It’s very intensive work, but can be quite nuanced. I don’t speak Spanish, so I worked with local translators and Google Translate – and lots of body language. It’s amazing, how much you can learn from someone, and how much comfort you can give, without language – with a smile, or a kind gesture.
People who learn I volunteer in conflict zones ask how many lives I saved, what dire heroics rescued the day. But my work is subtler than that; medicine is complex and people are, too. The small moments of comfort and consolation can be as powerful as actual medicine.
Some, I’ll never forget.
One patient lost his entire family in the quakes; he saw their building fall, crushing them, while he was outside playing cards. We listened to his story, and then, we asked, “how are you doing? How can we help? What matters now?” If you take a guy like that and give him a reason to continue living, you probably saved his life.
Doctor Dvora Werber in Venezuela (Photo: NATAN)[Missing Credit]
Then there was a little girl, no more than four years old. I’m a mother; when she came over and hugged my leg, she called me “Mama”.
“No”, I said, “I’m not your Mama – let’s go find her.” So I took her by the hand and walked over to a group of women to ask, “where’s her mother?” One of the women answered, “Her grandmother is over there. Her mother is dead.”
Did I save that child’s life? No, I didn’t. But taking her by the hand, hugging her, bringing her to her grandmother, restoring some scrap of everyday life – healing people with ordinary kindness – I hope it will help her heal. We cannot ask more of ourselves.
I met an 80-year-old woman who had never been examined by a doctor. I met mothers caring for disabled adult children, without adequate water or medication. I can’t give them a place to live; I cannot cure poverty or disability. But I also cannot stand aside and do nothing.
People who had very, very little lost everything. It’s hard to imagine – there’s no insurance, no one has money in a bank, it’s all gone, everything has broken down. When we come to treat them, we show that “people in the world care about you, your life is important”, in our actions, in our care. In the first days after the earthquakes, surviving was all that mattered, but beyond the first days, this is also saving people – saving people as human beings.
We felt seen as well, by many in the Jewish community in Caracas, who welcomed Israeli help.
Before we travelled, we had been cautioned not to be “too public” with our Israeli identity, but the minute we arrived, people were amazed.
“You have so much to do in your country – and you crossed the world to help us!” This warm welcome eased our worries.
Every day, I watched a silent man with a shovel and a small plastic bucket. He dug into a pile of pulverised concrete and twisted iron, without stopping. He filled his bucket, emptied it, and
returned to dig again. Two weeks prior, that pile of rubble was home to dozens of families – an entire human ecosystem. When the structure collapsed, a group of children – guests at a birthday party – were swallowed up in the destruction. Now, their parents waited, for news of their children – alive or dead. The man with the shovel kept digging.
He was my teacher, though he never spoke a word. He persisted, because someone had to keep trying. He embodied an ancient principle: "It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.
"It is not my job to single-handedly solve a global crisis – I cannot save every life – but I may not turn away.”
Again and again, we learn, reality cannot always be fixed. Some illnesses cannot be cured, lost time cannot be restored, and heartbreak cannot always be prevented. But we can relieve pain, offer presence, listen with compassion, and help people bear the unbearable scars of sudden, violent, and brutal, total loss.
Medicine is more than a bottle of pills. Often, it is a willingness not to look away, a careful follow-up question after the initial answer, or a simple hand on a shoulder confirming the reality of unseen grief. Simple humanity – sitting with a person who has lost everything, offering a mother a brief moment to breathe while her child is examined, or providing a local nurse a calm, sheltered moment to sit down and cry – matters just as deeply.
Every day, when I returned to the disaster site, the man with the shovel was still moving dirt.
And I understood that a single drop in the vast human ocean is never meaningless. A single drop will not fill the ocean, reverse a catastrophe, or bring back lost lives. But it is still water. And in a parched wasteland, even a few drops can sustain life.
Dvora Werber is a family physician, palliative care specialist, and volunteer with NATAN Worldwide Disaster Relief
