whereas with every minute, the plane reaches more and more feet, you ask yourself, really that’s it? This is it? Eight months. Eight months, suddenly wrapped up, in a couple of hours, leaving no space for a deep reflection; leaving no space for emotions and no space to properly say good bye, to people you might never see again.

Being thrown back in time and my own memories, I remember mid of August last year, when receiving an emergency deployment request for a humanitarian mission to Yemen. At this time, this bloody war, wages since nearly 5 years; leaving millions of people internally displaced and hundred thousands dead. Almost instantly, I see the old city of Sana’a emerging in front of my eyes. I remember, years ago, a documentary of National Geographic featuring this place – a place being said, so ancient and beautiful as the history of mankind itself. An answer not difficult to give, not difficult to imagine. Some weeks later, I feel unimaginable joy when stepping for the first time in my life, on Yemeni soil. You might be confused, but believe me, entering Yemen nowadays, isn’t done in a day, isn’t done simple. It is a long way ahead, filled with countless days of waiting and requests a lot of „sabar“, (which, signifies „patience“ in Arabic).  While waiting for weeks, I remember a proverb;  “Beauty only comes to those being patient.” It is a beautiful saying, yet a very painful one. Leaving the question open, like a never healing wound, how long do the people of Yemen need to be patient, to find their own country’s beauty again. I know, that many of you, ask me to write during my missions and I feel honored and thankful for having such attentive relatives and friends. The truth is, that I cannot write during my missions, it is not only the workload, which is absorbing me, as soon as I arrive to the mission; it needs reflection to write. But to be honest with you, if I start reflecting too much during my missions, I doubt I could keep being operational.

What I can’t tell you while working as humanitarian, is what haunts me, once I am back home. There are plenty of war zones in this world, plenty of atrocities and war crimes committed against innocent civilians. Children, women, mothers, men, husbands, girls, daughters, boys, sons, brothers and sisters. So, what makes it feel so different in a place like Yemen, than somewhere else. What is it, that Yemen is known to be, not only the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, but also a place humanitarians very frequently lose their minds to. Lost in countless extension of contracts, desperate coping behaviors, loss of distance and respect for yourself and others.  When I tell you that 15.9 million Yemeni people don’t have access to food and an estimated 2 million children in Yemen, under the age of 5, are suffering from acute malnutrition including, 360.000 children in absolutely life threatening conditions, then this are huge numbers for you. Indeed huge, but at the end of the day, sorry to acknowledge the truth: they stay numbers, just numbers. The problem I have and had already during math classes with numbers, simply is, that numbers are abstract, difficult to grasp, not easy to imagine. I can’t even tell you, how overwhelming it feels like, when those numbers suddenly become alive, start to get faces, names, individual stories of hope and tragic loss. The three – six – zero – zero – zero -zero makes you wanna cry, in the middle of this little, dusty and overheated tent,  where national aid workers try to identify children with life threatening acute severe malnutrition. Whereas you try to leave the tent, the mother of this severe and seriously sick child, just grabs your hand. That moment, when the time just stops;  just a feeling, a couple of seconds –  you never forget. When you see, children digging the graves for their brothers, sisters and friends, because what is imminent to life in Yemen, is death. What you can’t talk about working as humanitarian is that hunger and famine are not coincidences but man made. That hunger is used as a weapon of war, like the countless AK-47 you see every day in the hands of children. Children supposed to be in school. But sitting in a school bus in Yemen, we have all seen it, is as dangerous, as being sent to fight on the battlefields.

Whereas, I wrote earlier, entering Yemen takes a lot of time and patience, it seems to me, leaving Yemen, might take even longer. I think it is important to know about your own fragility and that while working in a war torn country you will lose some of your hairs; you will definitely have scratches and marks at the end of the day, invisible to the outside world but perceptible to yourself, latest, when you wake up in the middle of the night, because you dream of escaping airstrikes.

So why not just staying at home?

Why always going back into situations of extreme violence and suffering.

A difficult question, with a very simple answer: responsibility. We are responsible for one another and maybe now, with Corona Virus keeping busy this entire world, you, even if you don’t work in humanitarian aid, can better understand, what it might feel like to me. The fate of humans is intertwined and for me it goes even beyond that. So, if you think now, oh gosh, she starts with all her spiritual, emotional social justice bullshit – keep in mind, the bombs dropped on hospitals and schools today in Yemen; right now as I am writing, the weapons used in today’s on-going battles to commit war crimes, leaving children mutilated, orphans and entire generations lost, they come (amongst others), from member states of the European Union. There is enough evidence present, to call this anything else than emotional social justice bullshit.

Call it a fact.

Yes, right;

read again: it is a fact.

– what I can’t tell you working as humanitarian