The first explosion came just after midnight. I remember the exact moment because I was standing beside Dr. Emmanuel N'Dala, waiting for him to finish preparing for the next operation. One second, everything was quiet except for the hum of the generator and the occasional cough from somewhere outside the operating room. The next second, the entire building shook and the lights flickered, then the lights went out.
For a few seconds, nobody moved, everybody was in shock but they had become used to it. There is a strange thing that happens when you work in a conflict zone. You eventually become familiar with sounds that no human being should ever become familiar with. Gunfire stops being something you hear in films and you realise just how loud the gunshots really are in reality. Explosions stop being distant noises on the television. You begin learning the difference between sounds without even trying. That night, I knew immediately that the fighting had moved too close.
“Generator!” someone screamed at the top of their voices.
Another explosion followed that shook the building.
The nurses ran from the room. I don't blame them, they were terrified, and so was I, but i had to be brave because, the difference was that there was a patient lying unconscious in front of us. Dr Emmanuel looked at me and I looked at him.
“Do we continue?” he asked.
I looked down at the patient.
“Yes.”
That was the answer. Not because I was brave. I wasn't, It was simply because somebody had to. My name is Daniel Morel, and at the time I was working as a field surgeon with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without borders) in the Central African Republic.
Before I came to CAR, I had spent years reading about doctors who had worked in places where saving lives and conflict became impossible to separate. I had read about the Biafran War and the humanitarian crisis in what was then East Pakistan. I had read about Bernard Kouchner and other French physicians who eventually rejected the strict idea that humanitarian doctors should simply treat people and remain silent about what they witnessed.
That idea stayed with me. There are moments when neutrality can become another form of silence. I didn't understand that until I arrived in Central African Republic. Before coming, I imagined my mission would be dramatic. I imagined myself spending every day performing complicated operations, treating terrible injuries and saving people who had been caught in the fighting but the reality was different. Some days were almost painfully ordinary. I treated infections and I examined children with fevers. I also helped with routine procedures. I spent hours in meetings discussing supplies, beds and medical logistics. Sometimes when the going got really tough, I wondered what I was even doing there and if it was even worth it but the faces on the patients looking at us like angels and their last hopes of life and salvation kept me going, kept us going.
Then the fighting started moving closer to Bangui and suddenly there was nothing ordinary about my job. That night, after the first explosion, we continued working in almost complete darkness. Dr Emmanuel held a small battery powered lamp while I worked. The dust in the room was so thick that every breath felt heavy. I could taste it behind my mask. Somewhere nearby, something had caught fire, and smoke slowly began creeping through the corridor.
Another explosion, followed by another, usually after one explosion it will stop but this time around it came in very quick successions. The floor trembled beneath our feet and in my head i was like “This is crazy”. Eventually, after the operation the patient survived. But there was no time to celebrate, people were arriving at the hospital. Dozens of them poured in, families who had fled their homes. Children carrying smaller children. Mothers who kept looking over their shoulders as if they expected the fighting to follow them through the hospital gates and all of a sudden the corridors quickly became crowded.
There were no beds left, people sat against walls and on the floors. One woman kept asking me whether her husband had arrived. I didn't know who he was, i didn’t even know if he was still alive, i was getting asked questions i had no answers to. Then the hospital administrator came running toward me.
“Daniel, there are armed men outside.”
My heart sank and then, everyone became quiet, even the crying patients and relatives all went quiet. The hospital had one rule that we tried desperately to protect, no weapons inside. It didn't matter who you were, It didn't matter which side you belonged to. Once you entered the hospital, you were a patient. The men eventually agreed to leave their weapons outside and ee treated their wounded alongside civilians. That was one of the strangest things about the war, outside the people were fighting one another but inside, we were trying to keep them alive.
Months later, a local journalist asked me why I continued working there.
“You are a doctor,” he said. “You are not a politician or soldier. Why speak about what is happening?”
“Because I see the consequences.” I answered
I told him that I didn't need to decide which politician was right or which armed group was justified. I had already seen what the fighting did to ordinary people.
“I treat people,” I told him. “But I also have eyes.”
That same night after the interview armed men, this time around invaded the hospital and carted away with the equipments and medicines that we had stocked for emergencies, guns and bullet were being brandished everywhere and bullets were wheezing past us as the United Nations soldiers stationed outside had engaged the armed violent men. I rolled on the ground. When the volley of shots in the surroundings stopped, we started trying to make our way towards a building from where we were. We were halfway there when a figure suddenly sprung out from the darkness. Fear gripped me. I did not survive this volley of bullets just to be abducted but then, the man who was wearing traditional CAR attire, uttered these words to me “Follow me, there’s a United nations garrison nearby i can take you to.”
Months later i returned to the same hospital and same country, my mind was emboldened, i felt i could survive anything and when i am usually asked why i risk it all. I say “ Its a tough job but someone has to do it for the sake of humanity”
IMAGES ARE A.I GENERATED