Who is nurse Louisa Akavi?
The night the gunmen stormed her hospital in Chechnya, Louisa Akavi listened to the gunshots and stood silently at her bedroom door, waiting for them to burst in and kill her.
‘‘I remember just standing at the foot of my bed waiting . . .’’ Akavi, 62, later told a reporter.
The door, which she had quickly locked, was never opened. Across the hallway, Akavi’s friend, Wellington workmate Sheryl Thayer, was dead, killed in her bed. Five of their colleagues had also been killed.
Thayer and Akavi had signed up to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) together when they met at Wellington Hospital’s accident and emergency department.
Akavi would still be working with the Red Cross almost two decades later when she was captured in Syria.
They were inspired by the tales of former Red Cross nurses on the ward. But Thayer’s arrival in Chechnya 10 days before the bloody 1996 attack was their first overseas assignment together.
On that fateful night, Akavi heard the gunmen barge into Thayer’s room. Then two shots, before they continued their rampage. When they were gone, she crossed the landing and sat with her friend’s body, only leaving when a wounded survivor needed her help.
Few could imagine the terror of that night. Akavi, 40 at the time, heard it all – their heavy boots clattering up the stairs to the landing outside her room, doors being banged open, and then the gunshots – ‘‘lots of gunshots’’, as she later described it.
It was weeks before Akavi felt able to talk about the killings.
When she returned home, Akavi’s mother pleaded with her daughter not to go back. But Akavi could not stay away from the frontline. ‘‘I know I can do it well,’’ she once explained.
Returning to a conflict zone was like getting back on a horse, she said. It was how she conquered her fear.
The skills to stay alive
That resilience was what convinced Akavi’s colleagues that if anyone could survive being held hostage by Islamic State, it would be the humble nurse from O¯ taki.
Akavi was taken hostage in 2013 while on a medical run in Syria. She was passed from group to group before ending up in the hands of Isis, and thrown into the same prison as other Western hostages who were later brutally executed. There was no reason to think she would be treated any differently.
But even when the weeks stretched into months with no word, and there seemed little cause for optimism, her Red Cross colleagues never wavered in their belief that she had the skills to stay alive.
That was sometimes a source of frustration. Aware that keeping her captivity secret could backfire without evidence that she was still alive, government ministers were looking for more certainty.
In February 2015, one government insider told Stuff: ‘‘The Red Cross think she’s still alive but they’ve got absolutely no reason for that. They’ve got nothing to support it.
‘‘I asked them directly – is there something we don’t know,
has there been contact?’’
The Red Cross, for its part, says it has spoken to people in displaced persons camps strongly believed to have been treated by Akavi.
Akavi has served more than 30 years on the frontline in the world’s hotspots, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Iraq.
Her first mission was to Malaysia in 1987, where she helped Vietnamese refugees.
Five years later, she was stationed as a field nurse in Somalia. She travelled tucked between Somali staff who offered their protection – if bullets were fired, they would be the first hit, she explained to a reporter.
After the Chechnya massacre in 1996, her bravery was recognised by the Red Cross with the Florence Nightingale award for her exceptional courage and devotion to victims of armed conflict.
The award is given rarely. In 2003, Akavi was in another war zone, working in Iraq, where she helped restock hospitals with medical supplies and lived in a hotel under a curfew.
Staff were escorted to and from work but, despite the safety precautions, a colleague was killed by someone on a motorbike.
Sources have told Stuff Akavi was ‘‘hardy’’ and her family were ‘‘incredibly strong’’ and knew the risks of her work. ‘‘She obviously passionately believes in what she does, and has been overseas a long time. The family know the risks that come with it. You’re never going to stop her doing it because she’s the kind of person that she wants to do it.’’
Avril Patterson, the health coordinator for the ICRC, has worked with Akavi before and arrived in Syria one day after she was abducted.
‘‘Louisa is incredibly tough, resilient and has a sharp sense of humour. She’s a no-nonsense nurse who just gets on with the job. She’s humble and doesn’t look for the limelight, she just wants to help people,’’ Patterson said.
‘‘She loves being out in the field, not because she enjoys the hardship, but because that’s where she can talk to people to really understand what they need. It’s where she feels most useful and where she can really feel the impact of her work.
‘‘As nurses, we don’t care where people are from, what their politics are, or what they may have done in the past. We just want to help people. And that’s Louisa all over. She is an amazing human being.
‘‘I remember when I arrived in Afghanistan. She was just about to leave and she told me: ‘Avril, don’t take any nonsense from these boys,’ because I was going to be the only female expat in the office after she left. But amid that toughness, she is also incredibly kind and humble.’’
Akavi’s large extended family live in the wider O¯ taki and Ka¯ piti area. That was where the Kiwi nurse returned between missions, the place she came to recuperate, sometimes for months at a time.
During her Isis captivity, the family were regularly updated by Red Cross and Foreign Affairs officials. But news of Akavi’s abduction was tightly held among them.
Media approaches were rebuffed and it is understood family members also declined any offers to meet with senior government ministers – until this month, when they were asked to the Beehive to meet Foreign Minister Winston Peters. They were told at that meeting that the Government could no longer be certain that Akavi was alive. The family had a powerful reason to keep the media and politicians at bay. Akavi’s elderly mother was never told about her daughter’s abduction.
As she was already fragile at the time Akavi was taken, her family feared the impact of the news on her health. She is believed to have passed away in 2016, never knowing about her daughter’s ordeal.
Making a difference
Asked in a 2010 interview if her work restored her faith in humanity or made her more disheartened, Akavi admitted both. ‘‘It does become a little bit hard but it is the small things. It’s working with the national staff who do the best they can. I don’t know why I still do it. It’s something I do well. I know that I can make a difference, a small difference.’’
Akavi recalled one of her most vivid memories as being from the Bosnian War, in the winter of 1993-94. Driving towards the city of Tuzla, she remembered a stream of Bosnians fleeing.
‘‘It’s winter, it’s snowing, it’s cold. And I see on the road a child’s doll, and then I see some shoes, and then I see all of these families, women and children with their heads covered and vests, probably the thickest vests they own, wearing boots and no gloves, their hands are bare, carrying everything they own.’’
In Afghanistan, she worked with local women and described being ‘‘lucky enough’’ to go into their homes – something usually granted by the male head of the house. She worked with more than 100 women promoting health and hygiene programmes.
‘‘The women are amazing, they are so tough, they are so strong.’’
In 2010, she told a reporter she would not work in New Zealand again, saying that there was too much bureaucracy.
Without a trace
It seemed incredible that she would still be alive. Especially as her captors were whittled down to a small town on the banks of Euphrates known as Baghuz.
The battle to take Baghuz was bloody and intense, with the village described as ‘‘hell on earth’’.
But, as the years went by, the Government never fully lost hope that Akavi could still be alive, and could eventually be reunited with her family in New Zealand. These hopes were boosted in recent months when sightings of Akavi were described by people in displaced persons’ camps.
In the days and weeks following the fall of Baghuz, the Government hoped for some sign that would give Akavi’s family certainty about her fate.
But as the smoke cleared and the tunnels surrounding the village were searched, this hope began to fade.
By mid-april, government ministers were advised that Akavi’s status was now ‘‘under review’’ and there was no longer any certainty she was still alive.
On Thursday last week, Akavi’s family met with government ministers for the first time.
Peters asked them to pray for her.
Akavi’s mother pleaded with her daughter not to go back. But Akavi could not stay away from the frontline.