Helping my father

Following is an essay that I wrote back in 2016 when I applied for the TRIUM eMBA program. On the same day (April 29th), but five years later, I feel that what happened back then puts my experience going through the current COVID-19 crisis with our family business into a completely different, more balanced and nuanced perspective.

"Wednesday, April 29th 2015 was a life-changing day for me. I was on the road for a day-long cold call session with a sales rep in the Freiburg region of Germany. On the way back to Frankfurt my mother reached out to me to update me on my father’s status – he was on a 2-week sightseeing holiday trip in Ethiopia and we had been unable to reach him for a couple of days. The travel agency had told us that he was not feeling well due to the extreme heat and was too dehydrated to fly back to Frankfurt; however, they assured us that he would be ready to fly next morning after one additional night in Addis Ababa’s best private hospital. Nevertheless, we had been unable to talk to him for a couple of days and he was also not responding to our messages. I googled my way to the hospital’s contact data and tried to reach the hospital directly, but no one picked up. I did not have a good feeling about the situation. Therefore, I decided to book a ticket and fly to Addis Ababa that same night in order to check on my father, pick him up and return to Germany next morning. When I arrived in Frankfurt, I quickly grabbed enough clothes for the next day and there I went, convinced to return back to Frankfurt the following day.

After arrival in Addis Ababa next morning, I walked into the hospital and searched for my father. When I found him, I was in complete disbelief – he was in shocking condition and delusional stage. I had the nurses call the chief doctor and immediately take him to ICU. After getting in touch with the German embassy, they arranged for a private MSF doctor to come and assess my father. He was already in state of severe sepsis and transitioned to be in septic shock within the following hours. The doctor said that what saved his life that morning was me arriving at the hospital. The experiences of this trip do not fit into 500 words; to cut it short I gave it all to fly my father with AMREF to Nairobi, Kenia. It turned out that I could not fly him out to Germany before 14th May 2015. The emotional rollercoaster of this event was simply unbelievable. After two long weeks of critical care, it turned out that I personally had to find and arrange the hospital for my father in Germany, the airport ambulance transportation and the flight from Wilson/Nairobi over Khartoum and Heraklion with AMREF – because no one would support us, least of all the private insurance that my father has.

Life-changing and humbling are words that come to my mind when I think about this journey; life is precious and unforeseeable. I have witnessed myself that in time of severe crisis, one can outgrow and accomplish anything. We should be thankful and forever grateful for our well-protected lives and standard of life. For sure I originally had “important” meetings and business trips scheduled for the time that I was gone – however, “importance” completely shifted and I lived from day to day, trying to do everything I could in a foreign country without any local connection in order to get my dad back home alive."