Obidos, Portugal, April 2023

Just a few more days to go — and I can already feel that familiar spark of excitement building. Soon, I’ll be back in Portugal, even if it’s only for a little over a week. Time will be short, but there’s something about returning to a place that feels like home that makes every moment count.

I can already picture myself wandering the cobbled streets of Óbidos, with its whitewashed houses, bright flowers spilling from balconies, and that medieval charm that never gets old. There will be drives through the countryside, lingering lunches, and those quiet moments by the ocean that I’ve missed so much.

There’s another reason this trip feels extra special — I’ll be catching up with dear friends I haven’t seen in far too long, and this time, I’ll also be sharing it all with some of my Venezuelan friends. Hosting them in a place I love will make the experience richer, and I can’t wait to see it through their eyes for the first time.

Short trip or not, I know it will be packed with laughter, good food, and that easy joy that comes from being in the right place with the right people.

Image of the Nutritional Centre in Kabul

Over the past months, I’ve been immersed in writing my memoir — a journey through the many places, people, and moments that have shaped my life. Today, I found myself working on a chapter that takes me back to the very start of my humanitarian career, in Afghanistan in 1999–2000, under Taliban rule.

With World Humanitarian Day approaching, I want to share this passage with you. Though written as part of a fictionalised narrative, it is not far from the truth. The people, the challenges, and the choices reflect realities I have witnessed — impossible situations, extraordinary courage, and suffering that often defies words.

I hope it will spark reflection on what some people must endure simply to survive.


Over the next days, Kacper was taken, step by step, into the quiet heart of GNI’s work in Kabul. There was the ward in the Indira Gandhi Hospital — crowded, hot, and heavy with the sharp, medicinal scent that clung to the air — the smell of a place where life was held together by thin threads — and then the scattered nutritional centres in neighbourhoods further out, where the dust was thicker, the streets narrower, and the war seemed to press closer against the walls. Some were on the edge of the city, almost touching the mountains; others were tucked into quiet courtyards where children’s voices carried through cracked wooden doors.

He was never alone. Amélie, calm and precise, would speak in the measured rhythm of someone used to explaining difficult things. She unfolded the technical side of the work — the weighing, the measuring, the careful re-feeding — until he could almost recite the process himself. Jawed was the other constant. He was the translator not only of language but of the unspoken rules that kept them safe: how to greet an elder, when to lower your gaze, what to say and what never to say under Taliban rule.

It was Jawed who explained the boundaries — that once inside the safety of a GNI compound, the walls gave more than shelter; they gave space for women to be seen. Nurses, doctors, cleaners — their faces uncovered, their voices strong, their laughter carrying in from the courtyards — would welcome him into their world. Under the folds of their burqas were women with fierce intelligence, quick humour, and the quiet defiance of those who refused to stop saving lives.

Kacper listened to them, and slowly began to understand that malnutrition was not simply hunger. Hunger could be satisfied with a meal. Malnutrition was a slow, invisible thief that began its work long before a child’s first cry.

It began in the body of a mother already weakened by years of scarcity, her bones light from not enough food, her blood thin from lack of iron. Poverty was the soil it grew in, but there were other roots: the weight of cultural rules that placed women last at the table, the absence of healthcare that could catch a problem early, the exhaustion of carrying and birthing children too close together. A malnourished mother gives birth to a child already fragile, sometimes too small, sometimes without the strength to suckle.

Without enough food or the right food, she cannot produce enough milk. Without clean water, illness comes quickly. Diarrhoea drains what little strength the child has, fever burns through reserves, a cough lingers and eats away at the body’s defences. Slowly, weight slips away until skin hangs loose over bone, or swelling from oedema gives the false impression of health while the body is collapsing inside.

Malnutrition was not one thing, Kacper realised. It was an entire chain of events — a web of hunger, illness, and neglect, tangled further by tradition and inequality. And in the worst cases, it became a sentence.

There was a line between life and death, and GNI’s work stood on it. Amélie explained that when a child arrived in the worst stage — severely malnourished and unable to digest normal food — giving them a plate of rice or bread could kill them. “Their bodies cannot handle it,” she said softly. “The machinery has shut down. You must wake it slowly.”

That was where F75 and F100 came in — powders mixed with clean water to make a liquid that was not milk in the ordinary sense, but a carefully balanced formula of sugars, oils, proteins, vitamins, and minerals. F75 was the starting point, a gentle reintroduction of fuel to a body on the brink. It gave just enough energy for the organs to begin working again without overloading them. When the child’s body had stabilised, they moved to F100 — richer, more calorific, building weight and strength day by day.

“This is not milk,” Jawed told him, holding up a silver packet in the warehouse days later. “This is a key. Without it, the lock stays closed. If the supply fails — if it is delayed, lost, or runs out — you close the door on them.

Kacper could see it now — how every link mattered. A mother’s decision to bring her child. A nurse’s skill with the feeding cup. A cleaner’s care in keeping disease away. A driver’s ability to get supplies through a checkpoint. His own responsibility to keep the warehouse stocked. If one link broke, the child did not make it.

And then there was the cruelty of culture. Fathers, sometimes without malice but bound by old beliefs, would refuse treatment — especially for girls. Girls ate last, and least. To survive to the age of five was almost a miracle for them. Even then, survival came with scars: stunted growth, damaged minds, and bodies less able to fight the next illness that came along.

Yet in these centres, miracles were made daily. The women of GNI — nurses who fought for each tiny patient, doctors who argued with fathers until they relented, cleaners who brought comfort to grieving mothers — held the line. They treated infections. They buried the children they could not save. They stood in the gap between death and survival, teaching families not only how to pull a child back from the edge but how to keep them from returning to it. They taught with whatever the context allowed: how to make nourishing food from the smallest gardens, how to store clean water, how to use seeds and scraps to keep hunger at bay. And, quietly, how to find strength if the danger in the home could not be escaped.

It was only later, after walking out of one of the centres, that Kacper found his thoughts drifting to Zakopane. To the smell of disinfectant in the wards, the creak of the wooden floors, the way his mother’s face lit up when she was allowed to visit. He had thought, as a child, that he understood what it meant to fight for life — and in his own way, he had. His condition had been complex, the treatments painful, the path uncertain. He had survived because others had fought for him: his family, his doctors, even strangers far away.

But here, the fight was different. Stripped bare. This was not about intricate surgery or rare medicines. It was about whether a child could eat enough to live. Whether the water they drank would keep them alive or kill them. Whether a mother could keep her baby nourished long enough to see another season.

His battle had been hard, but it had never been this. He had never had to wonder if there would be food on the plate or clean water in the cup. And he knew now that the difference was not a measure of whose suffering weighed more, but of how survival could depend on the most basic things — and how, without them, the margin between life and death could be as thin as a spoonful of F75.

And as he walked back through Kabul’s dust, past walls pitted with years of war and markets alive with the stubborn hum of life, he felt something shifting inside him — a quiet tether being tied, thread by thread, to this wounded, unyielding city.

Yes, you guessed it — Kacper is me.

My Office in Panama City, Panama, June 2024

As 19 August approaches, I find myself pausing more than usual, reflecting on what it truly means to mark World Humanitarian Day.

This year feels different — heavier, perhaps. The humanitarian needs across the world are staggering, overwhelming in their scale and urgency. From conflict zones to climate disasters, millions are left without safety, food, or shelter. And yet, as these needs grow, the world seems to lag ever further behind in its response.

For many of us who work in this space, it’s not just about underfunded appeals or dwindling resources — it’s the quiet, corrosive shift in how humanitarianism itself is treated. Too often, aid is manipulated for political gain, instrumentalised to serve agendas that have little to do with saving lives. Worse still, we see attempts to criminalise humanitarian action, to make compassion suspect, to brand the act of offering a helping hand as something to fear or punish.

What cuts deepest is that sometimes, these pressures and abuses come not from hostile regimes but from governments and countries often perceived as open, democratic, and supportive of humanitarian principles — places once seen as allies of humanitarianism. It’s painful. It shakes the very foundations of what drew many of us to this work — the belief that solidarity transcends borders, politics, and prejudice.

Even more heartbreaking is how often we see human suffering deliberately used as a weapon. Starvation, displacement, and the denial of medical care are tactics in conflicts around the world. They are not accidents of war; they are strategies — ones that leave civilians trapped, suffering, and voiceless.

All of this goes hand in hand with an increasing lack of respect for International Humanitarian Law (IHL). In simple terms, IHL is a set of rules designed to limit the horrors of war: to protect civilians, hospitals, schools, and aid workers; to ensure that even in conflict, some lines must not be crossed. It exists not as lofty theory but as a hard-earned safeguard, built on the lessons of unimaginable past atrocities.

I cannot stress enough that upholding IHL is everyone’s business. We are all responsible for demanding accountability from those who violate it. Because when these protections collapse, it is not abstract ideals that suffer — it is people.

I’ve seen it repeatedly: places that seemed prosperous and safe, where life felt unshakably normal, suddenly plunged into crisis, into war. Entire societies that believed “this cannot happen here” found themselves dependent on humanitarian aid, clinging to the protections of IHL.

This is why World Humanitarian Day matters. It is not just a date on a calendar but a quiet act of defiance — a reminder to ourselves and to the world that compassion cannot be outlawed, that humanity cannot be politicised away, and that even when institutions falter, individual acts of solidarity still matter.

Views of Caracas, Venezuela, July 2025

August has slipped quietly into Caracas. The heat feels different now — thicker somehow, heavier — as if the city itself has paused to catch its breath. Streets are a little emptier; neighbours talk about escapes to the coast, chasing breezes and salt air. Even the city’s usual hum seems muted, softened by the weight of midsummer.

I stay behind, windows open to a humid stillness, watching afternoon storms roll over Ávila. Work continues, as it must, but my mind drifts elsewhere. Across the Atlantic, Portugal waits — and more specifically, Óbidos.

Óbidos is a different kind of refuge. A place of quiet stone streets, whitewashed houses trimmed in blue and yellow, and vines spilling over ancient walls. I remember walking its narrow lanes before, feeling history under my feet — a medieval rhythm that makes you slow down without even noticing. It isn’t loud like Lisbon or Porto; it’s a place that holds you gently, whispering rather than shouting.

What I’m dreaming of most is the coastline nearby — the sweep of Peniche with its rugged cliffs and fishermen mending nets by the docks, the endless stretch of sand at Foz do Arelho where the lagoon meets the restless Atlantic, and Nazaré with its dramatic waves crashing like liquid thunder against the shore. These places carry a raw, untamed beauty that I’ve missed. The Atlantic air feels different there — saltier, cooler, more alive.

This time, I’ll have a rental car, which means freedom to wander between these spots at my own pace, to pause at a hidden café for grilled sardines, to stand alone on a windswept beach at dusk and watch the tide pull everything away. Portugal always feels like a homecoming now, more so since I used my Portuguese passport for the first time earlier this year. Carrying it in my pocket isn’t just a document — it’s part of a story that still feels like it’s unfolding.

Travel is strange this way — even before you pack a bag, it reshapes you. I find myself noticing details of the everyday differently, as if my senses are practicing for something they know is coming. The light on Caracas rooftops, the echo of footsteps in quiet corridors, the smell of mangoes in the late afternoon heat — all tiny reminders that movement is life, that journeys, whether across oceans or through memory, keep us awake to the world.

For now, August holds me still in Venezuela. But on the horizon, Óbidos is waiting. Its ancient walls, its Atlantic winds, its calm streets where I can finally take a long breath. A different sun, a different breeze, a pause of another kind — one that feels very much needed.