Tag Archives: Confession

One

14 Nov

This weeks it’s the Tales From the Hood rock ‘n’ roll marathon.

Here’s the first tune in the playlist:

U2’s “One” sounds to me like a conversation between aid workers and beneficiaries about the issues in the aid system…

Is it getting better?
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now?
You got someone to blame

Sometimes aid is broken. Sometimes, no matter how badly aid donors or aid workers wish otherwise, change just doesn’t happen. We do our best and it’s not enough. Or maybe we’re just tired and can’t get it together.

Sometimes, no matter how abject things are “on the ground” or “in the field”, and no matter how well-planned the intervention is, it fails. Sometimes there is local resistance to aid. Sometimes it’s overt, “get the hell out!” Sometimes you can’t put your finger on it.

Everyone in the aid equation is culpable at one point or another.

Did I disappoint you?
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without? 

Everyone – aid workers, beneficiaries – comes to the conversation with expectations that, in the end are not met. We expected each other to think differently, to act differently, to value and prioritize different things. And we were all disappointed, disillusioned at some point.


Well it’s…

Too late
Tonight
To drag the past out into the light

Sometimes it’s good to analyze what’s happened before in order to clarify the way forward.. Sometimes, though, the past is just that: the past. Sometimes you just need to start from where you are right now and move on.

We’re one, but we’re not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other

Indeed.

Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus
To the lepers in your head?

Every aid worker on the planet comes to this line of work, in addition to whatever else, for personal reasons. Maybe we have a Jesus complex – we are going to save the poor from their poverty. Maybe we seek absolution from a dark past. Maybe it’s both of these and more.

Did I ask too much?
More than a lot
You gave me nothing
Now it’s all I got

What do the poor deserve from us?

We’re one
But we’re not the same
Will we
Hurt each other
Then we do it again

Indeed.

We’ll continue doing humanitarian work. We’ll get it wrong. And sometimes we’ll get it right. And one day – who knows? – we’ll find ourselves as beneficiaries of aid programs run by those we once purported to help.

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Some days…

12 Oct

The world of humanitarian aid will eat your soul if you let it.

Stick with this job, in this industry long enough, and you will see not just the good, the bad, and the ugly, but also the very bad, the really awful, and the grotesque. It is possible to spend your days consumed by the abundant and very real wrong here. It is possible to become deeply cynical about the realities of what could be done but isn’t; by the realities of what actually happens in the field versus what is said in fundraising and PR materials; by the discrepancies between what pictures seem to portray and what you see and hear as you walk through the refugee camp. Not to mention that fact that it is difficult, largely thankless, and very often dangerous work.

I’ve written about all of these repeatedly on this blog:

We’ve all compromised our principles.

The world of aid operations and the world of aid marketing are different worlds.

We don’t tell the truth about what we do.

We basically lack the incentives to get aid right.

We’re inherently donor-driven.

These are all present realities in the aid world. And for me, the essence of staying sane in the aid world comes down to how successfully one maintains the balance of perspective between what is and what is possible.

If we fail to gain or allow ourselves to lose our grip on the reality of what is – the incredibly, depressingly ugly brokenness, messed-up UN and INGO idiocy of the aid system – we will become complacent and ultimately ineffective as change agents inside a system that very clearly has to change. We’ll be in a space of heady naïveté where it’s all good because we all mean well and just that alone makes all the little brown babies gain weight and the villagers all smile and say ‘thank you’ and they don’t seem to mind that our overhead calculation is wack. Unpleasant as it sometimes is, we have to stay connected with the facts of a ramshackle and frequently dysfunctional aid system.

On the other hand, if we lose our vision for what is possible, based on an honest understanding of past success – and there are successes: despite its dysfunction and at times questionable motives, the aid system as we know it has accomplished a great deal of very real good – we also become ineffective. If we lose sight of what is possible, we can become deeply and irretrievably cynical. We’ll be in a space where not only is it all bad, but where there’s no point in even trying to make it better. The aid workers I know personally who spend too long in this space become depressed, maybe leave the industry. Some commit suicide. Some abuse substances. Some live with mental health issues. It’s not a good place to be.

* * *

I swear, some days all I do is argue with people dumber than me. Some days all I do is explain, yet again, the most basic of basic principles of good aid to people who, for reasons I am not able to fathom, seem patently incapable of getting it. Some days the weight of a dysfunctional system feels very heavy. Some days the dark spectre of “what is” threatens to consume what is “possible.”

The hardest part of this job is not seeing awful things in the field. It’s not repeatedly witnessing the suffering of others and being able to offer little as a remedy, dealing with corrupt district officials, getting sick, or spending too long away from one’s family too often (hard as those things truly can be). The hardest part of this job is simply dealing with the crushing weight of a system that fundamentally lacks real incentives for getting right what it claims as its core purpose. Similarly, the most dangerous part of this job is not armed militants or bad drivers or  blood parasites. No, the most dangerous part of this job is the humanitarian world itself: it will eat your soul if you let it.

Some days it is about just getting through the day. Some days it comes down to a conscious decision to invoke – almost as an act of faith – the “what is possible”, in order to cope with the “what is.” Some days it’s about identifying spheres of influence, focusing my efforts in those places where I know I can make a difference, and letting the others go. Some days I have to consciously reassess where I fit into the big picture and adjust accordingly my expectations of what I can feasibly contribute. Some days it’s about finding that Zen place. Some days it takes a conscious act of will to stay.

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Testify

8 Sep

Many of your have written to me to ask why I got into humanitarian work, and why I continue. Not how – that’s another series of posts – but why? Don’t I get depressed? How can I spend my days thinking about the seamy underbellies of all the worst places in the world and remain at all normal? Here’s your answer:

The “why” of why I got into humanitarian work is easy: It was coincidence, an accident. I was in the right place at the right time. There was an opening that matched my meager skills and it beat the hell out of both returning to suburban North America and continuing to teach English (which is what I’d spent the previous year doing).

I was unusually fortunate. There was an older, experienced aid worker who took the time to talk to me about indicators and what the difference between good program design and bad program design were and the importance of local participation in every phase of project cycle management (although we didn’t have the term “PCM” back then). It made sense. The pieces all fit, even if in retrospect my understanding was painfully simplistic. It felt good to be “doing good.” And it was fun as heck, traveling aroundSoutheast Asiabecoming something that I didn’t even know the name for at the time: an aid worker.

That was in 1991 and I have not looked back since then.

The “why” of why I stay in humanitarian work is a bit harder. I’m older, now, and more cynical. I’ve seen the dark side of the Aid Industry up close. There’s certainly plenty to dislike, even to loathe about being here. So why do I stay?

If not aid, then what? I’m deep enough into my career now that switching to another line of work would be risky. What else would I do? My entire professional life has been spent here. Where would I go? How would I make a living? I think my dreams of being a famous guitarist in a heavy metal band are pretty much never gonna come true. So that’s out. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” That’s certainly one powerful incentive for staying. I’ve thought about changing careers many times – for about 20 seconds. At the end of the day I cannot imagine doing anything else.

I enjoy it. There. I’ve said it. I make my living thinking about human suffering and trying to put in place measures that will reduce it or alleviate it. Measures that we all know, from the get-go, will never be enough. And yet, in a probably perverse way, I enjoy it. I enjoy the work. I enjoy the crazy, quirky people (aid workers) I work with. I like going new places and meeting new people. I work with some amazing local colleagues in a number of countries. I like them very much as people, and I also like the diversity of my diverse range of friends in its own right. And yeah, I enjoy the rush of deploying. I enjoy the chaos and texture and intensity of the first month of a disaster response. I enjoy the complexity and challenge of transitioning from relief to recovery in month six of a disaster response. I’m not saying that every minute of every day is awesome. This path has taken me through some very dark times, both personally and professionally, and there are absolutely moments when I wonder what the hell I’ve wasted my life on. But on balance I enjoy it.

I still believe. I’m not blind to the paradoxes and internal contradictions and inconsistency and straight-up dumbassery of the Aid Industry. I get it. There’s a lot that’s wrong and in desperate need of redress. There are some glaring issues which, barring a massive shift in thinking globally within the sector, will probably never be really resolved. The tortured and absurdly power-charged ménage à trois between aid providers, aid recipients and aid donors, for example. Or the extreme glut of incompetent practitioners in the sector, both formal and informal. It’s possible to become deeply cynical and disillusioned, and many days I succumb to this temptation. And yet, I also see the positive day-to-day. I see how what we do as humanitarian practitioners matters. And by “matters”, I mean specifically that we do make life better for survivors of disaster, conflict and extreme poverty. No, of course it’s not enough. But for all of the messed up-ness, my honest opinion is that there’s more good than bad happening here. No, I can’t prove it – it’s an opinion. But it’s why I stay on.

You asked why I stay in aid.

Now you know. 

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