Field Notes

Nepal - A Mountain Tsunami, Grief Without Bodies, and a Country That Leads Its Own Response

I am standing on what used to be a riverbank, trying to fit the picture in front of me into a category. During my engineering studies we went through every kind of natural hazard: landslides, glacier collapses, floods. I remember the diagrams and the case studies. I do not remember anything like this. The houses here have not collapsed, they have been torn apart. Concrete structures built to last for decades lie in broken pieces along the bank, and in places the land itself is simply gone, as if someone had cut a slice out of the valley and carried it away.

Jamaica - Broken Trees, Missing Eyes, and the Children Nobody Is Counting

Three months after Hurricane Melissa, the storm is easiest to see in the trees. Many houses in western Jamaica have already been patched up: roofs re-covered, fences rebuilt, debris cleared from the yards. But once the road leaves the coast and climbs into the hills toward the center of the island's western half, the slopes tell a different story. Trunk after trunk is snapped halfway up, the crowns gone, the bare stumps standing in rows like broken matchsticks. After a while I caught myself reading the hillsides the way an engineer reads a failure pattern: almost every break leaning the same way, a record of the wind written into the landscape, months after the wind itself was gone.

Natural Hazards

Public Health and WASH

Field Observations

Colombia - Sanitation, Self-Settled Camps, and the Aid Nobody Thinks to Send

Pereira sits at about fourteen hundred meters, on a ridge in Colombia's coffee belt, where the Andes run in three parallel ranges and the air stays at a temperature that locals describe, with some justification, as eternal spring. Below the city the slopes fall away into valleys planted with coffee and plantain, and the wax palms, which grow taller than any other palm on earth, stand along the ridgelines like badly spaced lamp posts. Two hours west, over the last range, the land drops into Chocó, which is among the wettest places on the planet. Some stations there record more than eight meters of rain a year. It is also one of the poorest departments in the country, and almost none of that water is captured, treated, or stored. Standing on a hillside in Chocó in the rain, you are looking at an engineering problem that has nothing to do with scarcity.

Sri Lanka - Landslides, a Two-Person Team, and Teaching Instead of Treating

The road ends in a wall of red earth. A few minutes ago it was a narrow strip of asphalt climbing through the jungle, tea bushes on the slopes above us, a drop into green mist below. Now half of the hillside lies across it, a palm tree sticking out at an angle with its roots in the air. Our driver switches off the engine, gets out and makes a phone call. Nobody seems surprised. A man on a motorbike squeezes past on a footpath that probably did not exist yesterday. Ten minutes later we know there is another way around, and that it will cost us two hours.

Venezuela - A Golf Course, the Latrines Nobody Ordered, and a Week That Lasted All Summer

The northern coast of Venezuela is built on a narrow strip of land wedged between the Caribbean Sea and the Ávila mountain range, a massif that rises so steeply from the shoreline that the capital, Caracas, sits around nine hundred meters above sea level while the port city of La Guaira clings to the coast below. The two are connected by a highway that winds through tunnels and guardrail-edged switchbacks, the sea appearing in glimpses between the cliffs. It is one of those landscapes that stays with you: dramatic, almost claustrophobic in its verticality, the kind of place that makes you understand immediately why cities were built here and simultaneously why that was never a simple decision.

Vanuatu - Disaster Risk, Isolation, and Humanitarian Logistics in the South Pacific

Many people have never heard of Vanuatu, and even among those who have, it often remains little more than a distant name somewhere in the South Pacific. When looking at a map, the country appears as a scattered chain of small islands located roughly between Australia and Fiji, surrounded by vast stretches of ocean and far removed from the main centers of global attention.

High-Level Event Security Support

Not every assignment takes place in disaster zones or rural communities. Some involve a very different environment, one that requires a similar level of preparation and discipline but operates within highly structured security frameworks.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Public Health Emergencies

Public Health and WASH

Field Observations

Malawi - Health Data, Rural Healthcare, and a Remarkable Team

Malawi is not among the African countries that immediately come to mind when people think about the continent. It rarely appears in international headlines, and many people would struggle to place it on a map. Yet this small landlocked country in southeastern Africa offers a striking mix of beauty, cultural richness, and structural challenges that define daily life for millions of people. Traveling through Malawi quickly reveals why it is often called the “Warm Heart of Africa.” The country is known for its welcoming people, vibrant local culture, and extraordinary landscapes, ranging from the vast waters of Lake Malawi to the dramatic slopes of Mount Mulanje and a series of national parks that remain relatively untouched by mass tourism. Compared to more widely visited destinations such as Tanzania or Kenya, Malawi feels quieter and less commercialized, which gives the country a very different atmosphere.

Myanmar I - Earthquake Response and Access Challenges

On the morning of March 28, 2025, a powerful earthquake struck central Myanmar, with its epicenter near Sagaing. Official figures later reported around 3,300 fatalities, although many observers believe the real number of victims may have exceeded 10,000 once rural areas and collapsed buildings were fully accounted for. For humanitarian organizations, the disaster triggered an immediate mobilization. Within two days our team was preparing to deploy, initially heading to Thailand, which served as the closest operational hub from which we could organize entry into Myanmar.

Myanmar II - Floods, Floating Architecture, and Field Engineering on Inle Lake

When you arrive at Inle Lake during the rainy season, the landscape does not immediately reveal the scale of the flooding. From the boat, the water appears calm and expansive, reflecting low clouds and the dark silhouettes of stilt houses that rise directly from the lake. Narrow wooden boats glide quietly through the channels between homes, carrying people, supplies, and sometimes entire construction components, while fishermen balance with remarkable precision on slender hulls that seem far too narrow to support a standing person.

Nepal - A Mountain Tsunami, Grief Without Bodies, and a Country That Leads Its Own Response

Jamaica - Broken Trees, Missing Eyes, and the Children Nobody Is Counting

Colombia - Sanitation, Self-Settled Camps, and the Aid Nobody Thinks to Send

Sri Lanka - Landslides, a Two-Person Team, and Teaching Instead of Treating

Venezuela - A Golf Course, the Latrines Nobody Ordered, and a Week That Lasted All Summer

Vanuatu - Disaster Risk, Isolation, and Humanitarian Logistics in the South Pacific

High-Level Event Security Support

Malawi - Health Data, Rural Healthcare, and a Remarkable Team

Myanmar I - Earthquake Response and Access Challenges

Myanmar II - Floods, Floating Architecture, and Field Engineering on Inle Lake

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