France Hurtubise is a former employee of the Red Cross. For a quarter of a century, as a communications delegate, she found herself in the heart of hell, whether in refugee camps following the Rwandan genocide or among the survivors of the earthquake in Haiti. She looks back on her day-to-day work in a book with a Dostoyevskian title, Greatness and destitution. 25 years traveling the world through wars and disasters.
Before getting involved in the world of humanitarian aid, France Hurtubise had a tidy life. It was at the start of her forties that she decided to leave a comfortable professional situation in the marketing and advertising sector in the hope of embarking on a 180-degree career reversal. “The trigger is that I was not happy in this job which had no meaning for me. I understood that I was evolving in an environment of appearances and that I was not in my place there, ”she summarizes.
She then said goodbye to a good financial situation and took a sabbatical year, full of uncertainties. After a few volunteer contracts in communications at the Canadian Red Cross, in 1994 she landed the position of communications delegate for the international organization based in Geneva, Switzerland.
The same year, France Hurtubise found herself catapulted into the refugee camps of Goma, located on the border of Rwanda and Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of Congo), a region which at the time was experiencing a terrible humanitarian crisis. “I rubbed shoulders with misery and ugliness, she writes in the first chapter of her essay. Barbarism drives me mad, reminds me that if we leave the world unguarded, it will belong to those who ransack everything. »
To not forget
Today, at 67, the author no longer works for the Red Cross, but her work was born from this desire not to forget her years in the field in order to testify to all that she has experienced. “When I started writing, my mother had Alzheimer’s disease, so I thought that maybe I too, at some point, will forget everything, and it would be stupid to forget everything. what I experienced for 25 years. »
France Hurtubise wanted to avoid a chronological narrative, a sort of nomenclature of her various missions which would have put her at the forefront. She has instead chosen to shed light on her encounters in often poignant stories, where the best and the worst rub shoulders.
“I talk about the people who allowed me to be the person I have become today,” she says, while recalling that she had the “privilege” of leaving war or disaster zones. when a situation became too dangerous. “I oriented my book towards the real heroes, my local colleagues or the victims, those who lived there and who had no chance to flee. »
We think of Claudine, a young Rwandan refugee met in Goma and whose “kindness” and “good humor” will leave an indelible mark on the author’s mind. “Later, she sent me a distress message to which I could not respond, she recalls bitterly. I was so angry with myself for not having helped her at that time. The two women will see each other again following an email sent years later from Toronto. “Claudine had moved to Canada with her family and she had written to me to hear from me. We have since remained great friends. »
On the other side of the spectrum, the book looks back on a certain number of critical moments experienced by the author, those moments when everything can change in a few seconds. On the shores of Lake Kivu, a child soldier appears and points his Kalashnikov at his temple. “I know it could have degenerated, because these children are in fragile psychological states. Strangely, I had confidence, my time had not yet come. I left him my camera, and he left. »
This episode recalls the many dangers of a job that attracts more and more candidates bathed in a romantic vision of travels to the four corners of the planet. “To all these young people who dream of humanitarian work, I tell them that yes, the job is magnificent, but there are also gray areas. It’s not glamour. You have to be aware of this before committing. As I often say, we are not the heroes, let’s not forget that. »
Yoga to decompress
In an almost pedagogical concern, the author also puts into perspective the complexity of the crises or the conflicts discussed. “I won’t go into geopolitical details, but it’s important that readers who haven’t experienced the genocide in Rwanda or the war in Bosnia can find their way around a bit”, tackling the supporters of the infotainment and misinformation.
Because a detailed knowledge of a country, a territory or a region is of paramount importance in this profession, so as not to arrive somewhere as “an intruder” and to lack respect for the populations, believes -she. “I have seen so many of my colleagues, or even journalists, imposing their views by arriving with their big clogs, but who did not know the region or the conflict they were covering at all. »
Over the pages, other devastations of the world follow one another, such as the war in the former Yugoslavia, the disaster of the earthquake of 2010 in Haiti, the famine in South Sudan or the victims of natural disasters in China or in Central America. “Everything goes very quickly in this business,” she explains. We find ourselves dealing with emergency situations by moving from one region to another, from one conflict zone to another. »
How to last 25 years in such contexts, one wonders? “Yoga”, retorts France Hurtubise. Breaks in Italy or Nepal – with hours of meditation on the program – allowed him to recharge his batteries and continue “the job”, with his head freed. “War journalists will tell you: it’s a drug. When I was in Sarajevo, I felt like I was part of history. It was both crazy and difficult, but it was also what made me want to continue. »
France Hurtubise remembers her return from mission waiting for the phone to ring to announce her a new departure in a warm place of the globe. “Often, I couldn’t decompress. I needed my dose of adrenaline. In 2018, I did violence to myself by stopping all that. I couldn’t go on like this anymore. The publication of the book allows him to turn the page after all his years of humanitarian aid.