"volunteering Across Borders: Humanitarian Mission Travel Insurance In Europe"

"volunteering Across Borders: Humanitarian Mission Travel Insurance In Europe" - Born during the war in Lebanon, MSF veteran Richard Zereik knows what it means to be a refugee.

The Central Prison in Georgetown, Guyana was like everything you can imagine. High walls and dirty cells, a crowded yard, a hut in the corner for those condemned to death. Sweat, agitation and prison rules.

"volunteering Across Borders: Humanitarian Mission Travel Insurance In Europe"

The young Canadian stood behind the rusty gate, filled with fear and uncertainty. He was already in prison twice, but always accompanied by colleagues or the local priest. This time he was alone.

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"I'm here alone. I thought about not going there, but I knew that if I didn't, they wouldn't take me seriously and I'd never come back. On the other hand, I thought that if they did, they might kill me. "

The guards outside made sure he knew he thought he was crazy. "White boy, don't go out" they laughed.

The young man went, survived and helped start the first drug counseling program in the nation's history. In the following months, he taught group classes at the prison for inmates struggling with addiction.

Years later, Richard Zerick sits in a cafe in Montreal and laughs about how his decision to go to prison launched a career that has taken him to some of the most violent, unpredictable and fascinating places on Earth. For more than a decade, the 41-year-old has played a key role in medical humanitarian missions for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), negotiating access, planning campaigns and finding resources for colleagues during conflicts, outbreaks and crises.

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Zereik's family was born during the Lebanon War and moved to Montreal when he was five years old. “My parents had two suitcases and the airline lost one,” he recalls. “They rebuilt their lives from scratch.

The desire to travel and help the disadvantaged was always the plan: "I knew what a refugee was," he explains. In 2003, after earning a degree in psychology, Zereik focused on international development.

"I didn't know where to start, so I did some research. Books in the library, magazines, even the Yellow Pages. I had no experience or skills, so I started writing letters.

He came across Canadian Crossroads International, a group that sends volunteers on development exchanges around the world. "They were in good shape. They didn't need to have any skills and I liked the idea of a cultural exchange. They asked me where I wanted to go, I said wherever you think I'm going, that's where I want to go."

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Guyana was offered. He worked as a disc jockey and a project was created on the local radio. She looked perfect. He soon learned his first lesson: most development careers don't follow a straight line.

"The Canadian representative of the group called me the day before I left. She said good luck, I hope you have a great mission. Oh, and by the way, I don't know who's going to pick you up at the airport, the [radio station] project fell through, so I don't know what you're supposed to do here. I don't know where you'll be living, and the country representative isn't actually in the country. But good luck anyway." With a day's warning and limited funds, he couldn't change his ticket, so he went ahead as planned. Through a contact on the ground, he met a group that wanted to go program to help drug addicts. , and soon found himself in prison, learn about going.

After Guyana, Zereik returned to Canada, earned a master's degree in counseling psychology, and began thinking about his next move.

"I always dreamed of working for Doctors Without Borders," he recalls. “When I was growing up in Montreal, I heard about his work in Beirut. He attended an information session, was immediately intrigued and signed up. He told her he was going on a trip to Europe, but made it clear. “If you call me, I'll be back. A few weeks later in Florence, Italy, he received an email. When he was near Rome, MSF wanted him to check out the office.

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"People started appearing out of nowhere, as if they had crawled out of the sand. We processed hundreds of people within a few hours."

Turns out the recruiters liked their work in Guyana. He has experience in managing projects, people and money. Zereik, then 30 years old, was hired as a field coordinator responsible for managing missions, providing security and space for medical teams to work. He was sent to Armenia, where a long conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan brought the country into crisis.

"Working in the region was a big problem. We had a long-term medical psychosocial program in a country without social workers and a culture that didn't trust and care about psychology."

After a year on the ground, Zaryk was offered a promotion. Because he felt unprepared, he decided to move in parallel to Sierra Leone, a West African country immersed in a bloody regional conflict. MSF ran seven camps for internally displaced persons and three hospitals amid the chaos. Over the next few years, he alternated between MSF offices in Canada and back to the civil war in Côte d'Ivoire. In 2005, it was Darfur where MSF launched a massive medical operation.

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The bitter conflict between North and South Sudan is notorious for its unpredictability. Janjaweed mercenaries supported by North Sudan traveled on horseback or camel, often accompanied by bombers, and terrorized rural villages in an area the size of France. MSF teams responded to calls for attacks, assembled a mobile clinic and raced – often over long distances – to the scene. Part of Zaryk's job was to ensure the safe passage of the teams. “It was about being able to read people, trusting your instincts and the people around you, your co-workers and the environment you were working in,” he explains. “I couldn't do anything else.

There were no ordinary days. He remembers the day of the attack on Tamai village. The call came and Zaryek gathered a team and a mobile clinic - two vans with drivers, doctors, translators, a project coordinator and himself. "We went blind. So I had to work."

As the team passed through checkpoints, it felt like it was being slowed down on purpose. Zereik, who speaks a little Arabic, tried to speak urgently. As they approached, they told him that the people had fled from Tama to a nearby village. They therefore changed their course, and upon arriving in the town announced that there were doctors who could help them.

“People started appearing out of nowhere, it was like they were crawling out of the sand. The team only had a short window to save and had to act quickly. "We cured hundreds of people in a few hours."

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History repeats itself many times in his work. He often flew blindly back to the prison gates. In 2006, Zereik worked with the Médecins Sans Frontières operations center in Switzerland, part of a team that managed missions in Niger, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He still made regular forays into the field. Again, nothing was easy. An outbreak of pneumonic plague in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo meant sending a team to a region in full crisis. UN peacekeepers had recently been kidnapped, rebel groups were everywhere, and the front lines were moving fast. As the plane approached, the pilot told Zereik that he had ten minutes to unload. Anything more would be too dangerous. As he watched the plane fly, he realized he had no idea it was off the runway. "Okay, let's go," he recalls thinking. His team got to work and the fire was under control.

In late 2007, he led a study to predict the challenges MSF teams would face working in an increasingly urbanized world. He was once traveling the world doing what he loved, but being away from his young family began to take its toll.

For the past several years, Zereik has worked with McGill University's Student Services, where he is currently the Associate Program Director. The difficult mission still haunts him, he admits, but he has found peace in a quiet life and cannot complain. "Sometimes I still laugh in the morning when I turn on the faucet and there's cold and hot water. It puts everything into perspective."

James is a multimedia journalist originally from Montreal, Canada. In recent years, he has written, filmed, photographed and recorded important events on four continents. James has reported from many major international conflicts, humanitarian crises and national elections in countries such as South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Bolivia as well as many locations in Europe. and North America.

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