She worked and lived in the town we’d driven to. She was like a teacher, nurse, midwife type for the local women and children around there. She’d been campaigning for the “medical centre” we were gonna build. Seemed friendly, but a little suspicious/wary of us; but that’s kind of understandable. Great cook and a good singer. Super passionate about helping people to be well and better themselves.

The rebels weren’t hugely into female autonomy and education our fixer told us… so we told him to go grab her as we swapped clothes and readied the truck.

I didn’t spend much time with her when we began fleeing because me and my two colleagues bounced around in the flat bed of the Toyota whilst she was upfront in the cab with her son.

You could see she’d been crying - hard - when we got to the other village but she then kind of took charge of the situation and got all the folk onto the coach and started taking care of everyone. She was genuinely pretty solid all around, when she needed to be.

I went back about a year and a half later for the same project and she almost hugged me to death and just wept - I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such raw emotion.

Nothing but respect for her.