Great Barrington — Soumya Ait Hazem Boutin was born and raised in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, where she lived until five years ago, when she came to the Berkshires to get an education. Earlier this month, when a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Al Haouz province, Soumya’s village of Armed was decimated: Every single house was either reduced to rubble or rendered uninhabitable, the sole road out blocked by detritus. A scant week after receiving the devastating news, the 18-year-old high school graduate returned home with 400 pounds of clothes and medical supplies to aid residents of the remote region.
“At a time when I thought my life couldn’t be better, having just started college at UMass Amherst, a powerful earthquake hit my village … and I can’t reach my family,” said Soumya in a teary video posted on YouTube, one that spoke to the absence of electricity, Wi-Fi, and cell service rendering news of her loved ones impossible. On September 12, Soumya and her adoptive mother—Dr. Pier Boutin, an orthopedic surgeon in Great Barrington—journeyed to Morocco to help those affected by the catastrophe, employing the language skills of the former and the medical training of the latter to aid villagers.
Before trekking into the mountains, the pair stopped at the Souks in Marrakech to buy heavy blankets and warm clothes. With winter on its way, the conditions in Armed were nothing short of catastrophic: Soumya and Boutin found folks living in tents (where they will likely spend the winter as homes will not be repaired in time), with little access to food and clothing, and evening temperatures dipping into the 30s as winter nears.
“It’s truly incredible to see such high spirits despite the difficult living conditions,” Boutin shared on Instagram, alluding to tents pitched on rocks amidst the cold, wind, and intermittent rain—with no improvement in sight for these living conditions.
“[Pier] set up a clinic to help the wounded … [and] examined over 200 people from the village of Armed,” Soumya shared in another Instagram post, calling attention to Boutin’s experience—gleaned while answering the call for French-speaking orthopedic surgeons in Port-au-Prince following the earthquakes that ravaged Haiti in 2010—as integral to the relief effort. “She did an incredible job,” said Soumya, who was just six years old when she first met the surgeon who would change the course of her entire family’s life.
“Initially, I treated injuries resulting from the earthquake, and, later, I began to see patients with pre-existing conditions due to the lack of medical care in their village,” said Boutin in another update.
In June, following six years of study in the United States, Soumya returned to Armed to visit her family, including brother Mo. In that time, she had not only been hard at work earning her high school diploma but also founding Soumya’s Journey, a nonprofit in support of giving Berber girls in her village the opportunity to attend school beyond seventh grade rather than marry at age 13, as is the current expectation.
Now, using her eponymous nonprofit as a fundraising platform, Soumya has endeavored to assist her village in meeting goals that run the gamut from supplying critical medical care and basic necessities to securing access to clean water and rebuilding the village of Armed, a necessary—albeit painstaking—process required in order to provide residents (among them Soumya’s brother, father, and uncle, who all survived the earthquake unscathed) with a place they can once again call home.
“There will be a long process of knocking everything down and rebuilding from the ground up,” said Boutin who, upon her return to the Berkshires, had nothing but praise for those she had met abroad. “I’d like to celebrate the incredible people of Armed. Every single person came together and contributed in any way they could. I can’t believe the meals these women were able to create with a three-burner stove and the ingredients available to them. This community is so strong and is remaining positive during this difficult time,” she shared, while also citing the need for ongoing assistance in the weeks and months ahead.
“I assure you: Any and all donations will go toward the village of the Atlas Mountains,” Soumya said of collective efforts—including thousands of dollars in medical supplies donated by Fairview Hospital—that will allow her to make a difference in supporting the people of Armed during this challenging time.
“There’s still a long way to go, and a lot of work to be done,” said Boutin in a nod to the ongoing medical exigencies and the rebuilding process that lay ahead in the Atlas Mountains.
NOTE: On the heels of her summer visit to Armed (with Board members in tow), Soumya’s vision has since been fine-tuned via The Women’s Cooperative, an extension of her nonprofit’s mission to develop economic opportunities and entrepreneurship training for women; together with her Board, Soumya remains dedicated to developing new ways to support women in the village of Armed as evidenced by her long-term goal: to build an all-girls’ high school there as a means of extending the opportunity she received, to pursue an education and, by extension, reach her full potential, to all.
