We had the luck to be able to meet a special humanitarian worker, Alyssia Allen, born in 1993 in Nice, France and we would love to share with you, dear reader, some of her poetic and – at the same time dramatic – reflections after her last project in Congo. If you are interested about how you might follow this kind of path in terms of studies and education, we can tell you what Alyssia has done: a Master’s degree both in Administration and Engineering of Public Action, and Integration and Mutation in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, at Sciences Po Grenoble, Humanitarian Project coordinator training at the Bioforce Institute.
She wrote essays about “The smuggling of migrants in the migratory flows towards European Union from Africa, the Middle-East and Central Asia” and “The territorial expansion of Israel in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.”
She volunteered to go to work in Palestine for a local organisation in 2015 and in a refugee camp in Greece in 2016. She worked for Action Against Hunger and she was the Director for the Grenoble branch – SOS Mediterranée – and from 2019 until 2022 she was Emergency Programme Manager for Concern Worldwide in Goma, Congo.
There, she was forced to experience emergencies like the eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano, various security accidents and operating in an unpredictable context in areas in which arms dealers dictated the laws of the land. We are so inspired by her proud strength, her generosity and her enriching soul. As said before, it is a pleasure to share with you some of Alyssia’s reflections; reflections that she wrote to an important person in her life after her experience in Congo. The Democratic Republic of Congo, has been subject to intense conflicts on various fronts for nearly thirty years now and has directly faced the horror and consequences of the Rwandan Genocide. Aside from all the ethnic tensions, the country is endowed with rare and precious natural resources (diamonds, coltan, lithium, gorillas…) and this attracts illegal traffic and armed groups. Since then, it has become a major humanitarian hotspot, where many NGOs struggle to meet the population’s enormous needs, facing constant conflicts (more than one hundred different armed groups registered), violent sexual abuse (it is the country with the highest rate of women who have been raped), corruption, natural disasters and chronic malnutrition as well as disease on a large scale (severely stoked by the outbreak of Ebola). She makes us reflect on fundamental topics such as home, belonging and lifetime missions. When you’re reading this article she will already be in Ukraine.

Wednesday 7th September 2022 On the train from Marseilles to Paris.

I spent five days here and it was lovely, but I’m not really good at staying at the same place. It’s like staying in a flat, I can’t stay there for more than two hours when I start to get super anxious and start panicking. So now I am on the road to Paris and then Brittany. I am having a bit of a syndrome of always wanting to be where I am not. If I am, like, at the beach I want to go to the mountains and when I am away I want to go back home. When I am at home I want to move on again. That brings to mind two thoughts:

Where is home?
I was just wondering where I should settle if I want to one day. I love Nice, it’s home, but I also hate Nice and I don’t feel at home there. I like its beauty, the surroundings, the lovely life it offers and of course the attachment I have for it. But at the same time, I hate the people there, the atmosphere, the mentality and I’m well aware that I will get bored and suffocate quickly. But finding another place which might fulfil all of my personal standards is not an easy one. Sometimes, I just want a house made of stone in the mountains with acres of land so that I can have lovely dogs and live a happy life only eating local products, spending my entire time in Nature. Then, I remember that I hate being isolated, I love to have lots of people around me all the time and I love partying. Clearly a problem to find some sort of balance here.

The second question is directly linked to these first thoughts and to a conversa- tion I had with a friend about work. I finished my time in Congo after nearly three really intensive years. Full of amazing discoveries, emotions, pressure, intensity, learnings. It’s like being sent to another planet where one hour in our world is like one month there. It was such an enriching experience but also so traumatising.

It’s hard to come back, hard to move on, hard to forget.

You can’t really forget, but at some point you need to. More than this notion of time you are in a bubble on this planet, always surrounded by the same group of people who become your family, your daily routine, your safe space. Everyone exposed to the same pressure, the same sadness, and the same explosion of happiness as everything is multiplied. You see them every day and after one week they become essential for you. They are the only ones that are really able to understand what you have been through. And at one point you leave, and you just disappear from that circle. Once you are not on the same planet anymore it is super hard to keep a connection. You then face a gaping hollow like you are projected into the atmosphere, and you are just free-falling. A sort of dizzying fall and then you crash back to the earth. You need to reconnect to this world, those people whose lives kept on moving forward without really changing whereas, with you, it’s like you have had three lives. You just feel disconnected to this world like an alien. You know it by heart but you are not sure that you want to cope with it anymore; but you need to, of course. You need to cut yourself out from your bubble and accept the gaping that it had left; the loneliness and the misunderstandings.

Then, you learn how to reconnect with everyone, how to take part in a discussion where people complain about the traffic when you are used to complaints because people get killed, raped and die for money. You try to pretend to be listening when people talk about their new flat and how they struggle to put new windows in when your only landmark is your backpack. You learn not to get cross when people complain about taxes and not to be able to fill up their swimming pool whereas you have just spent the last three years where water was as precious as gold and no one has running water. Then you start to enjoy this world again; after a while you have finally become adapted to it. And, this is exactly the time when you start looking for a new mission. The time to leave and to start all over again. Take a ride to another planet. And this is exactly where I am now! And, this is the life I have chosen. Even if I find it hard, I can’t draw myself away from this intensity, a form of intensity that makes me feel the need to constantly be in this particular environment. To always learn, discover, meet new people, love more people, being brought back to simplicity, being faced with reality. I think that this is what I am made for and good at. I would never be happy with a calm conventional life, even if it means starting over again and again. Hopefully there are a few people from your circle of friends that you choose really carefully, with whom you maintain strong links. People who help you keep a connection between all of your various lives, all of your planets. People, maybe, who share your own on-the-move lifestyle, too. You are also one of my planets to which I will always stay connected even when I am in orbit. And, I know one day we will be reunited. Perhaps, together, in this little mountain house made of stone? We’ll be speaking soon and, so, don’t worry about me, I am like a glittering unicorn, flying from one planet to another, chasing my moods, my needs and my desires.

Love you, Alyssia