TUSHA

April is my life-change month.

I mar­ried my part­ner Mag­gie on Sant Jordi, 25 years ago this year. Words will never sum up how sig­nif­i­cant and pro­foundly emo­tional the day of roses and books is to me for that rea­son alone.

April is also when, three years ago, the team of doc­tors and nurses at l’Hos­pi­tal Sant Joan de Reus, saved my life after I was felled by acute pan­cre­ati­tis. I was crit­i­cally ill. Conxi and every­one there at Sant Joan, if you are read­ing this, I will never for­get the care and kind­ness, hope and de­ter­mi­na­tion. How lucky I have been.

And it was in April, 18 years ago, that I stepped out of my “first world” bub­ble and into the “third”, an ed­i­fy­ing, life defin­ing jour­ney into the mael­strom of a cat­a­stro­phe. Mozam­bique, al­ready the poor­est of all coun­tries, maimed by years of war, was drown­ing. Can you re­call? It came into sharp focus for a mo­ment be­cause of one event, the birth of a child in a tree. The dev­as­tat­ing floods meant there was nowhere else for peo­ple to cling to life – a daily life where nor­mal­ity was the lot­tery of mine­fields, mal­nu­tri­tion and Aids. Her mother had been in that tree for four days and nights be­fore giv­ing birth.

I had seen and scented ex­treme poverty on my trav­els, but this was be­yond des­per­ate. Con­flict had left thou­sands of street or­phans, and by street I mean the lumpy mud tracks through the end­less ghetto, home to mil­lions, that cir­cled the cap­i­tal Ma­puto. The in­deli­ble mem­o­ries are of chil­dren scav­eng­ing on a moun­tain of rub­bish; of be­wil­dered Tusha, the skele­tal 5-year-old Aids or­phan with no bed and but few months to live; the hun­dreds of women wait­ing in line in the heat for clean water from a new well, danc­ing and singing with joy; my abid­ing re­al­i­sa­tion of the gulf be­tween what I thought I knew and what is real for so many peo­ple, so many help­less chil­dren, on this planet.

The baby born in the tree has just turned 18. Her name is Rosita. She is well and thriv­ing and is hope per­son­i­fied.

In the price­less, car­ing and sus­tain­ing tra­di­tion of buy­ing a rose and a book, think about send­ing love and sup­port fur­ther afield through a char­ity. I have been moved by how Cata­lans have im­plored the rigid Span­ish au­thor­i­ties to ac­cept more refugees from the lat­est tragedy that is Syria. That is pro­foundly the moral and car­ing course.

Life is pre­car­i­ously short, even in our bub­ble, and we only have to con­sider what we would yearn for if we were a refugee from war, famine or per­se­cu­tion to re­alise what is the right thing to do. Cata­lans know this only too well.

There are five pho­tographs on my desk. One is of my Mag­gie on our Sant Jordi wed­ding day. There are oth­ers of my par­ents. And then there is Tusha .