I traveled to the small town of Gulu in northern Uganda with Medical Missions Foundation to document volunteer physicians from the United States performing surgeries for patients who would otherwise have no access to care.

Many of the patients were women who had survived brutal violence at the hands of local militias and mercenaries. The injuries they carried were severe, and in many cases had gone untreated for years. Watching volunteer surgeons operate in a small clinic, knowing the difference a single procedure could make in someone’s life, was one of the most sobering experiences of my career.

What struck me most in Gulu was the contrast between the scale of the violence these communities had endured and the quiet, precise nature of the work being done to address it. One surgeon, one patient, one operation at a time. The images here reflect that. Not the spectacle of crisis, but the human-scale work of repair.