Yesterday I watched Ms. Clinton on the television screen, stumbling towards her van, after attending a ceremony at the WTC in New York City. She had to be grabbed by both arms by her aids, and then literally pulled into the vehicle.
Embarrassing? Not really. People get exhausted; they get sick and sometimes they can even hardly remain standing on their feet. When they stumble, when they fall, their close ones should offer them support and help, immediately.
Several days earlier I met my German translator in Heidelberg, and he showed me an introduction to a book he was working on, a book written by a British journalist who had been covering several terrible conflicts in Africa; conflicts triggered by the Western Empire. At one point, a journalist wrote that he collapsed; he was not able to walk, anymore. The burden of knowing, of witnessing unspeakable horrors, was too overwhelming.
I know exactly how this feels. It happened to me as well, just few short months ago. For more than a year I had been ignoring all the red lights and warnings that my body was sending me. At the International Conference of Psychiatrists for Peace, at which I spoke in Pretoria and Johannesburg, in 2015, several friends warned me that I am actually suffering from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As I was presenting several clips from my films shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Kenya, Egypt, Iraq and elsewhere, they were just staring in disbelief, repeating: “How…