Life after aid work: When the ground begins to shake

A vague career roadmap I drafted after finishing my master’s in the late ‘80s had me ending up as a history professor. Having grown up in India and wanting to stay engaged in South Asian issues, the ivory tower seemed the most logical and easily realized option. But chance intervened. In early 1988, I ditched my academic future in favor of a job offer from the United Nations. Within the span of a few months I went from having only a vague notion that “aid work” was a job category to heading up a large urban refugee program in Pakistan. It wasn’t until years later that I realized what a fluke it had been — to land a job in one of the more “sexy” careers in the world on my first attempt without so much as a face-to-face interview. But those first exhilarating years were not without career anxiety. Contracts were always time limited. The possibility that it could all crash down around me anytime, forcing me to return to driving a cab in Minneapolis — the job from which I’d been so surprisingly lifted in the first place — was ever present. Five years passed, with several longish gaps of unemployment, before I was confident enough to call myself a professional aid worker. Anxiety over job security was soon replaced with other issues, which in the early scramble to “go anywhere, do anything” got brushed aside as easily as the wilted lettuce accompanying a mutton burger in Peshawar. I was appointed to more responsible field-based positions and discovered that I was expected to have an opinion about what was going on around me. Now that I wasn’t in camps 14 hours a day or so besotted with cultural exoticism, I turned my attention to the business at hand: humanitarian action, community development, best practice et cetera. Those of us who entered the sector when it was still a genuine subculture had little formal training or exposure to the theory of development. We were educated on the job. We were in our positions because we had proven we wanted them bad enough — not because we were experts in development or humanitarian action. Having said that, as I attended meetings and got drawn into programs and situations of some complexity, it was often clear that things were amiss. That the “good” we were supposedly doing was not so unalloyed as people, including many of us young professionals, imagined. For me, the ground began to shake about six years into my career. I was appointed to a senior management position in Angola with a well-respected European NGO. Several things struck me immediately after I arrived for my two-year assignment. First, the massive humanitarian effort of hundreds of NGOs that catered to almost every conceivable need of the population. Thirty percent of Angola was being fed by the World Food Program. Luanda, the sleepy former colonial capital, vibrated night and day with the whup of choppers, the roar of cargo planes and the rumble of convoys heading up country. Second, Angola was at war. A war that was oblivious to but enabled by the mighty humanitarian rumble and roar. The nominally Marxist government held most of the big cities and some parts of the countryside. UNITA, the darlings of South Africa and the U.S., professional rebels and playthings of a drugged-out Jonas Savimbi, held smaller patches that included the economically strategic diamond mines in the north. The two forces attacked each other without let, while populations in the hundreds of thousands moved continuously back and forth across the country seeking refuge and safety. NGOs, like ambulance chasers, followed them as best they could. Third, business was booming. With the Cold War over, Western arms dealers were given the green light for deals not just with their regular customers, UNITA, but the government as well. At the same time, a batch of international governments, led by a senior African diplomat, and including the U.S., Portugal and other western governments, were earnestly promoting “peace talks” in Zambia. Had I started my career in Angola I probably would have seen these as three independent activities. But six years on it was blindingly obvious that the common partner in each dance was Western governments. The penny dropped with a heavy thud. The same governments who were sponsoring the peace talks were also allowing, nay encouraging, shady characters to sell their weapons to both combatant parties. Simultaneously, they were funding NGOs to pick up the pieces of broken humanity this devilish arrangement produced. In some cases this was literally true: International NGOs were running street cleaning programs in Luanda apparently because the government couldn’t be bothered to provide a rubbish disposal service. And why should they? Aid agencies were only too happy to oblige as long as we could employ — as volunteers — street kids and war orphans. I left four months into my contract. I was so anxious and upset by this nonsense I was barely able to function for several months afterwards. Sadly, my experience was not unique. Neither was it that bad. Several former colleagues and very experienced aid workers shared with me their own ordeals — of lack of staff care, of being told to stay hush-hush about government misdoings, of unfair promotions — as I prepared to write this article. A friend who has worked for the U.N. and many NGOs told me he was given responsibility to conclude the negotiations of several large water contracts with the government in Albania after his senior colleague was killed by a gunshot to the head. "When I examined them, I discovered prices for basic materials inflated thousands of times," he said. "Several government workers were making fortunes. The U.N. told me not to raise a fuss. They needed the government onside.” Another colleague, still employed in the sector, but soon to get out, described his disgust with several organizations' approach to staff mental well being, which perpetuates the idea that trauma is part of the job. He himself has been taken hostage, survived years of artillery, mortars and landmines and witnessed beheadings. When a beneficiary committed suicide in the U.N. office he ran, his agency headquarters offered no support or advice, he told me. Ironically, the executive director of another U.N. agency was the only one to phone and ask how he was, only aware of the situation because a security report had crossed her desk. All too often it's easier for agencies to exploit the altruism and devotion of their staff, especially when “there is a long queue of bright and capable new recruits who would like to replace me,” he said. Several other ex aid workers expressed bitter disappointment with the way in which international NGOs repeatedly promoted Europeans, even when they clearly had neither the experience, personal skills nor cultural knowledge, at the expense of qualified national staff. Though I left the field in 1994, I continued to work within the sector in Australia and the U.K. As time moved on, I put Angola down to a "unique situation." The others who shared their experiences with me did the same. It's hard — and indeed, unfair — to condemn an entire system based upon one or even two or three bad events. I will always treasure the many heartfelt expressions of thanks I received from refugees for “saving” their family’s lives, something that only a complex, well-oiled global system could facilitate. Every organization I represented implemented excellent programs that were responsive to real needs, delivered powerful results and adhered to the highest standards of probity and integrity. So it was relatively easy to brush aside the indiscretions of a colleague — sexual favors for resettlement — as I did early in my career, because I knew I was not guilty of these things. It wasn’t me. I’m different. No need to paint everything black, we told ourselves. No need to look for a new career. Not yet. Devex Professional Membership means access to the latest buzz, innovations, and lifestyle tips for development, health, sustainability and humanitarian professionals like you. Our mission is to do more good for more people. 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