I have been longing to visit Yemen for years but never had the chance. I have always been fascinated by the county’s unique context –which is underreported in mainstream media-, in addition to the delicious food and mesmerizing landscape. I work with Médicines Sans Frontières communications team in the Middle East and North Africa region and this August, I was able to go on my first field visit to Yemen to help the MSF medical teams document their work.

In order to reach Yemen, I took a plane to Djibouti with a transit in Addis Ababa. From Djibouti all aid workers either take a humanitarian plane or boat to Sanaa or Aden; so on my way to Yemen I caught the MSF flight, but on my way back I took the shuttle humanitarian boat. After almost 24 hours of travel, I arrived to Aden airport, tired and sleepy, but my mind also conscious of the so many things I will encounter.

On my first day I went to visit MSF’s hospital in Aden. At around 8 AM a strong blast shook the hospital, and a few minutes later the emergency siren started ringing alerting everyone that an influx of patients has started to arrive. The hospital team except for a handful of international staff members, are all from Yemen, they have family and friends living near the area where the bomb blast happened. They are used to emergencies – and they happily stayed extra hours. When the patients started to arrive, every person in the hospital left what they were doing regardless of their positions and went to help.

Over the course of the day, the MSF medical team managed to handle the stream of patients and dead bodies. Their sense of community and selflessness left me in awe. As always, I have focused on covering and documenting the events. As the day came to an end, I realized how my little contribution may give me a sense of purpose for the rest of my life.

On my seventh day in Yemen, I visited an MSF-supported hospital in Atturba town, in the south of Taiz governorate.

The main supply road from Aden to Atturba was shelled then turned into a front line where heavy fighting is now taking place so the only way to reach Atturba is through a five-hour drive in a rough terrain between the valleys.

In Atturba, I visited a school that was turned into a camp for internally displaced people coming from the embattled part of Taiz. I then met with the doctors from the MSF-supported hospital in Atturba. They explained that they no longer refer patients to hospitals in Aden given the difficulty of the road, that’s why they refer their patients to the MSF-supported hospitals in Taiz’s city center.

On my last night in Yemen, I sat with my colleagues on the roof of MSF’s hospital in Aden and contemplated about the work that MSF does in the field and about our role as humanitarian workers.

I realized that this visit which I could consider as “an adventure” is actually the daily suffering of millions of Yemenis. Friends and family might hail me as a selfless person or maybe as a “hero” for going to a conflict zone, but I just went for 10 days and I stayed most of the time inside MSF’s facilities under strict security guidelines. There is nothing heroic about being a humanitarian worker jumping from one mission to the other. As an aid worker, you get paid, you travel, you follow strict security guidelines and you get evacuated if things go bad. Of course there are always risks but you happily take them as part of the job.

In Yemen, death is practically besieging Yemenis everywhere. They could die from a suicide bomber, an airstrike, shelling, or a falling bullet shot by someone celebrating a special occasion. And even if they get to live another day, they have to face the endless restrictions on their movements. The only way for Yemenis to get out of the country is through commercial flights to Jordan or Egypt or a 13-hour boat voyage from Aden to Djibouti then to any other destination. Inside Yemen, in order to go from one place to the other you have to go through a considerable number of checkpoints and there is a high risk if you are travelling after sunset. The majority of Yemenis have limited access to health care and job opportunities, while at the same time facing a surging inflation.

Abdallah during his visit to Aden hospital. Source: MSF

Yemen has been plagued with civil wars since its independence in the 1960s. Yemenis call the 2014 civil war “the fourth war”. Despite all these dire conditions, Yemenis living under the civil war continue to carry on with their lives; they never lost their sense of humor, generosity, and hospitality to all their guests.

It’s very clear to me after my short trip that the real heroes are the Yemeni people who struggle to survive an endless war; for them, it’s not a temporary adventure, it’s their daily reality.

If you want to know more information about MSF or if you want to join MSF’s team, visit: www.msf-egypt.org

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) أطباء بلا حدود is an international, independent, medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid in around 70 countries all over the world to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters and exclusion from healthcare.