Soft Wisdom

It seems like months ago, now, but in reality it’s only been three or four days since I was wading through flooded evacuation centers and muddy neighborhoods just outside Manila, listening to the stories of Typhoon Ketsana victims.

I’m not exactly new at this. I’ve been around a bit.

But no matter how many relief operations I participate in, no matter how many disaster zones I visit, no matter how many haggard survivors tell me their stories, I always find that my eyes are opened in ways I did not anticipate when I finally make it out of the cubicle. While on the surface each response may feel “same same” with the previous one, when I escape the head office or the country office or even the project office and actually get out and talk to those affected (you know, actual people) my understanding expands more and farther and in ways I could never have foreseen. I might cut and paste text from a proposal for India into one for the Philippines. We might hand out the same NFIs or “shelter kits” for every emergency response. But every response is still unique, if not at an operational level, then at least at the level of the individual human beings being served.

When you sit in a cubicle or office churning out proposals, compiling data, doing media interviews, and explaining the basics of disaster response to fundraising staff, and generally directing email traffic, it gets easy for a response to become about sound-bites. It becomes a one-page summary of bulleted talking points, the bare facts of numbers and places. In the heat of a big, high-visibility disaster where I’m in an on-point role, I am as guilty as anyone of focusing on the cold facts and evaluating options numerically and letting it all (temporarily) be about those tasks which need doing. Human references get boiled down to scripted statements that seem either too bland or too over-the-top, but never right on the mark. We lose sight of people’s faces (and although it’s not the main point of the post, this all adds up to perhaps one of the very best reasons ever why HQ people and field people need to spend meaningful amounts of time in each other’s worlds).

And so, just a few days ago, I was spending time in the world of Marikina City, the “Shoe Capital” of the Philippines. I was in a neighborhood where backed up lagoon water had risen to well over three meters (comparable to The Tsunamis), and as it receded left mountains of trash, clogged sewers, and ruined shoe-making equipment and supplies. The people here most made their livings handmaking high quality shoes for sale in Manila’s boutiques and export throughout the region.

My employer’s Philippines team had done an absolutely crack job of responding with a wave of basic food and NFIs up front, followed by very extensive cash-for-work for cleanup in that municipality. By the time I walked through that small, peri-urban neighborhood, it looked almost back to normal. The streets were relatively clean and I could hear the sounds of shoes being made again through open workshop doors. The neighborhood “Captain” pointed out the still visible high-water line, about a third of the way up the second storey. The people living there clearly had challenges ahead of them, but they seemed very pleased with what had been done up to that point.

That’s when I met Joey.

He wheeled himself out to “our” little entourage with some effort. It was clear that Joey suffered from Cerebral Palsy or something similar. He was contorted and unable to speak. But it quickly became evident that Joey was fully capable intellectually. He’d learned to communicate by using a combination of fingers and toes to “type” text messages on a cell-phone that he kept on a lanyard around his neck. Joey was 26 years old.

Through our translator I learned that Joey was fluent in English and also a chess player of some fame, locally. Which was impressive enough. But what really struck me, standing there among a crowd of onlookers, watching Joey using his toes to text on a grimy Nokia, was how at home and – well – happy he seemed. I’ve been before in communities where people with disabilities like Joey’s were pestered and taunted by neighborhood children. I’ve also seen situations where people with disabilities of all kinds have been lumped together into “special” dank, grungy, unfunded institutions, sequestered away out of sight of a mainstream preoccupied the appearances of things. Maybe the mere fact of my presence there that day was a temporary deterrent, and everyone was on good behavior. But I did not detect even a hint of animosity or disdain or disregard for Joey among the growing crowd. If anything, they acted pleased to show him off to us.

In his 2007 documentary of the American health care industry, SiCKO, Michael Moore said something that really came back to me in that moment. I can’t remember the quote exactly verbatim, but it was approximately: “You can tell a lot about a society by how it treats it’s weakest members.”

Of course I’m in absolutely no position to judge anyone, anywhere. But if I were pressed to make an assessment of that community based on their treatment of Joey – treatment that was certainly costly in the context of that difficult time when every able body was needed to clean up and rebuild and restart the shoe-making business – I’d say they passed with flying colors.

And although I can’t precisely pin down all of the reasons why, I found that moment unexpectedly moving.

* * *

In parts of Southeast Asia – perhaps also the Philippines, I’m not exactly sure – there is a way of thinking about people with disabilities like Joey. It’s called “soft wisdom.” In some ways the concept of “soft wisdom” might be inappropriate in a western, politically correct sense. It tends, for example, to lump together those with Cerebral Palsy (like Joey) into the same category as those with, say, Down’s Syndrome. But in other ways I think that “soft wisdom” is a nearly perfect descriptor. I love the fact that it communicates a difference in ability and capability without an implicit value judgment.

Slammed back, in the space of only a few hours, into the head office grind of proposals and reports, strategies, meetings, and numerical analysis, I already fight the urge to too easily forget that emergency responses are, at the end of the day, about people. I can’t help but think back to Joey, talking to me by texting with his toes.

I’m still working out how “soft wisdom” applies here, but I’m convinced that somehow it does.

Oye! Mamacita!

There’s this classic line in the movie Crash, where the black guy is in bed with the Latin-American woman, and he calls her “Mexican.” She gets all wide-eyed and uptight ‘cause she’s Honduran, not Mexican, and, you know, there’s a lot of difference, and only the most culturally out-of-the-loop and insensitive person could ever mistake one for the other. And his response is something like how, regardless of all that cultural diversity in Latin America, isn’t it interesting that they all still park their cars on the front lawn???.

* * *

In case there’s anyone reading who doesn’t know this already, Guyana is the only English-speaking country on the continent of South America. Further, if I could be indulged to lump a bit, culturally Guyana seems quite distinct. It’s clearly Caribbean. It might share borders with Venezuela and Brazil, but has more in common culturally with little Trinidad, just off the seawall.

Now, if you know any Guyanese person, it’s important that you don’t think of them as “Latino.” ‘Cause they’re not.

But what kills me is that my wife actually kind of looks Latina.

And that’s not just me talking – it has actually been repeatedly confirmed by others.

When we lived for a few years in a northern suburb of Washington D.C., we’d sometimes rendezvous for lunch at a little southern Indian restaurant that was smack in the middle of a Nicaraguan neighborhood (or was it Guatemalan???). As she’d walk the length of the strip mall from the parking lot to the door of “Udupi Palace”, nearly every (Latino) male within earshot would have to say something:

“ehhhh babeeeeeee!”

“(suck teeth loudly…) ehhh mamita!”

“que pasa muchacha?”

Or maybe they’d just whistle loudly.

She’d be good and miffed as she sat down to her dhal and biryani… Not miffed that she’d been hollered and whistled at, though. Miffed because they’d just assumed she was Latina, and – hellooooo – she was from Guyana, and, like, there’s a difference!

And for the last eleven years, the “hey, aren’t you Latina?” theme has been one of our in-jokes as a couple:

On a business trip to Bolivia I showed a picture of my wife to a group of local colleagues who asked where she was from. I answered that she was from Guyana (you know, between Suriname and Venezuela…). They nodded approvingly. “Ah, good for you! You married a Latina…”

The guys selling purses in Istanbul’s “Grand Bazaar”: “Como esta, muchacha..?”

The aging German man at the security screening line in Frankfurt Main: “Hola…”

My favorite, though, was when the two Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the door and she answered. Our son then a baby and still relatively white was balanced on her hip. Their first question: “Oh, is the lady of the house at home?” (Let’s just say, the Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t win any converts in our home that day.)

* * *

By now I think I’ve made all of the classic white-man blunders regarding Guyanese culture. I know that it’s “peas and rice”, not “rice and peas.” I know the Demerara is the only real rum on the planet. I can recognize “guinepps” in the market. And I have learned to never refer to Guyanese as “Latinos.”

But still, some times I just can’t help it. I need to see the eyes flash and hear the voice rise. And I just borrow from the lyrics of “Los Lonely Boys”:

“Oye! Mamacita!”

“Transvaginal Ultrasound”

This was the phrase that stuck out.

Down a narrow, central Manila sidestreet, in the middle of a chaotic wall of textured, colored signage, it was hard not to notice the signboard of what was obviously a private gynecological clinic. Bright letters advertised the various services offered by said clinic. There, in 8-inch high bolded script, it was impossible to miss:

“Transvaginal Ultrasound.”

It’s not something you see on a signboard just every day. Not what I’d automatically expect in Southeast Asia. But then again, I am a bit of an American prude…

* * *

Between trips to Southeast Asia I tend to forget some of the ways in which it can really be another world, wholly apart from the one I inhabit in North America. And there is, perhaps, no arena in which this difference, this “otherness” is so marked as at the intersection of sex and humor.

Sex. One of the few things that stuck from the orientation I received prior to my first year-long deployment in Southeast Asia was basically around the differences between Asian and Western notions about relationships, love and sex. The team doing the presenting clearly wanted to persuade us newbies to avoid relationships with local people (did not work in my case). The picture they painted basically conformed to the stereotypical formulas: Western = simplistic, flippant, insincere; Asian = complicated, measured, highly emotionally involved.

A great deal has been written about the similarities and differences between Eastern and Western ways of thinking, particularly those differences in the ways that each approaches relationships. Some of it is great. Much of it is nothing but ethnocentric noise. I won’t try to summarize or refute anything here (you all have access to Google). But for the sake of this post, the way I see it working (based on both my professional observation and also past personal involvement) is basically this:

Western culture tends to be uptight when it comes to discussing sex. The recurring debate about sex education in American schools is a powerful example. We get red in the face, stammer, and use obscure euphemisms. If we joke about sex, it is in hushed tones, behind closed doors, only with people who we trust will not be offended (or complain to HR that they’ve been sexually harassed). We slap an “R” rating on movies like American Pie, not so much because we get to see areola, but because there is so much talk of masturbation.

By contrast, we can be shockingly casual about the act itself. Rates of teen pregnancy and STI infections in the United States would be seen by some as evidence of this.

On the other hand, in a Southeast Asian cultural context the act itself remains highly mystified. “Doing it” is a big deal, and the importance of female virginity (or at least the plausible perception of it) at marriage is at least part of the evidence. Figuring out who can have sex with whom, and under what conditions can require some pretty complicated social calculus. In some cases there can be very severe (to Western ways of thinking) repercussions when the “rules” are broken.

But in stark contrast, Southeast Asians can be amazingly direct and open and sometimes downright casual in communicating (though not necessarily talking) about sex. The number of euphemisms in common everyday use in some Asian languages really speaks to this. Tell some Thai friends that you’re planning to go eat “seafood” and watch them try not to snicker.Walk through an old Cham or Hindu or even some Buddhist temples and take note of the number of penises and vaginas and breasts on prominent display. Listen carefully to the words (or have them translated) to traditional Thai, Khmer, Lao, Burmese, and Vietnamese folk music… or read their folktales – their equivalents to “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” – and you’ll see what I mean. I continue to be amazed at the random settings in which Asian men – total strangers – have approached me out of the blue wanting to discuss penis size.

Somehow that sign, out there for all to see, proclaiming the availability of a “transvaginal ultrasound” seemed to crystallize some of the differences between “Western” and “Eastern” ways of thinking and talking about… you know, vaginas and the like. (For goodness sake, this is the region of the world that invented the word “poontang.”)

And it seems to me that nowhere is the Asian directness in talking about sex more obvious than when it comes to humor.

Humor. Plenty has been written about humor, too. And I won’t do too much deconstructing here, except to say that sex and the cultural mystification around it most probably the single best source of humor in just about any cultural context. American sexual innuendo is legendary and surpassed only by Australian capacity for sexual euphamism. I’ve now heard the joke about how vulvas were originally detachable in at least two African countries. But in my experience, nowhere is sexual humor more over-the-top than in Southeast Asia.

In general, Southeast Asian humor very frequently crosses lines that are rarely crossed in Western cultural settings. I’ve lost track of the number of times at parties or gatherings where the honored guest was somehow required to walk on all fours like a dog and relieve him/herself on a tree (“bok-bok-chee”), eat a confection shaped like a turd, or a range of other mildly degrading things (to Western thinking), in some case as horrified Western people looked on from the sidelines. Even over and above the challenges of raw language capability, it was not easy for me to “get” Southeast Asian humor during those initial years. I can remember going to Bangkok comedy clubs where my Thai friends would laugh themselves silly over routines that left me nonplussed, even on those occasions where I’d understood every word.

So much of culture and tradition and language is wrapped up in humor, that I consider the ability to appreciate the humor of another culture (really appreciate it) as the true test of real understanding.

And in Southeast Asia (perhaps in other places, too), the humor very often goes sexual: Gymnasts’ faces being pushed into each others crotches or bums, a line of conversation coming around to someone seeming to say that he’d had sex with his friend’s grandmother, a new bride calling her father for advice during her honeymoon night are all sure to elicit hysterical laughter. But by a wide margin, the most common sexual humor theme seems to be around mistaken sexual identity whether intentional or inadvertent and the humorous calamity that can ensue. It would be unusual to get through a live comedy routine in Bangkok or Phnom Penh or Ho Chi Minh city without one or more of the male cast appearing in drag.

Or, Manila…

* * *

So, last night was my last night in Manila. It had been a very good trip. Despite significant remaining challenges in the Typhoon Ketsana/Parma response, the activity to-date had gone off pretty much without a hitch. People I’d known only as email addresses prior, had become friends. We’d shared meals, slogged through neighborhood still flooded, endured the usual ceremonies and speeches.

And so, as often happens, we went out for a team dinner. This time at a restaurant with a name something like “Singing Cooks and Waiters” where, as one might expect, part of the deal is that the cooks and waiters sing. Everyone on staff played some instrument and/or sang well, and so as they went about waiting on tables and preparing food, the restaurant staff rotated through spots in the band or singing. The staff was the usual mix of a chunky chef with a moustache, a grizzled old man with a fedora on guitar, several petite waitresses, and one obligatory “ladyboy.” They sang a mix of exactly what you’d expect: ballad-y love song-y Western pop hits of about 1982 and a range of Filipino and Japanese tunes of the same ilk. While it wasn’t exactly AC/DC, I have to say: they sang really well.

Our group sat at the table closest to the stage. There were a few other tables with foreigners – one looked like Chinese businessmen, one looked like a few Japanese tourists with some Filipino friends. Per what has become for me the norm, I was the only Western male in the room.

I didn’t think too much of it when one of the waitresses asked me to dance (that frequently happens during restaurant performances). But I was totally unprepared when the chef started stroking the hair on my arm and asking me if he could be my “wife in the Philippines.” My Filipino colleagues gave me questions sideways glances and snickered quietly to themselves.

One of the other waitresses tried to pull me onto the dance floor. I’m a horrible dancer (my wife can attest), but I decided to play along (better than being hit on by the chef). I stumbled through what felt like a 15-minute Samba. (My Filipino colleagues were openly laughing by now.) Then the chef again. Standing right behind me, rubbing my shaven head, telling me how jealous he was and why couldn’t he be my Filipino wife? (Filipino colleagues doubling over. My one western colleague had tears running down her face.)

Then the ladyboy was up singing a bluesy version of “I Will Survive” (Gloria Gaynor). One of the Japanese tourists had clearly had a few too many San Miguels. He was up on the floor trying to do what looked basically like a tango with the ladyboy, interspersed with grotesque attempts as Patrick Swayze-esque dirty dancing moves. (Filipinos were killing themselves laughing. My western colleague was slack-jawed.) One of the Chinese businessmen, not to be outdone, stuck what looked like an RMB note down the skirt of one of the waitresses. She pulled him up onto the dance floor where nearly the entire staff of the restaurant descended on him, grabbing for his wallet. There was a shower of coins of the floor and a mad scramble. Somehow in the shuffle, the ladyboy’s blouse came loose. He had to pause from covering Gloria Gaynor to readjust. (A few Filipinos had to leave the room to catch their breath. My western colleague looked horrified.)

The chef came back, totally in drag (no Southeast Asian comedy routine complete without this part), including a parasol. He asked me once again to marry him. (Tears returning to the eyes of my Filipino colleagues…) The Japanese tourist, now another San Miguel later, was up on the floor in an instant. Almost like magic, the staff produced a white wedding dress for the chef, a shriveled man dressed like a priest, and a third guy dressed like a Muslim terrorist and carrying a wooden rifle. (Every Filipino in the room was rolling on the floor by this point. My western colleague looked glassy-eyed and stunned). The priest made the couple kneel and did a loopy wedding homily that kept the entire room in stitches. The Japanese tourist, not about to lose the spotlight, grabbed the chef-dressed-as-bride and planted a big kiss squarely on his/her lips.

As we were winding down, getting ready to pay the bill, another waitress stood behind me and sang a completely drippy love ballad about “learning to make love” while hanging all over my shoulders and rubbing my (shaven) head. It was embarrassing, but my Filipino colleagues loved it. And my western colleague took, like, 30 pictures.

I think it’s safe to assume that images of me, bald head being caressed, now grace the Facebook pages of at least seven Filipino colleagues. Lovely.

* * *

And on second thought, “Transvaginal Ultrasound” seems pretty tame.

Twice as Hard (as it was the first time I said “Good-bye”)

I’ve been listening to a lot of The Black Crowes on this trip to Asia.

What a great band.

I saw them live at an outdoor venue in Maryland a couple of years ago (they were opening for Tom Petty).

Tom Petty was still plodding through “The Waiting” when I left the arena and headed for home.

But The Black Crowes totally tore it up.

* * * * *

I usually cringe when I see those foreigners who think or seem to want to make me think that they’re practically from “here.”

You know the ones I mean.

I’m talking about the plump, red-faced, matronly expat who insists on using painfully broken Tagalog to order burgers and RC from “Jollibee”, ‘cause – you know – she’s lived here long to enough to have actually acquired a preference for them and is therefore somehow different from a tourist.

Or maybe it’s the guy who seems to think if he wears a barong (or at least a “Manila” T-shirt) and publicly makes out with a Filipina who looks half his age that I’ll – you know – mistake him for a local.

And a hundred other variations on a couple of very common themes. Those odd and sometimes random bits of local culture that we assimilate, first as a matter of survival when there are no other options, and then later cling to, perhaps out of nostalgia. Or out of a desire to make the point to anyone who might be watching that we are kind of from here. Sometimes I just want to step up to the person and say, “yeah, see – you’re not really fooling anyone…”

But if I’m really honest, I must admit that I’ve been there, too (well, not the ‘publicly makes out with a Filipina’ part). I have, in the past, made a point out in the field of conspicuously speaking Thai or Vietnamese in the presence of other foreigners, even when it was more than reasonable to assume that the person I was speaking to was fully conversant in English. I have, at different times, worn local clothing for no other reason, really, than to make what in retrospect was a misguided statement of supposed solidarity with local people who were themselves wearing Western clothes. I have walked into ethnic restaurants in the United States and Europe, and ordered food so characteristic and specific to that ethnicity that there was no way they’d have it available – for no reason other than to get a reaction, and perhaps to impress the bored wait staff with my vast knowledge of their culture.

While I hope that I don’t do it now, I have to admit to having once been that awkward, geeky guy trying to pass as someone from here (hard to imagine me as “geeky”, I know, for those readers with whom I am personally acquainted…)

Being oneself in a foreign context, feeling comfortable in a foreign context, understanding a foreign context, and being understood in a foreign context are all laudable enough aspirations. But they are also all quite different. And those of us who exist in those contexts foreign to us, whether for years and years, or just for a few days at a time, seem to confuse one with another or blur the lines between them. We very often try to accomplish one by doing one of the others badly.

* * *

As it happens, I’m writing from a Starbucks in Manila right now. I’m here following up parts of the emergency that my employer ran following Typhoons Ketsana and Parma. (Perhaps more on this later.) Just before here, I was in Bangkok for meetings.

So far The Black Crowes have been the most consistent contributor to the soundtrack for this trip so far. Especially their “Shake Your Money Maker” album.

*

I get this feeling on every trip out to “my” region, but this time, for some reason the it is stronger than normal: a deep-rooted sense that I am quite simply and irretrievably in love with Asia.

I’m painfully conscious of the fact that I’m not from here, that I don’t really fit in very well, and that nobody would every mistake me for a local person here (certainly no Asian person would). Like many foreigners I am a slightly different person when I’m here. Not unrecognizably different, but different nonetheless. And so being oneself is kind of out. While I have gone to a great deal of effort and sometimes expense to understand Asia, every time I come I am confronted with the humbling fact that I barely scratch the surface. So understanding is kind of out. And similarly, I have zero illusions about being understood here.

But I can’t help but love it. I miss is when I’m gone. I look forward anxiously to every opportunity to come back. Every time I do come back, there’s a sense that I’ve been gone for far too long… matched by the reality that it will probably be quite some time before I am able to live here again… if ever. And yet I do feel comfortable here. At least most of the time. Even when it seems to treat me badly, I can’t bear a grudge for very long and I always come back. It sounds cliché to call Asia “magical”, but still, it is magical.

I’ve long been over any naïve notion or wishful thinking that I am somehow from here, that I fit in in any real sense, or even that I really (really) understand it. The truth is that most of the time, I bumble along and try to offend as few people as possible. But I can’t stop loving Asia.

Africa, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East… are all fascinating (okay, maybe Australia, too). But Asia touches me in a way that no place else does.

It’s no accident that I’m listening to the Black Crowes on this trip. Especially “Shake Your Money Maker.” The first track says it all:

“Twice as hard… as it was the first time I said ‘Good-bye’”

Rules to Live By

And…. I think we’re due for a little more straight talk and a “rules to live by” post. I’ve implied or directly said most of this already, but some clearly need a reminder:

1) Don’t overdo “process.” Yessssssssssssss, process is important. But process is not the actual point of aid work. The point is product, output, outcomes, impacts, benefit to beneficiaries… [INSERT PREFERRED AID-WORLD BUZZWORD]. If your process doesn’t lead to one of those in fewer steps than you have fingers, then it is probably useless and should be fixed or abandoned immediately.

2) Don’t overdo “participation.” Sometimes less is more when it comes to group decisions and group-led processes. If you can make the decision, make it. If you must involve others: Involve the lowest number of people practical for operational decisions. Involve only technicians and/or those with direct managerial authority over the project in question on technical decisions.

“Process” and “Participation” are not and can not be substitutes for good leadership skills, sound judgment, and just making good decisions (and then owning those decisions).

3) Don’t send so much email. We all get far too much email. Don’t clog your colleague’s inboxes with a lot of “FYI.” I can and do read the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune and the Huffington Post on my own. And stop forwarding everything. When you do that people can’t tell whether you’re untrustworthy or just lazy.

4) Don’t copy so many people. Unless it’s an agency or department or team-wide memo, the more people copied, the less important I assume the message is. If you’re copying five people or more on an operational or technical matter and they’re all absolutely essential to the conversation, try to have a meeting or conference call instead. If you’re copying five people or more on a message that is just “FYI”, assume that they’ll delete it without reading. See also #3 just above…

5) Don’t throw your staff under the bus. I’m convinced that there is a special place in aid work Hell for those supervisors, managers, team leaders, country directors, etc. who do this. Deal directly with performance and competence issues if you must. Don’t stand for insubordination. Intervene on a controversial decision and take ownership. But don’t you dare make your staff take heat from above when it should be you taking it for them.

“Writer”

At one point early in my aid career, it was my job to be based in an HQ cubicle but to travel frequently to the field for the express purpose of writing primarily USAID grants. It was one of those jobs that was all about “customer service” out to our country offices, “empowering local counterparts”, and “flowing accountability downward.” Which meant, basically, that I was the fresh-faced, fresh out of grad-school, fresh meat thrown to the country-office wolves on a regular basis.

One colleague, based in a barren and mostly godforsaken country that I found myself getting repeatedly sent to took obvious delight in the fact that it was my job – not his – to craft the proposal language, develop the theory of the argument, ensure “good flow.” He was good with the numbers and so would look after the budgets and tables, he explained. But the word-smithing was my territory.

He dubbed me the “text bitch.”

* * *

If you want to work in aid, as much as anything else (and more than most other things) you need to be able to write well.

Yes, you need to have a degree and some technical or general skills related to aid, and you need to get experience. But when it comes to the actual day-to-day work, more than anything lese, you’ll find yourself writing.

Very often the tangible outcome of aid work – at least the tangible outcomes that stick around for posterity in head office files – are written documents. And those written documents – those briefs, those evaluation reports, those strategy documents, those white papers – all have to be written by someone. In the aid world (but not just), written documents are currency, and the ability to write well frequently translates into power. You take it for granted until what you need is 10 pages or 5 or maybe just one page of well-written text.

And it seems that writing, that act of transferring the substance of conversations into text – whether those conversations happen in a board room, around the coffee makers, at the pub – that act of magically solidifying ethereal concepts into tangible form is very often seen as the grunt labor of aid work. Everyone wants it to be his or her job to have deep conversations with traditional healers under the mango tree, to look appropriately dusty and haggard on CNN, to help fleeing little old ladies make it across the border, to pull typhoon victims from the rubble… By contrast, no one really wants to be the one whose job it is to miss happy hour in order to hunch over a keyboard pounding out a report or budget or opinion paper. Writing has become menial labor. Something to be weasled out of whenever possible.

Writing has become something to be pushed onto the desks of our text bitches.

* * *

Once you have a few years of USAID proposal-writing on your CV you can never really totally escape from it. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. You become one of those in your organization to whom people come when they need something written. And despite annoyance with some people who seem to be worse about dumping their writing, I’ve basically made a measure of peace with it all.

You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t get it written down it’s practically the same thing a not having it. You can have the most astute, penetrating insight on – well – anything. But if you can’t somehow turn that analysis into text, then, it benefits no one. I’ve sat innumerable fascinating discussions, led by sometimes absolutely brilliant people, many of which for all practical purposes might as well have never happened once the first after-hours round began to take effect… because nobody wrote any of it down.

I’ve been a lot of places and held a number of different positions since that colleague out in the desert gave me that inappropriate nickname. I am not the least bit disappointed that my current job does not require me to write USAID proposals as a core task (sometimes I have to jump in and do it if the team is stretched). I’ve been a technician, a manager, a team leader, an advisor… It’s been my job to explain budget deviances, to persuade boards, to negotiate with host governments, to fanangle agreements with partners… Sometimes I’m a cubicle-dweller, sometimes I’m a globtrotter, sometimes a cowboy. But the most constant constant across all of that is writing: email, reports, proposals, strategies, white papers, skype conversations, Facebook updates, this blog…

Don’t you dare call me “text bitch.”

But I’ll always be a writer.

The Cliffs of Insanity

Yes, I know. It’s horribly un-hip these days to compare Afghanistan and Iraq with Vietnam.

But if you’ll indugle, see the table below:

	Vietnam	Afghanistan	Iraq
Pretext for War 1	Prevent the spread of Communism	Prevent the spread of “Militant Islam”
Pretext for War 2	Gulf of Tonkin incident. Later acknowledged to be at least partially fabricated (President Johnson admitted that the US Navy had “probably been shooting at whales out there…”	9/11 / harboring al Queda	9/11 / State sponsor of terrorism and producing weapons of mass destruction. The former is almost certainly false; the latter proven false conclusively.
Overall strategic assumption	Initial invasion/tour de force. Command and conquer.	Initial invasion/tour de force. Command and conquer.	Initial invasion/tour de force. Command and conquer.
Reality on the ground	Prolonged occupation; lukewarm “partnership” by host government; growing insurgency.Any civilian who can leave, does (see southern California).	Prolonged occupation; lukewarm “partnership” by host government; growing insurgency. Any civilian who can leave, does (see Iran…).	Prolonged occupation; lukewarm “partnership” by host government; growing insurgency. Any civilian who can leave, does (see Jordan and Syria).
Overall civilian assumption	Build capacity. Private business investment. “Win hearts and minds.”	Build capacity. Civil society. Besides the Iranians, few private businesses crazy enough to open up shop in Afghanistan.	Build capacity. Civil society. Private business investment.
Tactic when initial military gains were/are lost to insurgency	Escalation: more troops, unrestricted bombing of North Vietnam.	Escalation: re-focus on Afghanistan as central in the war on terror.	Escalation: “Surge.”
Popular sentiment in the US	Nearly universal non-support by the end.	Rapidly diminishing support. Everyone wants it to be over.	Rapidly diminishing support, except for a few lunatic fringe-types.
Humanitarian stance	Loathe to view as “emergency” despite massive population movement, loss of livelihood, crimes against humanity (by all sides): USAID programming focused primarily on “development interventions”	Strong push to articulate Afghanistan as a post-conflict “development” context, despite the fact that the conflict seems to actually be growing… Full-time OFDA rep. in Kabul is a recent development.	What-ev: USAID ready to fund almost any kind of program run by almost any western NGO crazy enough to set up shop outside the green zone.
Regional fallout	Depending on interpretation of history, US involvement in SE.Asia helps to enable the rise of the Khmer Rouge – one of the most horrifically murderous regimes since WWII. At least 2 million Cambodians die. More than that leave.	US involvement enables regional sentiment in favor of the Taliban (how do you spell “P-A-K-I-S-T-A-N”?).	If Iraq wasn’t ground-zero in the war on terror prior to the US invasion, it sure as heck is now.
End result	Total meltdown. Untold human tragedy on all possible sides. US pulls out, ass having been soundly kicked by the NVA. It takes nearly 20 years to normalize relations with Vietnam.	To be determined…	To be determined…

They say that to do the same thing over and over, even when that this clearly doesn’t work, is the very definition of “insanity.”

I’m thinking that we can guess how these stories end…

POST UPDATE:,7 November: Since that table is so bloody unattractive in WordPress (looked great in MS Word…), I’m adding a text version of the same below:

Overall Doctrine for War – United States will save the world from evil

Vietnam: Prevent the spread of Communism

Afghanistan & Iraq: Prevent the spread of “Militant Islam”

 

Pretext for War – Inaccurate, muddled or plain fabricated messaging

Vietnam: Gulf of Tonkin incident. Later acknowledged to be at least partially fabricated (President Johnson admitted that the US Navy had “probably been shooting at whales out there…”

Iraq: 9/11 / State sponsor of terrorism and producing weapons of mass destruction. The former is almost certainly false; the latter proven false conclusively.

Afghanistan: 9/11 / harboring al Queda

 

Overall Strategic Assumption –  Command and Conquer

Vietnam: Initial invasion/tour de force.

Iraq: Initial invasion/tour de force. Declare “victory” a few months later.

Afghanistan: Initial invasion/tour de force. (They’re living in caves anyway… how hard can it be to win?)

 

Reality on the Ground –

Common to all three:

• Prolonged occupation.
• Lukewarm “partnership”/participation by host government
• Growing insurgency.
• Increasingly frequent and dramatic attacks on Western “hard targets.” (e.g. Taliban overrun of UN compound in Kabul; Vietcong take and temporarily hold control of the US Embassy compound in Saigon…)
• Most any civilian who has the means to leave the country does (Vietnam – see southern California; Afghanistan – see Iran; Iraq – See Jordan, Syria, Lebanon…)

 

Overall Civilian Assumption – “Inside every Vietnamese, Afghan, Iraqi… is an American trying to get out” (paraphrase from “Full Metal Jacket”)

Vietnam: “Win hearts and minds”, invest in the private for-profit sector.

Iraq: Build capacity destroyed during the invasion. Civil society. Invest in private for-profit sector.

Afghanistan: Civil society. Besides the Iranians, few international businesses crazy enough to open up shop in Afghanistan…

 

Tactic When Initial Military Gains Lost to Insurgency

Vietnam: Escalation. “Bomb them back to the stone age…”

Iraq: Escalation (“Surge”)

Afghanistan: Escalation – refocus on Afghanistan as central in the “War on Terror.”

 

Popular Sentiment in the US

Vietnam: Virtually universal non-support by the end.

Iraq: Rapidly diminishing support (except for a few lunatic fringe types)

Afghanistan: Rapidly diminishing support. Everyone wants it to be over

 

Humanitarian Stance – “It’s not really an emergency…”

Vietnam: Loathe to view Vietnam as an emergency context, despite massive population movement, loss of livelihoods, crimes against humanity (by all sides). USAID programming focused on development interventions.

Iraq: What-ev. USAID ready to fund almost any kind of program implemented by almost any Western NGO crazy enough to operate outside the Green Zone

Afghanistan: Strong push to articulate Afghanistan as a post-conflict “development” context, despite the fact that the conflict seems to actually be intensifying. Full-time OFDA rep in Kabul is only a recent development…

Regional Fallout

Vietnam: Depending on interpretation of history, US involvement in SE.Asia helps to enable the rise of the Khmer Rouge – one of the most horrifically murderous regimes since WWII. At least 2 million Cambodians die.

Iraq: Depending on one’s interpretation, US mucking about has upset the balance of power in the Middle East and helped to enable further rise of Iran as a potential nuclear power. Nice.

Afghanistan: US involvement enables regional sentiment in favor of the Taliban. The Taliban is now a serious source of concern in a supposed key regional ally – Pakistan (already a nuclear power).

Miscellaneous…

- Drugs. Large-scale opium/heroin production a key issue as it provides a source of support to one or more sides in the conflict (Vietnam – CIA; Afghanistan –Taliban/al Queda).

- Silent Partners. Strong silent partners with vested interest in outcomes unfavorable to the US (China – North Vietnam; Saudi Arabia [and some Gulf States] – al Queda).

End Result

Vietnam: Total meltdown. Untold human tragedy on all possible sides. US pulls out, ass having been soundly kicked by the NVA. It takes nearly 20 years to normalize relations with Vietnam.

Iraq & Afghanistan: situations still in-progress, and so obviously “to be determined…”

We Mean Business

I’ve just spent two days in intensive meetings meant to take to the next level my employer’s in-house conversation about tapping into corporate support for relief and development work.

My prior grumbling clearly has not worked. And I find myself being worn down…

For-profit sector interest involvement in aid work is fully a reality of the world we live in now. We (and I say this for my own benefit as much as for the benefit of anyone else) need to acknowledge and deal with this reality.

Thinking out loud about what this means…

Just like bilateral, governmental and large institutional donors, corporate donors represent a very wide range of motivations and objectives, and also technical rigor. We must never allow ourselves to lose sight of the fact that, regardless of any community benefit language that they may use, benevolent programming that they might support, or even as good as they might actually be, the for-profit sector and for-profit companies exist precisely for the purpose of making profit. Which means that they will come to the humanitarian aid conversation with a set of assumptions, priorities, goals and tolerances that do not necessarily overlap with ours.

I do not write this out of cynicism or distrust (although there’s justification for both), but simply as a statement of fact. We’re quite used to talking about this divergence of interests between NGOs and donors when it comes to bilateral government donors or funding from institutions like the World Bank. But it seems we’ve been initially somewhat naïve on that point when it comes to corporate donors. Maybe we’ve allowed ourselves to believe, wrongly, that because the proposal formats, approval processes and reporting requirements for corporate funds seem almost endearingly simple in comparison to government grants, that corporate grant-making is somehow less calculated towards end goals. Donors fund aid work based on what they believe will advance their own interests. Period.

As well, after several decades now of NGO engagement and push-back and “donor advocacy” towards our more traditional governmental and institutional donors, we seem to have achieved a level of comfort with those relationships. We know very well where the areas of divergence and overlap are, and we know from experience where we can push-back and how. We’ve kind of made peace with the fact that we have to agree to disagree with those donors on some points. But now we’re having to start the process of getting to this point from the beginning with our corporate donors. It feels redundant, like going back to square one, and that’s frustrating.

We need to view and talk about and interact with the for-profit sector fully as an “aid actor” – and I mean “aid actor” in the same sense that we talk about ourselves, the UN, big bilateral donors like USAID or the EC, and relevant host government entities. Whether they participate in coordination meetings or not, whether they engage in the kind of analytical, strategic or competitive bidding processes that other aid actors do, the for-profits are increasingly a central part of the big picture, the “aid environment.” Corporations are fully part of the aid environment (they have been for some time, actually – what’s changed recently is that they themselves articulate that they are), and we need to engage them directly on those terms. We do everyone, including ourselves and our beneficiaries less than full service if we segregate out the for-profits in our overall thinking.

NGOs and perhaps particularly INGOs need to remain clear, internally and externally, about their/our role in the aid conversation. I see the role of NGOs becoming specifically more about advocacy, representation, championing the cause of the poor. Both the traditional donors and aid-involved corporations now increasingly employ aid professionals and maintain social responsibility units with immense technical capability. Our resource constraints will eventually mean that we cannot keep up with them on that front. Yet of all of the aid actors and non-aid actors in the aid conversation, NGOs are the only ones whose primary interest is (or should be) benefit to the poor on their own terms. For donors, whether governments, foundations, corporations, or individuals, helping the poor is a means to another end: advancing foreign policy, gaining market share, a tax write-off or accumulating treasure in Heaven. For NGOs, helping the poor is itself the end. We should be careful to not  understate our importance on this point.

Maybe we need to mean business about our core business. Maybe we need to get back to our roots of essentially telling donors what to care about and how to spend their money. We did it USAID and DFID and the EC and AusAID and the UN (and many others). Now we need to do it with the corporate sector.

No one knows what it’s like to be the bad man

I was late checking for my flight today.

No matter how convenient the time that I need to be at the airport and no matter how far in advance – how many weeks prior – I know that I’ll be traveling, the morning of there is always some extenuating circumstance, some reason why I rush out of the house at the last minute…

* * *

It’s not easy to balance aid work and a family life. When, for a variety of family-related reasons it becomes necessary to come back “home”, to relocate to a first-world city for an HQ job there’s the expectation that things will be somehow easier.

But they never are.

You’re here, but your real work is over there. Your heart is over there. You’re constantly torn, pulled in multiple directions. No matter where you are physically, there’s a nagging, tormenting notion that you should be somewhere else. At home, you need to be out in “the field”; out in “the field”, you know you should be home. …At “home.”

*

My wife puts up with a lot, bless her. It can’t be easy being married to me. Or to any itinerant aid worker, for that matter.

I scheduled this trip after a previous one fell through at the last minute. Apparently the generals in Myanmar didn’t see fit to give me a visa to their fair country. At least not this month.

And it’s a good thing: see, I was going to miss Halloween.

Not that Halloween is any big deal. Until it seemed that I would miss it. And then there was drama. My daughter (8 going on 15) had a meltdown: Apparently I’m never there. I miss everything…

And then the trip to Myanmar fell through and all was well. Until this trip – the one I’m on as I write this - came up. I knew about it and discussed it a full ten days in advance. There was full disclosure on this one. No ambiguity; no, “well, I’m still sorting out the ticket…” And so, after some discussion and finally booking a ticket at the last minute – one that departed and arrived at decent hours – and after a day of all being well, and then an evening of watching “must see” TV with my wife, I confess that I was a bit grumpy when at 11:03 PM she looked at me with the “you’re never here” eyes and demanded to know why I’d booked travel to be away on my son’s semesterly parent-teacher conference.

I am currently overseeing more than ten grants in eight countries. I meet every reporting deadline, get the no-cost-extension paperwork in on time. I meet my in-house administrative obligations, too. I submit my electronic labor-accounting reports, I do performance appraisals of those I supervise, I review and give meaningful feedback on proposals and strategies and plans and policies. People depend on me for a lot, and I follow through for them. I am dependable. I can deal with the big picture without losing the details. I get stuff done.

But at 11:03 PM last Wednesday, I had no answer for my wife. If I’d ever even been aware of it to begin with I’d totally forgotten about that damned conference.

*

My daughter (8 going on 15) sometimes has her little friends from the neighborhood come over to play. I try to be cool with her and them: Let them have their tea parties in the backyard or organize their “Littlest Petshop” figures on the dining room table.

I think I’m a pretty good dad. Okay, maybe not as over-the-top involved-in-the-minutae-of-their-child’s-lives as some. I don’t personally participate in the backyard tea parties… But, still, I’m a heck of a lot better than many.

Sometimes, though, I need to weigh in as a parent. Sometimes meals just have to be eaten, baths taken. Sometimes SpongeBob has to be turned off so that homework can get done. And very often those are moments when my sweet little daughter morphs into the Wicked Witch of the Wild West.

In the course of a single week I might make financial decisions equivalent to the gross annual budget of some smaller NGOs. I make recommendations on strategies for entire regions and that will affect hundreds of employees, thousands of beneficiaries. I participate in discussions in different forums that are relevant globally. I have hired and fired people who depended directly on me as their supervisor for their livelihoods. I have handed relief items to refugees fresh from a third-world war zone, haggard and frightened. I have personally made decisions about where hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of aid would go and not go.

But when my daughter doesn’t like what I want her to do, I suddenly become temporarily a nobody. And I have to swallow a level and quality of attitude and disrespect for which I am utterly unprepared.

* * *

The hardest part of this job, hands down, is just trying to stay balanced. Being a whole person. Not totally losing yourself in the work. You learn, soon enough, that there kind of are multiple worlds that we’re required to inhabit simultaneously. There’s the world of aid: the high stakes, the pressure, the intense debates, the even more intense subject matter.

Then, there’s the world outside of aid. Family, friends, acquaintances, neighbors who cannot begin to comprehend the stuff that we see and deal with. Not because it’s so complicated or technical, but because it is so heavy. I long ago stopped trying to explain what I do to the soccer moms and dads on the sidewalk outside my daughter’s school waiting for the bell to ring. If the subject of my travel comes up, I stick to stories of shopping, weird food, and how hot it is there.

I think this is the least acknowledged paradox of aid work, actually. The fact that we do inhabit multiples worlds (some of us more expertly than others). We act globally in the full sense of the term, hopefully for the better, as our “job.” And then, after hours, we’re extraordinarily mundane.

My 8-going-on-15 year old daughter helps keep me very well-connected with that reality.

* * *

My flight this morning left late. Around 11:00 AM. Enough time for me to walk my daughter to school, about two blocks away. She walked on ahead. Didn’t really want to talk with me, beyond a few strongly-worded directives about how I’d better be back for Halloween.

The bell rang, I called out to her, she looked embarrassed and ran inside. 8 going on 15 years old.

I wanted to hurry back, but my son was busy shuffling through the leaves piled up along the sidewalk. I stifled impatience. I know I’m gone a lot. I don’t want his childhood memories to be of me being on his case to hurry up so that I can leave.

Taxonomy of Aid

I have not seen anyone else come out and say this in so many words…

Whether we’re critiquing or defending or just theorizing “aid”, we probably need to be clearer, define our terms better. We use language that sounds the same, but we don’t always mean the same things. There is aid, and then again there is aid.

Here are the kinds of aid that I see and tend to write about. Maybe there are others (some of you, I’m sure, will be stoked to point out obvious ones that I may have missed…).

Age of Empires: Like the game Ages of Empires, this is high-level, 35,000 ft. view, big-picture Aid. This kind of aid happens predominantly in places like Geneva and Rome and Brussels and New York and Washington DC and London… the “Humanitarian Capitals.” It also happens in air-conditioned, well-guarded compounds in places like Singapore, Panama City, Nairobi, or Baghdad. This kind of aid moves billions of dollars around like poker chips, considers the fates of hundreds of thousands of people at a time as simply part of a day’s work. This is the aid that deals with big theories and tries to tackle big problem like malaria or “hunger.” This is the aid that asks big questions like, “is aid a good thing? Or is it simply a modern recapitulation of colonialism?”, “What does ‘poverty reduction’ really mean?”, or “does Bono matter?”

The real work of Age of Empires aid is primarily pondering and arguing about structural issues. And that pondering and arguing happens a lot in institutions like New York U., Princeton, Yale, and the LSE, by people like Prof. Bill Easterly, Jeffery Sachs, Jim Collier. You can find their book on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble.

Practitioners of this kind of aid – if they make it to “the field” – usually wear Kevlar vests while riding in their white Landcruisers or helicopters.

Looking closely at this kind of aid can be incredibly jading, mainly because it is so hard to draw clear, straight lines between budgets and material capacity, on one hand, and community-level change in the field on the other hand. Despite the mind-boggling numbers talked about in the context of this kind of aid, it can be tough to get a firm grasp on what this kind of aid actually does in tangible terms. By and large, this is the kind of aid I was thinking of when I wrote

Gran Tourismo: This is fast-paced, fervent and frenzied kind aid. This kind of aid is so competitive, take-no-prisoners, and flat dangerous in different ways that I almost called it “Grand Theft Auto.” Like the racing game, Gran Tourismo, aid at this level looks technical at first, but is surprisingly heavy on strategy and patience once you get into it. This kind of aid tends to happen predominantly in two places: Large, household charity INGOs; and because so much of this kind of aid as much about talking and discussion as actually doing, it is increasingly happening on the internet – which is to say blogs and twitter. It tends to happen physically in INGO HQ and field offices, coordination meetings, and the curtained “pubs” of places like Banda Aceh. (It is important to note that this kind of aid exists in the field as much as at HQs).

Much of the effort expended in Gran Tourismo aid is around making NGOs work, and so tends to take on issues such as advocacy, aid effectiveness, good donorship, the relationships between HQs and “the field”, and coordination in the field. This is the kind of aid that asks questions like, “what does humanitarian space look like in Afghanistan?”, or “what are the base criteria for implementing micro-credit in community X?” People involved in this kind of aid argue about minimum standards and protocols and multi-directional accountability and reporting formats and definitions of “value-add.” This kind of aid deals with millions of dollars, rather than billions, and tens of thousands of beneficiaries, rather than hundreds of thousands.

The cool, in-crowd of aid bloggers out there right now seem to write primarily about aid at this level: Alanna, Amanda and Kate, TiA, Transitionland,  Saundra, Michael… Most of these bloggers have not written books, so Barnes & Noble won’t help you (unless you just sit there and use the free wi-fi).

Practicioners of this kind of aid frequently ride in Landcruisers, but never with Kevlar vests. They may also use public transit because they can and also because it helps them feel closer to “the poor.”

This kind of aid feels more practical. The discussions here are frequently more obviously applicable to what one must actually do in the field that those that happen in “Age of Empires” aid. While it’s certainly possible to become jaded here, burnout from the bureaucratic malarkey is a far greater danger (and this danger exists regardless of whether one sits in an HQ or in a large field office).

DOOM III: This is the in-the-trenches kind of aid that happens at ground level. This is aid “the field.” And much like the game, DOOM III aid is about overcoming a seemingly endless series of life-or-death obstacles, challenges and puzzles… all within budget. This is where midwives learn about safe birthing, where micro-credit applicants practice basic accountings, where logisticians or M&E officers curse erratic internet speeds. This is the kind of aid that many aspire to (or front about having done), but comparatively few actually do: this is the direct, daily contact with beneficiaries aid. This kind of aid requires you to either know a local language or use a translator (if you’re an outsider). And for expats, this kind of aid can also be about just staying healthy/alive.

The practice of this kind of aid very often encapsulates the outcomes of conversations had in Gran Tourismo and maybe even Age of Empires aid, but tends to focus day-to-day on very immediately practical things: how to maintain the cold chain; how to conduct relief distribution in an area known to be under the control of a belligerent militia; how to convince this community to use bednets properly for long enough to see a result.

Practitioners of aid at this level sometimes blog under catchy titles or handles like Pyjama Samsara or Itinerant and Indigent or Chasing Carly. They sometimes write books, too, but these are almost always technical – go straight to Amazon or some other online source. They’ll rarely ride in a Landcruiser unless they’re being kidnapped or evacuated.

DOOM III aid can feel incredibly thankless, and so also jading in it’s own way. Frustrations with bureaucracy seemingly “imposed” from higher in the organization are a common and frequent complaint. Having a trusting relationship with one’s counterparts at HQ is absolutely critical here. On the other hand and for obvious reasons, this is the kind of aid in which it is easiest to see the direct result of one’s contribution to community level outcomes. A challenge here, though, will be to maintain the ability to step back at least temporarily and see the bigger picture. Practitioners at this level will want to intentionally ask the bigger, theoretical questions on a regular basis, and not get bogged down in practice or sheer survival.

(In case you didn’t catch it, these headings are all from popular video games…)