At the age of 31, the Argentine Luis Montiel was tired of the life he led in the province of Córdoba.
He set out to leave his construction company behind and change course.
Shortly after, he was presented with the opportunity to join the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to work as a logistician in a mission.
In other words, he had to provide all the material means for carrying out medical-humanitarian activities.
A few months later he traveled to Nigeria to attend an epidemic of meningitis.
Currently, Montiel, 46, works as an emergency coordinator in Cabo Delgado, a province in northern Mozambique that has been affected by conflict since 2017. In his career as a humanitarian worker, Montiel has had various roles.
He was present in territories that were facing cholera, measles or Ebola, among other epidemics.
“We work in areas with exacerbated violence, where there are usually many displaced people.
We arrived, set up the operation and immediately began to respond to basic needs”, he explains.
At MSF, which assists people threatened by armed conflict, violence, epidemics or neglected diseases, natural disasters and exclusion from medical care, the team is made up of health professionals, logistics specialists and administrative staff.
50% of those who work there are not health personnel.
Montiel, who has studied law, plays a generalist role.
She coordinates the medical, logistics, financial, and human resources teams.
The mission in Cabo Delgado, for example, involves 150 employees.
50% of those who work at Doctors Without Borders are not health personnel
In 2020 the conflict in Cabo Delgado intensified and reached its peak in March 2021 when an attack on Palma turned the city – once very busy and home to Total gas extraction – into a ghost town.
Today the situation is very volatile, with people on the move to flee violence or return to their homes.
Humanitarian aid is concentrated in more stable points in the south of the province, near the capital, Pemba.
Montiel first arrived in Cabo Delgado in October 2020 to participate in an exploratory mission and stayed until February 2021. After passing through other destinations, he returned in February 2022 and will stay there until August.
Currently, there are around 800,000 displaced people in Cabo Delgado, according to the United Nations.
“The main cause of this conflict is social inequality.
Cabo Delgado is the province with the greatest natural resources and the poorest in Mozambique.
Then a religious component was added, when a group aligned itself with the Islamic State”, recalls Montiel.
The jihadist group Al Shabab has been extremely violent with the population.
“The first thing they do is set everything on fire.
They execute beheadings and leave, ”he says.
MSF provides displaced people with drinking water, food, shelter or materials to build a house.
There are those who have spent months – even more than a year – living in the jungle, in inhospitable areas.
Some eat only what they could find on the way: plants or animals.
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Many are elderly people who suffer from malnutrition, anemia and their clothes are practically destroyed.
If they suffer from chronic diseases such as tuberculosis or HIV (very prevalent in Mozambique) they are in poor condition because they have had to stop treatment.
Almost all families have experienced trauma, witnessed or experienced violence, or lost their homes, experiences that have had a very negative effect on their mental health.
Visit to a ghost town
In Mocímboa da Praia, an important coastal city in northern Mozambique and the capital of a district with the same name, some 120,000 inhabitants lived before the conflict, most of them dedicated to artisanal and industrial fishing.
The town was taken over in 2020 by members of a non-state armed group.
In August last year, the Mozambican and Rwandan armed forces regained control.
With no civilians living there, Administration officials regularly visit the area.
The port is being dredged and services such as electricity and water have been restored.
In early April, Montiel led an MSF team that briefly visited Mocímboa for the first time since violence hit this coastal town hard two years ago.
“The civil authorities informed us that several dozen people who had spent a long time living in the forest were transferred by the security forces to Mocímboa after being freed by the non-state armed group.
In April, a small team on a one-day visit saw 39 patients, mostly adult men and some teenagers and children.
We did not find any critical medical problem and we only had to refer a person suffering from heart problems to the rural hospital in Mueda”, says Montiel.
The restrictions of living in a conflict zone
Despite living in the midst of conflict, Montiel has developed a routine in Cabo Delgado.
He gets up at five in the morning to go for a run or a walk.
At seven o'clock he arrives at the office, located in Pemba, to resolve the issues that arise and at five o'clock in the afternoon he returns to his house.
He often changes these rhythms to attend field work.
Montiel admits that he has restrictions in his daily life for security.
“At first it is very difficult to assimilate him, but over the years he becomes naturalized.
In Córdoba he was not used to dealing with armies to move.
One has to incorporate all those procedures to live in a conflict zone.
The hardest thing is to see the suffering of the people.
Some days it affects me a lot and other days I can process it better.
To be as productive as possible, one tries to handle suffering in another way, ”he acknowledges.
It is very difficult, he stresses, to leave humanitarian work.
“I have tried to get out of this and I have not been able to.
I have not found any job in Argentina that generates this level of stimulation.
One puts the head and the body.
Risks are also taken,” she notes.
Of course, he recognizes that it is very important for him to return home after spending time on a mission.
He maintains his home, in the mountains of Córdoba, to have a place to return to.
“One needs a root, a place to anchor and to go down to earth a little.
There are my lifelong friends, my mother and my brother, ”he clarifies.
He spent the first part of the pandemic in Argentina, then in Mozambique, Yemen and Venezuela.
“With covid-19 there was no safe zone.
Humanitarian workers go in and out of insecure areas: you take a risk, but then you can get out.
With the pandemic it was staying for a long time in a dangerous area.
It was hard for me to assimilate,” he recalls.
Montiel believes that it is not good to spend more than three years in a territory with a humanitarian emergency.
“When you stay in the same place for a long time, you start to lose objectivity.
The longest I stayed in one place was in Syria, two years and eight months.”
The most difficult thing turned out to be working in Argentina.
“It is more complicated because you are tied by emotional ties.
When
you are
a foreigner, you find an exit at the airport”, he relates.
In August, after six months of work, Montiel leaves Cabo Delgado and returns to his house in the mountains of Córdoba.
He will be there for a while and then take on a new mission.
Possibilities include Yemen or Ukraine.
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