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Monique Nagelkerke, MSF head of mission

‘Good book and a head-torch to read it by. Sleeping mat or a sleeping bag as it can get very cold at night.’

Tim Albone, journalist

‘Music on my iPhone, shortwave radio, snakebite kit (in the wilds of Southeast Asia), and a US army escape kit (in Vietnam).’

Jon Swain, journalist and author

‘Army tourniquet, clean needle, antiseptic, water purification tablets and portable chess set.’

Sebastian Junger, journalist and author

2/ Avoiding Misunderstanding

There is no such thing as an enemy. You are independent in a war zone: you should be able to deal with everyone and everything. Understand that the people outside are just men and women. How are they thinking? What part of them can you understand? In the end they are all human. You need to find the kernel of humanity.

Leith Mushtaq

At the risk of sounding like a beauty pageant contestant, if everyone could approach the unfamiliar with the same sensitivity and lack of preconceived judgement as Leith Mushtaq, a world of violence and death could be avoided.

Unfortunately, when two people meet they bring their baggage with them – fears and notions of otherness that lead to dangerous misunderstanding. All we, as visitors, can do is to try to bridge the canyon of difference. There are many different ways to do that, from speech to looks and body language.

John Simpson, the BBC correspondent who has sat on many a front line, says you always need to retain your ‘self’. ‘Act naturally, don’t allow yourself to be scared; be friendly, look people in the eye and never, ever try to pretend you’re not who you are.’

Kamal Hyder has spent years working as a journalist in the tribal lands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. His reports are as popular with the Taliban as they are with the Pakistani Army. He advocates learning how to blend in with people in any way you can. ‘Even if you can’t assimilate, you can learn how to treat people, show respect for their culture. You should aim for them to respect you as much as you respect them. Engage them on their level.’

/TO BLEND IN OR NOT?

There are two very different schools of thought about blending in, and both sides feel equally strongly.

I spent a lot of time in Iraq struggling with my abia, the black, all-in-one number that covers you from head to toe. Initially, I wore it to travel when visiting scary places in town, and to funerals. But I quickly learnt that it was never going to help me – a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl – blend in. While other girls could go through an assault course in their headscarves, mine would not stay on. It was like the material and my head were magnetized at polar opposites. Wearing it just meant that people looked twice and often came up to me and asked who I was – the last thing I wanted.

A friend of mine, however, was able to wander freely around Baghdad without anyone batting an eyelid because she had brown eyes and brown hair. She had also perfected the art of dressing to blend in – carrying only plastic bags, never a smart laptop case. She wore local clothes, bought on arrival, and, most importantly, local shoes, and went quietly about her business. Our Muslim translators thought it was fantastic. The Christian was furious.

I ended up wearing the abia only out of respect, never for disguise. If I was meeting a member of the Badr Brigade – the Shia armed group who clashed with the Mehdi army just after I left town – I would wear an abia so that he was able to talk to me. If I was meeting a recently bereaved family, I would cover my head to show I understood their values. They would often tell me to take it off. But they knew I was willing to try upholding their culture, even if my efforts didn’t work very well.

I think I was saved more than once by people wanting to protect me because I stood out. As one of the only blondes in Basra – the only one I ever saw – and a journalist who was listening to their stories, I was apparently dubbed ‘the angel’ by some people in the town. They would bang on the ice-cream parlour window, where I chose to interview all the most dangerous people I met, to let me know if trouble was coming. They would stand in front of my car window if we got stuck in a crowd so that no one would see who was inside. They would run into the Internet café I used every day and tell my translator when we needed to move on.

Then there was the army – the only people who knew where I lived in town. When I was with them I had to blend in too. I needed to be respectful, smart and familiar – I needed them to trust me. It was a difficult balance, especially given the complete lack of running water during my whole stay in Basra. A daily ‘baby wipe shower’ just didn’t cut it.

My advice would be that if you can blend in, then try to do so, especially for one-off encounters, such as checkpoints, or travelling on public transport. But if you are staying for a while, blend in only out of respect for the local culture, not to hide. In the long run you will be found out.

Others have different advice. James Brandon was in Iraq and Yemen for several years and found going undercover worked best for him. ‘The number one rule is to try to blend in with the locals. Wear a cheap shirt. Grow a beard. Go to a local barber’s and demand the latest style. If locals don’t wear seatbelts, then you shouldn’t either. The exception is footwear. Even if most locals wear sandals, you should stick to trainers (in a local fashion of course) because if people start shooting, you might need to run. Unless you can run in sandals, don’t wear them.

‘Remember that disguises that work in one part of the world won’t work in another. Heading up into northern Yemen to report on the civil war in late 2004 with an American journalist, I travelled in a battered pick-up truck with some sympathetic Yemenis. The other journalist and myself were dressed in the traditional Yemeni outfit of long grey thoab and Arab-style headdress, plus a belt and traditional curved tribal dagger. To complete the image, we chewed qat, the local drug beloved by Yemenis. As we neared our destination, we were flagged down in a stretch of barren, volcanic desert by two tribesmen carrying AK-47s. They asked for a lift and we were happy to oblige – two armed men in the back of our truck only added to our authenticity. As a result, we made it through over a dozen army checkpoints to get into this remote region declared strictly off-limits to foreigners. We were later arrested and thrown into prison, but that’s a different story.’

If you are in a location as part of a team, you must realize that the actions of one individual could harm the whole group, so you should lay down some rules. One (female) MSF volunteer explained to me how they went about it in Yemen during the battle between government forces and tribes in the north in 2007. Peace talks were under way, but it was very tense and one of the hardest places to work as an outsider. The tribal, social and religious divisions are incredibly complex in Yemen. Everyone carries weapons.

‘We established a strict dress code… to find a way to be respected by the tribal leaders and respect their culture at the same time. It is a completely patriarchal society. Women are not considered to have any value. If we looked just like the Yemeni women, we would be dismissed immediately, so we went halfway – we covered our heads. We wore long shirts down to our knees and over our trousers. We also avoided flashy colours. Once we had established what we thought was sensible, we wrote a behaviour code and no one was allowed into the country to work with MSF unless they agreed first to stick to it. It risked putting us in danger if they stood out or gave the group a bad name. No NGOs had worked in the area before us, so we decided to go low profile in the beginning. Our logo would not have offered us any protection.