Last month we did a ten day camping trip in the Florida Keys with our three sons. The first few days of any family trip is always a little hectic. It takes time for us to settle into a rhythm together. We rented a boat and took it out to the Islamorada sandbar on day two of our trip, and this was the moment we fell into that rhythm. From there it was smooth sailing. The next day we headed to Key West, where we camped for six days at Boyd’s Key West Campground.

We loved our waterfront tent site. The first day was really windy and setting up our tent was a little stressful, but once we were inside it, we really dropped into the magic of the place. It was so relaxing to be away from all the devices and cozied up together inside our little oasis. On the last day of our trip we went to the sunset celebration at Mallory Square and there was a rainbow circling the sun. Definitely adding this photo to my collection of Sunsets and Magic. Want to know more about our time in Key West? Check out this video, and like and subscribe to follow on more journeys!

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This is my go to recipe for DIY instant oats. I use this as base recipe for camping trips or trips to the bush.

Ingredients

8 cups organic rolled oats
2 cups dried tart cherries (no sugar added)
1 cup organic ground flaxseeds
1/2 cup organic chia seeds
1 cup organic powdered peanut butter
1 cup organic coconut sugar
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons fine sea salt

Directions

Add all ingredients to a large sealable container and mix well. When you are ready to prepare, simply boil water and mix two parts water to one part instant oats and let sit for five minutes.

Notes

Our kids love these oats! Add nuts and chocolate chips (after soaking in hot water) to mix it up. They are especially great for camping trips or trips to the bush. I always bring a big bag of these on work trips because you can [almost] always find boiling water.

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The humanitarian crisis unfolding in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is both staggering and deeply personal. As a documentary photographer, I’ve spent over a decade documenting the impact of projects working to provide aid during humanitarian emergencies around the world. While documenting displacement in Eastern DRC, the stories I encounter in and around Goma —of families torn apart by violence, of communities forced to flee with nothing—are among the most urgent and haunting.

I visited the Kanyaruchinya camp for Internally Displaced People (IDP)  in September 2024. At the time, the stories were sad but filled with hope, because the programs that organizations were implementing there were helping IDPs rebuild their lives.

However, since January 2025, the conflict in North Kivu has escalated dramatically, with the M23 rebel group seizing control of Goma and triggering a new wave of violence and mass displacement. Partners from the field reported active shelling into the camps I work in. Now, the camps are empty and I don’t know the fate of the people I connected with.

My work on the ground aims to shed light on the lived realities of those caught in this crisis, particularly IDP who are seeking safety and survival amidst chaos.

Capturing the Human Face of Displacement in Eastern DRC

Through my lens, I follow families who have fled under gunfire, crossing dangerous terrain with only the clothes on their backs. For example. one such story is that of Fela Mbahibwe, (read the blog I wrote for Corus International here) who escaped with her grandchildren from the occupied village of Kibumba. In a moment of crisis, she tied the children together with fabric and carried the youngest on her back as they ran. “We just grabbed our kids,” she told me in the Kanyaruchinya IDP camp. “We didn’t carry anything. No utensils, just the children.”

Over 300,000 people in and around Goma, and nearly 5 million across North and South Kivu, have been displaced. Camps overcrowd, makeshift shelters stretch for miles, and families endure extreme uncertainty.

I filmed and produced the video below of Fela recoundting the story of her escape during the M23 occupation of her village.

Documenting Urgent Needs

In every camp I visit, the same critical needs repeat: clean water, food, medical care, and psychological support. The water crisis is particularly unsettling. Many families draw water from unsafe sources, risking outbreaks of cholera and other waterborne diseases. Children bathe and drink from the same lake that others use for washing clothes or disposing of waste.

Meanwhile health facilities face overwhelming pressure. Patients line hallways, and hospitals run short on medicine, fuel, and even food. One doctor shared with partners the emotional toll of turning people away. Not not for lack of will, but for lack of resources.

Why Documentation Matters

In the face of violence and displacement, visual storytelling is not just about bearing witness. It’s about accountability, advocacy, and connection. I aim to ensure that the world sees these stories. I want to honor the bravery of survivors like Fela and help people understand the scope of this crisis in human terms, not just statistics.

In collaboration with humanitarian organizations, I will continue to document these stories, focusing on the intersection of conflict, displacement, and access to basic services like water and health care. I hope this work opens more eyes and mobilizes more support.

Keep Seeing

The needs in Goma and the broader Kivu region are vast and growing. Continued violence has disrupted every facet of life—health care, education, livelihoods, and social cohesion. While humanitarian agencies are doing all they can, they cannot do it alone.

I urge the international community, donors, and fellow storytellers to not look away. This crisis demands attention, funding, and long-term commitment. And it demands that we continue to amplify the voices of those who are too often unheard.

Because every image, every story, every step toward recovery—begins with being seen.

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Learn more about how I became a documentary photographer on my YouTube Channel, All the Magic

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Hanna Pavlovna and her husband, Oleksandr, once lived a quiet and fulfilling life with their five children in the peaceful village of Velyka Pysarivka, nestled near Ukraine’s northeastern border. Their days were filled with the rhythm of farm life—raising rabbits, planting grapes, and nurturing the land that had been in their family for generations. Life wasn’t always easy, but it was theirs, and it was full of love.

Everything changed in an instant on March 12, 2024.

Lives Shattered

That morning, the family had just come in from planting grapes. Hanna was beginning online lessons with the older children, while Oleksandr lingered at the breakfast table. Then, without warning, a thunderous explosion shattered every window in their home. Glass flew like shrapnel. The children screamed. Margarita, the youngest, was bleeding in Hanna’s arms. Chaos. Fear. The unimaginable.

A five-ton guided aerial bomb had struck a checkpoint just 200 meters from their home.

Without time to process what had just happened, the family did what many families in Ukraine have had to do—they ran. Gathering only their documents and what little they could carry, they sought refuge in a cellar at the edge of town. An ambulance soon arrived, rushing them to a hospital in Okhtyrka where the children were treated for their wounds.

Hope came in the form of a phone call: a dormitory in the village of Hrun could take them in.

The family pose together in their small dorm room.

Now Another Displaced Family in Ukraine, Hanna and Her Family Struggle to Find Acceptance

Today, Hanna, Oleksandr, their children, and Hanna’s elderly mother share one large room in that dormitory. Eight twin beds line the space in two neat rows. Two plastic folding tables form a makeshift kitchen. They compress their lives into one room—but their family bond remains unshaken.

In the beginning, the community welcomed them with warmth. But as time passed, the embrace loosened. “We are not at home here,” Hanna says quietly. “At first the attitude was good, but now… it’s as if we’re second-class citizens. We would be happy to return, but there is nowhere left to go back to.”

In the face of loss and displacement, Hanna and her family hold tight to hope. They dream of having their own home again, of planting a kitchen garden where things can grow—where life can begin anew.

Because even after everything, Hanna still believes in new beginnings.

Read More

Read more about my work as a documentary photographer.

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From Bombardment to Bravery: Alina’s Story Begins

Alina and her daughters are just a few of the many women and children affected by the war in Ukraine. On February 25th, 2022—just one day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine—Alina Kravchenko’s life changed forever. Her husband enlisted to defend their country and was sent to the front lines just a week later. Left behind in their occupied village with her two young daughters, Olexandra and Sofia, Alina faced daily bombardments.

“We couldn’t leave because of the direct occupation,” she recalls. For two long months, heavy artillery pounded their village. The shelling had no target—only destruction.

Eventually, surrounded by Russian troops and driven by a mother’s instinct to protect her children, Alina made the painful decision to flee. She packed what little she could into her car and followed a friend along unmarked backroads, steering clear of danger at every turn.

A Long Road to Safety for Ukraine’s Internally Displaced Families

After months of moving between relatives’ homes, Alina and her daughters finally arrived in Lozova. There, an old arts school had been transformed into a dormitory for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Though grateful to be safe, the early days were filled with fear.

“I lost a lot of weight from nervous exhaustion,” she says. “Sometimes I still have insomnia and tremors. I worry about the war, and about my husband.”

Her daughters carried their own scars. Olexandra and Sofia, both under the age of five, had stopped speaking after they fled. “The younger one was only 1.5 years old,” Alina shares. “She had just started using the potty when a bombing happened. Every time she saw it afterward, she would have wild hysterics.”

A New Beginning Through Community and Care

Shortly after arriving in Lozova, Alina discovered a women’s center for IDPs that provided art therapy sessions. She attended a session designed to offer psychological support for women and children affected by the war.

What began as one session soon became a source of strength. Today, Alina regularly visits the center for art therapy, workshops, and emotional healing. Most importantly, she has built deep friendships with other military wives, mothers, and sisters—women who understand her pain.

“We are all united now, I think, by the same disaster,” she says. “We share our pain and support one another. The psychologists at Corus help us cope and stay strong.”

Alina attends art therapy workshops at a local women’s center in Lozova.

Creating a Life of Connection and Courage

One year later, Alina and her daughters have found a rhythm in Lozova. She walks and plays with her girls, surrounded by neighbors who have become like extended family.

“We’re living here as one big family,” she says with a smile. “We help each other.”

Alina hopes to find online work to begin saving for a place of her own, but with schools and daycare centers still closed, it’s a challenge. “There’s nowhere to place my children, so I can’t work right now,” she explains.

A Mother’s Wish for Peace and Home

Though her future is uncertain, Alina has found strength in community—and comfort in knowing she’s no longer alone.

She dreams of peace. Of the day her husband comes home. Of a life where her daughters can grow up without fear.

And until that day comes, Alina continues to hold onto hope—one art therapy session, one shared story, one step at a time.

Alina feeds her two daughters in her small dormitory.

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Crystal Stafford is a documentary photographer working in areas affected by humanitarian emergencies. Learn more about the women and children affected by the war in Ukraine and beyond here.

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The Recos taught her mother how to make the porridge and soon Mado took her first bite. We all looked at each other and smiled as she ate spoonful after spoonful of porridge. What an awesome moment to witness a child in need get the help that she deserves.

Six months later I returned to Kananga and timidly asked our local nutrition expert about Mado. I was worried that he would reply that she didn’t make it, for this happened sometimes in those days. Program failure is a necessary part of the process. It’s how we learn what works and what doesn’t. But when that failure results in the loss of a small child, let’s just say it’s really hard to swallow.

He took me to see her for myself. We walked up the path leading to her house and already I could see her running around her yard playing with the other kids. I was blown away. She was a normal kid, laughing and smiling and asking me for money. But Mado’s story doesn’t stop there.

I went back to her village this past march, six years after the first visit. As I walked up the path to her house, I once again felt so anxious to learn of her condition. It had been a long time since anyone had visited her, and no one knew her status. Anything could have happened. She could have contracted malaria, diarrhea, a simple infection from a cut that could take her out, the list went on and on in my head. When we got to her yard her mother came out of her house. But no Mado. Her and my colleague spoke briefly in Tshiluba. I watched the mother’s face for signs of sadness. I couldn’t tell what was going on. My colleague began to leave, and I followed. “What happened? Where is she?” I asked eagerly.

He answered, “She is at school.”

My heart was overwhelmed with joy when we found her in her classroom, repeating words and learning to write. This was the ultimate success story.

And the cool thing is, she is not the only one.

She is only one of more than 481,000 children who have recovered from malnutrition because of OUR WORK at IMA World Health. And that’s just during the ASSP and ASSR projects. Now we are starting the SEMI project, and because of us, that number is going to rise.

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I was living in a hospital in Kananga in Kasai Central Province in 2012, shortly before the start of ASSP. My church hired me to renovate the hospital, but the funding was sparse. My room was a barren, concrete box with no electricity and no running water. Hopefully I would be able to fix that during the renovations. I hadn’t been there long when one night, around two in the morning, I heard someone knocking on my door. I waited to see if I was dreaming but the knocking came again. I got up and opened the door to find one of the doctors standing there looking a little shaken.

“Do you have a flashlight?” he asked hurriedly.

“Um, yeah,” I said in a daze, shaking off the deep sleep I had just woken from.

“There is a woman in labor downstairs. I need to operate but we can’t find a flashlight.”

My eyes widened, “Oh, yeah, hold on,” I said as I hurriedly searched my room for the light.

“Bring it down to the operating theater when you find it.” He said as he ran back down to attend to the woman.

It was difficult to find the flashlight in the dark. There was no light coming from anywhere. No streetlights, no moon, just utter darkness. I crawled around on the floor, feeling around for it, Finally my finger tips felt the cold glass. I grabbed it and turned on the light. The light was dim so I needed to find my other flashlight. I shined around the room and located my suitcase. It took me a few moments to find the other flashlight inside it. Seconds later I was running down the steps to the operating theater, flashlight in hand.

I found the doctors there prepping what they could in the darkness. As soon as they saw me they took the flashlight and went into high gear. The mother lay on the table, groaning and weeping quietly. She had been in labor for many hours at her home several miles away. But the baby never came. Finally, her family found a neighbor with a moto and they took her to the hospital. When she arrived late that night, the doctors determined that she needed a c section, but there was no electricity and no fuel for the generators.

The doctor handed me the flash light, I looked at him confused.

“Can you hold it for me?” he asked.

“Oh! Yeah, Yes! No problem,” I answered, still shaking off the cobwebs.

The doctor took his place next to the mother, “You can hold the flashlight up here? And shine it on the mother hear?”

I stepped into place beside him. An attendant put something in the mother’s mouth and she bit down. The doctor continued to prep the area. It took me a moment to realize what was happening. There were no pain medications. She was going to endure abdominal surgery with no pain medication. Only an old rag in her mouth to bite down on.

Soon the doctor’s scalpel was cutting down into her lower abdomen. She bore down onto the rag, groaning loudly now, tears running down her face. The scalpel continued its trail across her stomach, the crimson blood pooring out now. Suddenly the mother went limp. She had passed out from the pain.

I was surprised by how quickly the doctor’s hands were able to open the mother up. Soon I saw the baby appear there in the shaky shaft of light that I shined down on her. I was surprised by how pale her skin was. The doctor’s hand hurriedly wrapped around the baby and began pulling with great force. The baby was breach, her bottom was facing down. This was the reason the mother’s labor had not been successful.

Finally after great effort the doctor pulled the baby from her mother’s stomach. I felt hope take hold in me. She was out! The doctor took her to a table, they turned her over and began slapping her back. I waited for to hear that first sweet whimper. I stood there, shining the light on her, waiting to see her chest move with that first breath. Was this normal? I studied the doctor’s faces in the pale light for any sign that things were ok. But They looked worried. Very worried. They turned her over and put the ventilator to her mouth and began squeezing. Any second now I would witness her take her first breath. Right?

They continued several minutes, but that first breath never came. There was no longer any pulse to keep working for. She had slipped away, right there under the beam of my flashlight.

The mother laid there on the table, still unconscious and unaware of the sad news the doctors would soon tell her. She would never get to hold her baby girl and feel her warmth before it faded. She would wake to a pain that no medicine would ever cure. A hole inside her that no doctor could ever close.

I stood there in shock. That was not the outcome I expected.  The doctors were still moving all around me. One of them took the flashlight out of my hands and began cleaning up. Finally, I began the slow ascent back to my room. I wracked my brain trying to figure out why? Why? Why?

It is hard to say at what moment it became too late. I couldn’t help but think that maybe it was at some point during those seven minutes it took me to find the light.

Something as simple as light.

Maybe that “too late” moment happened when the doctor was running up the steps to find me. Or maybe it happened when I was feeling around in the dark for my phone. Or during the moment when I found my other flashlight and turned it on. Yes, that was the moment. If I had just rushed down there with only my cell phone flashlight, that baby would still be alive, crying and wiggling in a warm blanket, waiting for her mother to wake up and feed her.

I couldn’t help but take responsibility. All it took was a light and I didn’t find it fast enough. It was my fault. I knew it.

If the mother had arrived to a hospital that had solar power, they would have been able to operate immediately. Instead, it took seven minutes for the doctor to find the light he needed to perform surgery. And it was seven minutes too late.

___________________________________________________________

I wrote this story as an exercise for a creative collaborative workshop. They asked me to write a story about something that happened in Congo but didn’t have a happy ending. At the time I was working in South Sudan on a video shoot for a grant competition to improve maternal health. South Sudan has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. The woman in the photo, Joice John, was due to give birth any day. She was lucky that she lived near a health center, only 40% of people in South Sudan have access to a facility. But if she gave birth at night her luck would change. Drastically. The health center near her didn’t have electricity. Each night they closed their doors at sunset. If a woman in their community went into labor she could either give birth at home or walk seven kilometers to the nearest hospital with electricity. She told me she would rather give birth at home.

So I wrote this story. It didn’t happen to me. It happened to Antonio.

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When I find myself in the forest with my camera, I seek the sacred details. The sacred geometry. It’s a newfound fascination for my photography and a perfect one for the rainy season when all things living experience exponential expansion and growth. Why do photos that capture perfect geometry, like this one I took in New Zealand, exude so much more magic? Why do I feel this photo as a calm truth in my heart?

It’s sacred.

That’s the only answer that makes sense to me.

Sacred Jungle Geometry Abounds in Costa Rica

I took this photo a few weeks back on my first trip to Monteverde Cloud Forest. I can’t believe that I have lived here for three years and this was my first time there. What a magical place. Thousands of acres of protected old-growth forest and endless trails for you to lose yourself on. To put a little perspective on it, I am told the fern pictured here grows only one centimetre per year.

This is a place I will come back to again and again. To find the sacred jungle geometry. To find the peace in my heart.

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Freedom to do what I please at most moments in the day. Thankfully, I have a job I love, working for IMA World Health, for which most days I am happy to sit down at my desk and perform. Mostly I enjoy a certain freedom of time.

My loss of freedom is experienced financially. Too much house. Too much upkeep. My current path to finding freedom is leading me into a small, 40 ft container home. It’s a home that my architect husband and I designed way back when we were pregnant with our first child. But then due to the complexities of building in Costa Rica, it is only now nearing completion, three years, another child, and a LOT more money later.

Now we are a family of four moving into this tiny container. And I am really nervous about it. I wake up in the early AM stressing about it. Where will I work? Where will we hang out when the kids go to bed? What about my musical instruments and equipment? Sometimes this thinking leads me straight into an anxious frenzy for which I must draw on my decades of yoga and breathwork to calm my mind and body. Sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn’t.

Finding Freedom in Day Dreams

Something that has been working for me lately is focusing on the financial freedom we will enjoy by downsizing. These thoughts lead to daydreams of working fewer hours and spending more time with my kids. Going to the beach with them every morning in the dry season. Planting a garden and teaching my kids to grow their own food. Maybe, just maybe, if I have more financial freedom, I won’t need a big indoor space because I will be spending most of my time basking in the sun and jungle.

Our move-in date is one month and four days away. In order to take this huge leap into a tiny space, I have to let go of my preconceived notions of comfort and find freedom in the small things. The little beings. Fewer things. The simple life.

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The surf report said five stars but it was gruesome and sloppy out there. Nevertheless, we are all happy to be paddling again, no matter where it leads.

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