Most actual, working aid workers I know personally sort of sneer at the whole premise of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir, Eat, Pray, Love. It’s the story of a newly single former housewife who embarks on a journey around to world to such famous tourist destinations as Italy, India and Bali. For most of us, though, India sounds like a lot of work, Italy is an airport, and Bali is a place for R&R and HRI-style life-saving meetings. But the truth is that most of us embarked on the aid journey in some way as our own Eat, Pray, Love tour. A tour that for many of us has gone horribly wrong (and for the rest, it’s only a matter of time).
Curse. Few things have caused me to question and sometime abandon my assumptions about the spiritual nature of human beings or the universe as has a life of humanitarian aid work. It doesn’t matter what agency logo is on your namebadge (faith-based or non-faith-based) or what your personal worldview is: stick with this job long enough and you will question what you think you know about God or god or gods and the universe and the place of humans in all of it.
Aid is our religion, and the disappointment and frustration at discovering the wide gulf between what we at first believe humanitarian aid capable of, and the reality of what it in fact delivers is indescribably deep. Whether we are up against organizational bureaucracy, impossible operational obstacles, “aid-resistant cultures” (don’t make me name one), or bandits with guns, the realization that we can actually do far, far less than we thought we could is our spiritual awakening. It is betrayal. It is the concession of vulnerability in the face of almost certain ravaging. It is a moment of innocence lost. And it is why so many aid workers curse like sailors.
Drink. No one tells you that aid work is basically a drug. Especially in the field. It often feels, living and working in the aid world, as if it is not a “real” world. Unless you are very careful – and most of us aren’t or weren’t – the aid world seduces you into believing that what goes on in the aid world doesn’t matter as much in the “real” world. It becomes an ominously safe space in which you feel liberated to do things you would never do in the real world, maybe even things that you would never even think of doing or want to do in the real world. You believe that since it’s [DISASTER ZONE DU JOUR] no one can see or cares what you do in and with your personal life. And the more time you spend in that space, the more you want it and the harder it is to function outside of it.
Aid workers are notorious for all manner of self-destructive, addictive behavior. As expatriate lore says, “‘Social drinking’ in the field is called ‘alcoholism’ back home.” And anyone who’s ever attended a weekend’s worth of NGOs parties in the field knows that this notoriety is rightly earned. But the copious amounts of alcohol that get consumed at aid worker parties and teamhouses is more symbolically imporant than it is actually important (and don’t forget that some aid workers are tea-totalers). It is the life itself to which we’ve become addicted.
Shag. Just in the past six days I’ve been made aware of three aid worker acquaintances whose marriages have only recently, or are in the process of splitting up. The life of an aid worker is not an easy one to live and also care for a family. It’s opposing tensions, impossible dilemmas, and what some days feels like a string of lose-lose propositions in having to choose between one’s work, one’s family, and one’s own sanity. Years ago, myself moving up the ranks as a young NGO staffer, I was told by older aid workers (they were the age that I am now) on more than one occasion, essentially: Don’t ever marry. Never have children.
They had clearly come to the point where they were ready to stridently choose, family or aid career, one or the other. And I know many, many aid workers who have this same perspective and have made the same either/or choice.
But then I go out to relief zones around the world and talk to aid workers of all ages who still cling to the hope of a family back home, who think that after the next deployment they’ll settle down in a suburban neighborhood somewhere. I see them at (the notorious) expat parties and hangouts looking for love. Or, failing that, a good shag. Or, at least an okay shag.
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We all go into humanitarian aid work out of mixed motivations, some “good”, some less so. But it is often difficult to admit to others our personal motivations – it’s supposed to be all about making the world a better place. Few of us would ever dream admitting that we’re all in this searching as well. We’re supposed to be coming to this whole aid thing with all the answers. It is hard for us to acknowledge that just like a suburban divorcee taking some time away, we’re also looking for meaning.
Tags: Celebrating The Life, for discussion, naval-gazing
