Journalist Michael Morrah has opened up on the personal toll of a harrowing trip to South Sudan, revealing a visit to his GP was the catalyst for dealing with the trauma he suffered while reporting from the wartorn nation.
Newshub's Investigations Reporter travelled to South Sudan in 2016 and again in 2017 to expose the brutal realities of life there - the filthy protection of civilian camps, the malnourished families, the child soldiers wielding assault rifles.
But his work in a country characterised by lawlessness, corruption, gun violence and poverty would leave an indelible mark on his personal life.
Morrah spoke candidly about his experience in a new interview with re_covering, a Media Chaplaincy podcast for RNZ where New Zealand's top journalists discuss the stories that have most impacted them.
"I had never witnessed firsthand the level of devastation and despair and hopelessness anywhere in the world as I did in South Sudan," Morrah told host and media chaplain Rev Frank Ritchie.
"There are 34,000 people internally displaced in their own country. They're in protection of civilian camps because their homes have been burnt to the ground. They've been run off the land that they used to farm.
"In many cases, children have witnessed their parents being shot or raped. Hearing stories, especially from the children, it was unimaginable the horror they had endured."
Morrah found much of what he saw in the field difficult to process.
Surrounded by intertribal fighting, he saw children playing with 'guns' they'd crafted out of the mud. Young, energetic and impressionable, it was clear they were inspired by the very soldiers who had displaced them, and many would go on to join the war.
Reporting from an emergency ration station, Morrah spoke with a mother whose baby had just died from sickness and whose two other children were so severely malnourished they lacked the energy to even stand.
These stories of horror he was hearing and seeing play out, combined with the knowledge that there were another 8.3 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in South Sudan, was crushing.
Morrah still finds it difficult to relive now. But it was his first few months reintegrating to life in New Zealand that were the toughest.
"When I touched down in Auckland, I went back to my flat on the North Shore and my young family... I thought, isn't this amazing? We've got this house, it's dry, there's only three of us in it. I'd visited homes in the capital Juba where 15 members of a family were living in a space a quarter of the size.
"I struggled to adjust. Nothing, for a while, seemed that important because of what I had experienced. The little things in life ... seemed unimportant.
"I was quite stressed... I didn't really deal with it, I didn't really talk about it, and I was just feeling overwhelmed with everything."
Morrah says a visit to his GP for an illness was the catalyst for change.
"He just said, 'you know, we can sort that [illness] out, but how are you in general?' And I broke down. I think I hadn't really addressed what I had endured when I'd been overseas. I just let it all out, and after that I felt so much better.
"I got on a better path to park that and compartmentalise it and not have it internally in my head and being part of my life all the time."
For Morrah, that experience has shaped him markedly. He now knows the importance of talking about what you've witnessed when reporting on traumatic events.
"[Don't] bottle all that up inside you and pretend like everything's just normal," he said.
"Talking with the colleagues you were with, debriefing more often, that's all critically important. Debriefing with the family, telling them exactly how you're feeling, what your state of mind is. Talking to your bosses.
"I think we're getting so much better at doing that in New Zealand."
In a wide-ranging interview with re_covering, Morrah also spoke about his journalism mentors, his sense of duty to highlight the plight of the most vulnerable, and the raft of challenges news outlets face in the modern era.
You can listen to the full re_covering interview with Michael Morrah here.
