What Disaster Response Needs to Save Lives is More Volunteers

Ramshackle apartment buildings on the edge of Thamel, Kathmandu’s old city, in 2007.

Thirty-six hours on from the devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck central Nepal on May 25^th, we know that the statistical chance of finding survivors buried in the wreckage of homes, offices and apartment towers is dwindling rapidly towards nil. To date, some 2,200 people are confirmed dead by the Nepalese government, although this is a partial count of known dead that as more rubble is cleared and more reports of missing people coalesce, is inevitably, tragically, going to rise. Scores of small villages, many perched precariously on steep hillsides or beneath towering, notoriously unstable mountains, have simply not been heard from, and may take days yet to reach and account for. We can hope and pray that in those villages, lighter structures and an outdoors-leaning agrarian lifestyle have translated into greater odds of survivability for the families that live there. The likelihood, however, is that with the threat of landslides, coupled with the long distance from medical care for those who have received otherwise-survivable wounds, many more dead have simply yet to be accounted for. The projections of 10,000 fatalities from this earthquake may well prove prescient.

Annapurna Region, Nepal, 2007

The aim of any disaster response- especially rapid-onset- is to save lives. Of course, as any expatriate aid worker (EAW) who has been deployed into a disaster response can attest to, the experience of reality is often less about saving lives, and more about handling the awkward logistics of providing well-needed but often non-critical comforts to survivors. Bedrolls that make sleeping out under tarpaulins more comfortable- but don’t save lives. Temporary toilet blocks that reduce the spread of disease in temporary displacement camps- although historically epidemics following natural disasters (as opposed to human-made mass-displacement events) are very rare. And, as often as not, carrying out coordination between other aid groups, documenting findings of needs assessments, and submitting unwieldy paperwork to institutional and private donors which can take weeks to resolve and turn into actionable funding.

Ditto those Search and Rescue (SAR) teams that are dispatched, who often fly in with much heralding from sending nations and are widely celebrated in the media when they pull survivors from the rubble. I’ve discussed this elsewhere, but generally speaking, your chance of finding many survivors after the first 24 hours have passed are very low. After 48 hours, improbably low. And after 72 hours, with one or two notable exceptions, they are essentially down to nil. Yet international SAR teams are rarely on the ground within the first 24 hours, and in many cases miss the 72-hour window that most professionals will agree is your outside limit of effective action in SAR.

Now, I’m not poo-pooing aid response here. On the contrary, I am a huge believer in the work that the UN, local and international NGOs, host and donor governments, and civil society organizations do to support communities to cope with and rebuild after a major disaster like Nepal’s earthquake. The psychological impact alone of knowing that you’re not abandoned is of almost immeasurable value. Some assistance- temporary shelter that protects people from aftershocks and the monsoon rains, for example- will certainly contribute to saving lives. And in situations of prolonged displacement, primary medical facilities and hygiene/sanitation services are also critical to keeping people alive.

Likewise, SAR teams selflessly risk their lives to find survivors, or retrieve bodies that allow loved ones essential closure to their grief. Every life is precious, and when survivors are found, it can give a disproportionately large psychological boost to responders and survivors. It also allows those teams invaluable training to prepare for a potential disaster in their own territory, when they may well be the first-responders pulling survivors from the rubble.

Durbar Square in Kathmandu, 2007

Durbar Square, March 25, 2015

Moreso international medical and surgical teams, particularly following an earthquake, where they provide an essential supplement to overwhelmed or destroyed local medical infrastructure, performing life-saving surgery, amputations, and dealing with the complications of crushing injuries. If they’re on the ground quickly enough, these guys too can save lives.

But- and feel free to take issue with me on this one- a typical aid response to a rapid onset disaster doesn’t save that many lives in real terms.

By the time an aid response is even at its earliest stages of ramping up, those in peril will have already died, and most of those who are left would probably have coped- albeit less comfortably- regardless of the aid delivered.

If we want to see disaster responses save more lives, then what we need is more volunteers.

Now, I’m not talking about expat aid workers here. International aid workers today tend to be professionals. Individuals who have studied, who have developed skills and experiences in the aid sector over a number of years, and who fit into a number of key roles within a highly complex organizational and inter-organizational structure and who are paid employees of the agencies sending them. Not volunteers.

I’m not talking about SAR and medical response teams- both of which are directly involved (to various degrees of success) in the job of actually saving the lives of survivors. While some of these individuals ‘volunteer’ their time to be sent into disaster zones, these are not spontaneous “I feel like helping so send me” volunteers, but people who have developed highly technical skills in their careers and who have usually received specialized training in disaster response.

And, with respect, I am definitely not talking about people from the general public offering to volunteer their time. However well-meaning, however altruistic, however badly peoples’ ‘I need to help’ button is being pushed, the time to step into the aid profession is never immediately following a disaster. Without experience, training and a knowledge of how the aid sector and disaster response works (coordination, technical standards, lessons learned and past mistakes, etc. etc.), it is very hard to hit the ground in a crisis and be helpful. Most often, offers of voluntary assistance simply add to the noise in an already chaotic situation. If aid is on your heart, get trained, get experience, work for an agency so that you understand what is required, and when the next disaster hits, you’ll be ready to go.

And not just sexy tourist spots like Vanuatu, Thailand or Nepal. We need qualified aid workers in disasters in CAR, in Mali, in DRC and in South Sudan.

Fishtail Mountain behind Pokhara. Disaster sites on the tourist track tend to solicit more voluntourism offers than less picturesque locales.

No, I’m talking about a different sort of volunteer altogether. The sort of volunteer who can save lives. Who’s been proven to save lives, disaster after disaster, and in far greater numbers than international SAR teams, aid workers and medical teams combined. The sort of volunteer who is uniquely positioned to know where the victims are at the moment of the disaster, and how to get to them. Who’s ready to respond in an instant, and who has more motivation than even the most altruistic NGO first responder.

Of course, I’m talking about the members of disaster-affected communities themselves.

Look at the photos coming out of Kathmandu over the last 36 hours, what do you see?

Beyond the devastation, the piles of rubble, the collapsed walls and the pall of dust. Beyond the horror and tragedy of a fascinating, historic city shaken to its core and the flashes of grief on survivors and injured alike.

You see people. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. Nepalese people, crawling over the rubble, hauling at debris, digging out survivors. You see them working in teams, long chains of hands clearing fallen masonry, working as teams, high-visibility vests mixed in with office clothes and people just out in the street. From the images, it’s impossible to tell how many of these teams are spontaneously responding, and how many are being coordinated by emergency personnel. But with very few exceptions, they are almost all local Nepalese. They are acting within minutes and early hours of the earthquake. And anecdotally we know that the majority of this response is happening in an ad hoc manner as people try to save those immediately around them when the disaster hits, or who rush home to save families, friends and neighbours.

These are the people who will save lives by the tens of thousands.

These are the volunteers we need more of.

Swayambhunath (Monkey Temple), 2007

Swayambhunath (Monkey Temple), March 25, 2015

Now, the majority of this ‘voluntary’ action is spontaneous. It’s going to happen, regardless of whether we try and make it happen. If there’s one thing we’ve seen time and again following a disaster, it’s that in those moments of life-and-death, in the midst of horrific tragedy, a huge majority of people simply shine their brightest. In a disaster like this, what you don’t see is everybody just sitting around the piles of rubble going, “hey, let’s wait for somebody else to sort it out”. No, you see people getting in there, getting filthy and bloody, risking collapsing buildings coming down on their heads to save friends, loved ones and absolute strangers. I am a firm believer that, despite the overwhelming crapness that news media chooses to share with us from around the world, most people are inherently good and, when the chips are down, many prone to incredible selflessness.

But we can- and must- do things to facilitate this action to happen. Governments, the UN, NGOs and donors (especially donors) need to make sure that local community members- be they Haitians, Nepalese, Ni-Vanuatu, or any other disaster-prone location- are prepared, resourced and enabled to respond to save lives.

This is the domain of what in the aid industry is called “Disaster Risk Reduction” (DRR)- one subset of a large and [finally] growing set of programs that aim to make nations and communities in disaster-prone areas more resilient, more able to cope and respond, and- crucially- less vulnerable to disaster events.

The earthquake in Nepal was not (unlike that in Port-au-Prince) in any way unexpected. Disaster professionals have been talking for years- decades- about the earthquake threat to Kathmandu. The city’s location on a fault-line, the high population density, the poverty, the poor building practices and the way fragile brick structures were piled one on top of the other, and the isolation of the city high in a ring of mountains, were all factors that combined, made alarm-bells ring.

Kathmandu skyline, 2007

Nor were these alarm-bells ignored. There have been trainings, response plans, mitigation plans, public policies and drills. The UN, NGOs, and the government have all worked together, on paper and in practice, to prepare Kathmandu for an earthquake. We won’t know until the after-action reviews come out just how effective these measures have been. But the very fact that the conversations were happening and contingencies considered means that both government and aid workers were in a mindset to respond once the disaster hit- a critical psychological edge.

I know anecdotally that my own organization has carried out multiple response drills, has extensive response plans in place, and has a cadre of disaster-ready personnel among its local staff, as well as in its community programs. Their country director, a friend of mine, has a long pedigree of disaster response, which no doubt contributed to her being placed in a position of responsibility in an earthquake-prone office. She and I joked when she was first appointed that I’d be joining her shortly, once the earthquake hit.

We were all expecting it, and we were all planning for it.

So how do we save lives? We make sure that local community members- everyday citizens- in the countries we work are prepared and equipped to the best extent possible. And we encourage them to get on and do it.

1. Awareness-Raising (as a conversation)

As with any activity, the first place to start is making sure that everyone has the same information. It’s patronizing to think that external organizations can walk into an urban or rural community group and tell them “these are what your risks are”. In most cases, they know these things far more acutely than you do. That said, in many cases, certain risks (such as a massive devastating earthquake) may be deprioritized in a community because it’s been so long since one was experienced that it may not be perceived as a critical risk. Mutual learning has to take place. As external actors, it’s essential to respect communities’ perspectives on what is important to them. It’s also important to learn what their existing coping mechanisms and plans are- it’s unlikely that you’ll be coming in to a blank slate. They may have traditional responses. Elders may have memories of earlier events and what was done. All of this has to be factored in. At the same time, however, if a threat is genuine & building (such as an imminent earthquake), communities not already aware of this threat need to be brought up to speed. It’s a conversation. Facipulation? Try and avoid it. Apart from anything else, communities are made up of people, and people, by and large, are smart- especially when it comes to survival- so it shouldn’t be a hard job. Just do it right and do it respectfully and humbly. But between external actors and community groups, there needs to be a common understanding of what the threat to the community is, and how best to tackle it.

Community artwork as part of an NGO DRR program in Latin America

2. Invest in National-Level Response Structures

In more developed countries, emergency response is a blend of professional emergency services (911 operators, police, fire brigade, ambulance drivers, etc.) and trained volunteers. Here in Victoria, mobilizing large-scale civilian emergency response happens in a very structured way in response to large-scale disasters, either through the State Emergency Services (SES), or the Country Fire Authority (CFA). Both agencies have a similar structure and approach, with a relatively small core staff of full-time professionals who oversee the organizational integrity, and a very extensive network of trained volunteers with appropriate skillsets. Volunteers are drawn from and attached to community-level response teams, with the possibility to deploy into other geographical areas, which means that at their most basic, volunteers are often motivated by the desire to protect their own towns and suburbs, and by extension, homes and families. It’s a highly effective structure, and one that gets utilized year in and year out here (in Australia, the country where everything is trying to kill you).

Less developed nations are increasingly adopting similar mechanisms, to greater and lesser degrees and effect. Investing in these structures, from central government to regional and sub-regional levels, is critical to ensure sustainability, continuity, and effectiveness. These government programs are usually national in scale and with a reach that no single aid agency or donor is going to be able to achieve. The most successful models I’ve seen on the ground- primarily in Latin America- have brand recognition down to the community level, and are present in pretty much every at-risk administrative zone. Supporting and enabling these organizations will have far greater multiplying consequences than a stand-alone program.

What does this look like? Obviously, it means funding them. It means training their core staff- at higher levels, in effective response management, and at lower levels, the critical technical skills required to respond. But it also means that in your community-level engagement, your DRR messaging is in line with that of the national response agency’s (and if you disagree with that messaging, then negotiating directly with that agency, rather than going cowboy). It means ensuring that you’re identifying gaps in their training and resourcing, and working with them on agreeing how to fill those gaps. It means ensuring that any community-level structures you put in place are directly compatible with national disaster response agency processes and structures. And it means that, when you launch your response, you ensure your agency (and any community-level mobilization you do) is slotting in to that structure, not working over or against it.

Civil Defence personnel working with an NGO DRR program in Guatemala

3. Drill, Drill, Drill

The most effective way to ensure that responders will do the right thing in an emergency is to have them dry-run it, in simulation exercises and in repetitive drills. The more you can do this, and the more realistic the circumstances, the more likely people are to get it right when the real event happens. Not only are their skills more robust, but they understand what to expect (which boosts psychological resilience), and how to fit in more efficiently and effectively with higher-level structures. This in turn allows them to more effectively mobilize additional resources.

Community brigades need to understand basic SAR techniques, and life-saving first-aid. They will be responding, regardless of whether any external actors get involved. They will inevitably be at their homes, scrambling through debris to pull out loved ones. How can we help them more effectively work together as teams? Prioritize disaster sites? Safely remove rubble and ensure nobody else is hurt and killed? Communicate when communication lines are down and they need a medevac, or critical resources? What equipment can we help them acquire and maintain that might save lives, which can be kept on-hand and be ready to use when disaster strikes?

None of this is without its challenges. First aid supplies get pilfered, equipment rusts or is sold when it appears defunct and no emergency has occurred, and training has to be maintained to stay current and effective. But we have to look at communities as our first responders, as the people who are going to save the lives whose fate will have already been resolved long days before our teams actually reach them.

At a higher level sophisticated simulations allow national response agencies to understand how to interact with the inevitable international response system that will arrive in force in the hours following a disaster. Teaching them how to work within coordination mechanisms, how to leverage for support and how to communicate and fill gaps in capacity and response is crucial. Likewise, the UN and agencies absolutely must drill their responses with national response agencies involved, or they risk ignoring or undermining the single most critical activities taking place during the first 72 hours following a rapid onset disaster.

Community members, part of an emergency response committee in Ecuador, drill first-aid and casualty evacuation in preparation for a disaster event

4. Give, Give, Give

This one’s for the donor agencies. DRR isn’t sexy. DRR investment is increasing, largely on the back of advocacy campaigns that have increasingly called on donors not to neglect preparedness funding. The Hyogo Framework has assisted this process as well. When I first started in this industry 12 years ago, getting disaster preparedness funding was like pulling teeth. This, at least, has changed.

None the less, because government donors often use overseas aid as a domestic policy tool, they give in accordance with the attention of their constituents, which in turn is driven by media attention that goes into a frenzy following a tragedy but tends to ignore the day-to-day stuff. An oft-quoted figure is that $1 spent in DRR programming saves $10 in disaster response spending. And that’s just cash. Never mind the lives that are saved by effective DRR.

This spending needs to go into the high-level stuff: Government policies, retrofitting, building codes, urban planning & development, and training and equipping national disaster response agencies. It also needs to go into the community-level stuff. Local risk mitigation plans, training and disaster simulation drills, and everything in between.

Agencies need to do likewise, and never stop pushing the DRR agenda. And- for both donor agencies and aid organizations alike- continue to push for the understanding that DRR is not an emergency response issue- it is a part of any and all good development. This conversation, I’m happy to report, is a mature one in many parts of the development sector- but DRR can still feel like a tag-on or optional extra, and often gets left on the sidelines like an ugly step-sibling. It mustn’t be. DRR done right will directly contribute to more saving of lives than most other development or response activities out there.

5. Post-Disaster Support

In the communities that response agencies ‘take on’ as their own, they need to treat community members less like ‘beneficiaries’- which is really just a politically-correct way of saying ‘victims’- and more like staff-members. Community members are our first responders. They are in a very real way our partners on the ground. They are doing the work of saving lives, and our hope as response agencies has to be- very humbly and carefully- finding a way to support them as best we can.

Just like our staff members need support in a post-disaster setting, so do our community first-responders. For the first 24-72 hours, these people will be running on adrenaline. They will be driven by the primal need to save the lives of people they love. Some will be successful. Many will experience devastating grief.

And like all humans, that grief will have different impacts, and will need to be handled differently. Response agencies moving into a community need to be acutely cognisant of how to support people in this situation.

Agencies need to learn how to utilize Psychological First Aid (PFA) and other basic psychosocial programming. Just as psychological support for aid staff is becoming increasingly mainstream, this needs to be extended to community-based first responders. For some of them, being kept busy- utilized further in response programs, either as volunteers or as newly-hired staff- will be critical. Others may require rest, and being allowed to stop and mourn. In response activities, flexibility to cater for a range of first-responder needs has to be built in across the program- ‘mainstreaming’, to use a dirty word.

But the critical thing to remember here- communities are never passive victims. They are our first-response partners, they are the people who risked their lives to save others while we were still sitting in airport business lounges, and they are the people who will carry the weight of what just happened for the rest of their lives. They are, and must be, our number one priority as external responders. We must celebrate them and their achievements, enable and support them, and avoid disenfranchising or patronizing them at all costs, lest we add to the harm they have already experienced.

Let’s make sure that in all our response and pre-response programming, we are enabling community-based volunteers at every opportunity. These are the people who will save the lives we never get a chance to.

This is Not an April Fool’s Post

“10: In our information, publicity and advertising activities, we shall recognise disaster victims as dignified humans, not hopeless objects.

Respect for the disaster victim as an equal partner in action should never be lost. In our public information we shall portray an objective image of the disaster situation where the capacities and aspirations of disaster victims are highlighted, and not just their vulnerabilities and fears. While we will cooperate with the media in order to enhance public response, we will not allow external or internal demands for publicity to take precedence over the principle of maximising overall relief assistance. We will avoid competing with other disaster response agencies for media coverage in situations where such coverage may be to the detriment of the service provided to the beneficiaries or to the security of our staff or the beneficiaries.”

-The Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Disaster Relief (taken from the Sphere Handbook, 2011 Edition, p.370; Emphasis mine)

It takes a lot to floor me. I’ve seen a lot of dumb stuff in the humanitarian industry. I’m moderately immune to dumbassery these days, and tend to keep my righteous indignation in pretty good check too.

However, a document came to me via a colleague in a partner NGO recently. Said colleague works in a specific emergency context involving refugees and refugee camps, and a fundraising office of said NGO had approached them with a request to bring in a TV crew and do some filming of the refugees and their crisis situation.

Not an unusual request, and under the circumstances of trying to raise both awareness and funds, generally a good idea.

As long as your fundraising office has at least half a clue about international standards of humanitarian fundraising guidelines, as outlined in the Red Cross Code of Conduct excerpt quoted above.

I won’t say much more. Instead, I’m going to lift excerpts directly from the media brief that the fundraising office provided, which instructed the country program exactly what stories they wanted to source for the commercial TV crew they were going to send.

Call me mean-spirited, but I have left the grammatical errors in the original request in place, because I think it adds to the flavour.

Detailed Story Request:

Children under 12 are suggested for the story case main character. If the child is too old, we lose the effectiveness.

Case Examples:

1. Disease/Injury

– AIDS infected, parasite, virus infection and so on. Because of these infections, the child is severely suffering. Please look for disease case that can be seen visually [in the original document, this word is in bold and in red text- MA] such as Elephantiasis, sand flea, one’s arm or leg amputated to protect from further virus infection, severe skin disease and so on. Disease that is so heart-breaking just by looking. Diarrhea and fever are dangerous for children under five but in filming, it is difficult to catch the seriousness of the symptoms because we cannot see from outside. [in the original, underlined and also in red- MA]

With me so far? They talk a little more about emergency medical cases and ‘serious injuries or burns’, and then:

2. Early Marriage

– Because of early marriage… she is not at school getting education but in household to live as young wife.

– She is originally from very poor family and that is why she has to accept early marriage. However she is suffering from disease and her babies are malnutrition and have other diseases.

Are you sure that you want to bother sending a TV crew all the way over here, or shall we just send you some shots of a sad looking kid and you can put your own voice-over onto it, because it seems like you already have the story figured out…

Onwards, and under the section on “Child Headed Family”

– A very young child who is in an age to receive full love and care from parents, but unfortunately the child has no parents (or parents who are very sick) and has to live as the head of the family…

– This child really wants to go to school as her friends in the village but could not go even near to the school. She really desire to get education and better life for the future.

– The child is very young but very loving and attractive child.

Obviously poor kids need to be visually appealing. Cuz, fundraising.

The list goes on. Then towards the end, the fundraising office explains that they want to ensure that “our potential donors can feel the same pain and sadness as if they witness the situation.”

I can think of some ways that could be arranged.

However, to avoid any potential misunderstanding (because it may not have been clear in the run-up), they conclude with a summary of exactly what they’re looking for:

-Children or households in serious poverty

-Children and family suffered by disease, water contamination, inflammation, aids, malaria, malnutrition, etc.

– Situation which was born by extreme poverty

– Sad, abysmal, inhumane scenes and stories that happened by local issues such as conflict, disaster, early marriage, etc.

Final emphasis mine.

So that you don’t damage anything, I am told that the TV crew visit did not go ahead. And I sincerely hope that somebody’s head of fundraising got a firm shoeing.

As the language in the brief suggests, there is a cultural element in play here. Different nations and cultures do have different expectations and standards around what is and is not acceptable in the public domain. Anybody who’s seen an Al Jazeera (Arabic) news report following an Israeli incursion into the West Bank knows that the Middle East has different thresholds for violence on the evening news than you’d expect to find on the BBC.

None the less, the issue of human dignity should be a universal one. The Red Cross Code of Conduct- and other guidelines more specific to humanitarian media and fundraising- are signed by international organizations- I stress that word international– recognizing that we are a global community, and it is simply not appropriate to exploit human suffering simply because our cultural norms say it is okay to do so. Not if we want to remain a part of that same international community, and be treated with any respect whatsoever.

I really wish this was an April Fools Day post. Unfortunately, this level of ignorance still thrives, even within the international aid community.

Troubleshooting

I walk back to my office after a meeting.

“Tibeb has been trying to call you,” Teme tells me. She’s one of my Monitoring and Evaluation officers and is running a mission about two days south of the capital, checking on an emergency food program. “She is wanting to stay in the field to complete her work until the 31^st. But the driver has only been authorized to be out until the 29^th.”

Teme explains that when the request was put to fleet management, a mistake was made on the driver request form and the earlier date entered. So I guess there’s some issue with fleet management wanting the vehicle and driver back. It wouldn’t be the first time that there are hiccups between what my field staff want, and getting the resources from the shared services guys.

I go down the two flights of stairs to have a chat to Girma, the fleet manager. I’ve never seen anyone so consistently smiley as Girma, and he greets me warmly. Although we’ve had issues in mobilizing vehicles at times, I know he’s dedicated to finding fixes and he has always been reasonable when I’ve discussed with him.

“The problem,” he tells me, “Is that on the form, she only asked for the driver until the 29^th. So now she wants the driver until the 31^st. But the driver only took out per diem until the 29^th, not the 31^st, so he won’t stay longer.”

I frown. “So have him stay out, and he can be reimbursed for the two extra days.”

The per diem rate clocks in at a little under ten bucks a day for that location. I’m confident that between them, the team are going to ensure that the driver doesn’t starve.

“I know. I said that to finance. But they say it’s against policy. It creates all kinds of problems. They say if he comes back and tries to claim per diem after the fact that he can’t be reimbursed.”

I raise an eyebrow. Creates all kinds of problems? We’re an organization that measures its in-country budget in multiples of ten million dollars annually. I don’t see how $17 constitutes all kinds of problems.

“He’s out doing work,” I say. “Of course we’re going to reimburse him. There’s no question about that. If finance are going to push the matter I’ll pay the per diem out of my own pocket.”

Girma grins his habitual smile. “I know. But finance.”

Girma and I walk down the hallway to finance. He shows me to the desk of the particular finance officer responsible for this edict. He starts to re-hash the conversation the to of them had earlier. I don’t let him get all the way through.

“We will reimburse him,” I say to the finance officer, directly, in a voice that indicates I’m not asking for his permission.

He doesn’t put up any real resistance. “Well, you’ll need to sign his acquittal form.”

“Yes.”

“Will you be around next week to sign it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

And that’s quite literally all it took.

It’s troubleshooting little things like this (as well as much bigger things) that fills time out here. It’s not difficult. But in an organizational culture where the drive for compliance and the tyranny of petty systems takes precednence over ensuring our project work goes ahead, it’s a constant tussle. Without my intervention (and in a society like this where rank trumps protocol, all I really need to do is show up and give my verbal instruction), a systems-compliant finance officer would have cut short the work being done by my field-team actually engaging at the community level and trying to improve the quality of the work we do. By simply standing at his desk and saying that I’d approve an exception to policy- what ridiculous policy I’m excepting I’m not entirely clear- the problem is solved.

This little story- which took place this morning- is a microcosm for many of the challenges we face trying to ensure our field operations keep rolling. Without constant- constant– attention, the procedural requirements, paperwork and red-tape rapidly grind activities to a halt. In many ways, I have no particular skillset that isn’t greatly outweighed by the experience and ability of my field teams, in terms of actually providing assistance to the communities we work with. I see my main role here as making sure that the systems work to support my staff, not get in their way. And then I get out of their way as well.

This compliance culture is nobody’s fault, per se. It’s a culture common to many INGOs and, I don’t doubt, a plethora of other organizations as well. In fact, I understand that government offices generally have it much worse. And to be honest, I’m lucky enough to be working in an organization where I have a Country Director who backs me up, so I can be confident of stepping into a situation like this one (or, more importantly, one where we’re trying to push through high-level organizational change to improve the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and impact of our field operations on a much larger scale), and when I tell staff to move the red tape out of the way, I know it’ll happen.

Sometimes after some negotiation…

It is, of course, a fine balance. On the one hand, administrative systems were designed to increase transparency and limit corruption. Driven first by donors, it is now increasingly pushed by the risk-averse inertia of organizations themselves, who are terrified of being publically caught out with inadequate systemic controls, fearful of the loss of donor funding that would presumably follow. Large government donors, with increasing layers of demands, don’t make this any easier either. Sadly, what we end up with is a wag-the-dog scenario where we end up putting so much emphasis on the controls that it becomes unwieldy to operate.

Aid organizations have a responsibility to seek a balance- ensuring appropriate accountability while maximising the speed and quality of field work. Donors, too, need to recognize that the more demands they place on implementing agencies- heavy reporting and fiscal requirements and micromanagement of tasks and activities- the more this can be detrimental to the communities we all exist to serve.

My heart is in operations. Helping stuff happen. Which is why I love this job. I get to push things out of the way, try to ensure a reasonable measure of accountability, but free up my teams to go do what they’re supposed to do and deliver our programs on the ground.

Of course, it’s also why I hate this industry sometimes. Because I watch, first hand, as administrative procedures delay funding and operations, occupy time and effort, and ultimately bog down our work until it becomes less efficient. And communities don’t get the services they’re owed.

Today, though, I’m just pleased I won’t be seeing Tibeb back until after the weekend.

Humanitarian Zombie Fiction Challenge

So, the twisted minds over at Humanitarian Fiction (you know, the ones that brought us Disastrous Passion, which should be enough to send chills up and down your spine in the first place) have set a global challenge- write and share a piece of Humanitarian Zombie Fiction.

I don’t post much fiction. As in, any. So this is definitely a stray from the path for me. But I thought, what the heck: I like aid, and I like zombies, and I kind of like writing too. And although I had lots of better things to be doing with my time, I did it anyway. So here ya go.

This little story is dedicated to @daggyvamp, aka Narrelle Harris, because it’s her birthday today, and because I don’t personally know any author who relishes the undead- and musing on the grisly transition towards deadness- quite so much as Narrelle does. Also, because once upon a time, Narrelle had a toe firmly dipped in the aid world, and I’m still waiting for her to write that sitcom… You can find Narrelle’s excellent and darkly humorous vampire novels The Opposite of Life and Walking Shadows linked right there, and I highly recommend them. You can also find one of her zombie-themed short stories in this compilation. Happy Birthday Narrelle!

*                    *                    *                    *                    *

From the roof of the white Land Cruiser, Jarrod watches the treeline for the first of them to appear.

It’s eerie in the late morning stillness. The boreal forest towers above them, cold and alien. Shafts of light catch in the drifting mist that’s burning off. The twittering of birds is at once familiar, but oddly disconcerting in the furtive, restless way the chimes bounce off one another.

The UN flag hangs limp. It’s as blue and pale as the cloudless sky.

Olivia touches his arm and Jarrod flinches. Looking down, he sees the rich hues of her fingers against the pale, almost translucent skin of his arm.

“Try to relax,” she intones quietly. “I know we’re a long way from home, but we’ve all done this before.”

The armoured vehicles are stationed in a broad ring about the distribution site. Jarrod can see the gunner atop the nearest. He’s looking out into the forest beyond the cleared circle. His head is swinging, side to side beneath the blue helmet, his thumbs twitching on the cannon grip. Jarrod can see a trail of sweat dampening the man’s dark temples. Mesh wire is clamped over the thick reinforced windows in the forward doors, and the white of the side panels is startling in the diffuse sunlight. The initials U.N. are stenciled in thick black lettering on the flanks.

Everyone’s either on a vehicle or in one, except Francois. The crusty old Malagasay, Head of Mission, stands with his arms folded in the middle of the ring, just at the foot of the flag. Crates of relief food pile behind him. He’s a picture of defiance, snowy whiskers against skin as dark as the forest soil, veined eyes behind narrow shades. Always the shades. Hiding those eyes that say he’s seen it all. The old-timer cut his teeth thirty-some years ago as a self-professed young-gun, first in Darfur, then later in responses like Haiti, Somalia, Azerbaijan, Mexico. Places that mean so little now, but he wears them like they’re badges, like military medals of honour. The staff still speak of him in revered tones, like he’s some kind of guru. He’s been in this since the start.

He’s wearing blue jeans and a short-sleeved button-down. His nod to the locals. Jarrod feels a warmth at the old aid worker’s presence. It’s reassuring to have someone familiar in this foreign landscape, a figure so confident facing something that sends stronger men loose at the bowels. Someone from home. Yet even the thought of home startles Jarrod in a way he’s not anticipating.

This might have been my home, another time.

“They’re coming,” Olivia says quietly. She was Ugandan, once. She’s a stout, athletic woman who’s taken a motherly affection to Jarrod since he arrived at the fort a few weeks back. She’s speaking English to him, and he can’t tell if it’s because she’s just used to being out here, or whether she actually thinks Jarrod speaks better English than Kiswahili. Truth is, until he was deployed a few weeks back, Jarrod’s barely spoken English since he enrolled in Kofi Annan University six years ago.

They’re a long way from Antananarivo now.

“How can you tell?” he asks her.

“Listen.”

Jarrod listens. All he can hear is the blood throbbing in his ears. The birds overhead. Odd, needle-shaped leaves on the tall trees- firs, he’s heard them called- seem to swallow sound. He’s never seen trees so tall, so straight, so close together. So dark. Like anything could be hiding in them. Staggeringly different to the bulbous baobabs back home that are now sparse, but for all that scarcity, fiercely guarded in their spreading glory.

Home.

That word again.

Then a flash of movement.

A gunner spins. The mounted turret makes an oiled hiss, and the man’s shoulders bunch beneath the blotches of camouflage. But the figure coming out of the trees moves slowly, and as Jarrod watches, the gunner’s grip relaxes. The gun stays trained.

“They’re jumpy,” Jarrod observes, to nobody in particular, but quietly hoping for some sense of comfort from Olivia.

“They should be,” she murmurs, then adds, as if realising his intent a mouthful too late, “But they’re good. The Haitians and the Dominicans, they’re some of the best troops we have in DPKO. They work well together. You know, Dominica held out for a long time. Nearly became a refuge as well. It was…” she hesitated, her voice tailing off like the fading mist. “Unfortunate.”

But Jarrod’s attention is now on the figure emerging from the treeline. No, not one figure. Several. Moving slowly. Stiffly. Something uncomfortable about the gait. Not the easy lope of a youth in sandals beneath a tropical sun, or the scurry of children as they tumble over one another in the dust. These figures are stumbling into the clearing. Hesitating before the outposts of gleaming white half-tracks. Even at a distance, Jarrod reads the flickering of an emotion: Fear? Relief? Or perhaps it’s simply the acknowledgement of constant insecurity, and the echoes of the question ‘why’ growing quieter with each passing year.

The first into the kill-zone is a woman. She’s emaciated, pale, her t-shirt hanging loosely off a body that might be considered tough under circumstances of diet and healthy labour, but which overwork and undernutrition has left brittle and unforgiving. Sharp angles. Stubborn.

There are three children with her. One is an infant, hanging wide-eyed from a makeshift carriage on the woman’s back- metal poles tied together with threadbare canvas. The others are young, though it’s hard to tell how much-so, as they’re equitably underfed. One has a crop of orange-blonde curls, a little girl who could be six. She’s in a tattered dress with holes worn into the fabric. Her little brother has a mop of startlingly black hair against fair skin, a swollen belly, and limps where his sister leads him.

“How far did you say the forward delivery point is from the refuge?” Jarrod asks.

“About six miles,” Olivia replies, dropping back into Kiswahili with him.

“Damn.”

“Mmm. We do our best. But you know what Sphere says about standoff distance and noise protection. They don’t want any chance they might lead-”

She tails off as Francois steps forward and begins jabbing his hands decisively. He signals the guards to open up the perimeter fencing. It isn’t much to hold anything off, just a ring of coiled razor wire, but it might prove to be enough of a delay for the gunners to get a bead on, and that has to count for something.

The ballet is orchestrated in an odd, otherworldly silence, all hand-gestures and furtive movement. Jarrod listens to the birds, knowing from his security training that when they fall silent, it’s time to pay attention.

*

Olivia hops down off the roof.

“Coming?”

They’re pouring through the opening now. Jarrod’s amazed at how many are arriving. Like a hot-season storm, what starts as a few drops becomes a patter, then a stream, then a torrent. In just a few minutes he reckons there’s a couple of hundred of them in here, all survivors, all haggard. He follows Olivia into the clearing, exhilerated, more alive than he’s ever felt even though he knows he’s never been more vulnerable.

He keeps his distance. He recalls what Francois warned him about.

“Remember, they’re desperate. Some of them won’t have seen anything but bush food in several weeks. Rabbits, rats, even boiled leaves. There’s not a lot left in the forests these days, between the survivors, and, well…”

“They get that we’re here to help, right?” Jarrod had interrupted.

Francois had spread his hands and shrugged. “People are fearful. We come in, we go out again. This is their reality. You know, there’s a lot of resentment. But mostly, desperation. You never know what people in that situation might do. And they’ll be armed, remember. They know not to bring their weapons in sight of the distribution. But the men’ll be out there, just a couple of hundred paces out, watching for their wives and children, their old men to come back. I’d hate to think what would happen if they thought they weren’t getting what they were entitled to.”

Jarrod could see them now. It was a fair overview. Wives and children, old men. A few able-bodied males- young men who looked close to Jarrod’s own age- had come in to help with the distribution itself, to haul the pallets around and assist some of the elderly or the slow with their burdens.

“I don’t understand,” he’d asked Olivia after their first distribution, back at the fort a couple of weeks back. “Why don’t they all gather here? There’s protection. We can get supplies and services to them, and they never need to leave the perimeter.”

He’d cast his eyes around the scene even as he’d said the words. The concrete walls. The squalid courtyards at the feet of those overcrowded condos. Nightsoil stains from glassless windows. Smoke eminating from cracks and holes where people burned refuse to keep their shelters warm. The smell. The constant clamour. In the far distance, the Bitterroot Mountains rising sharp and jagged and snowcapped into the sky.

“And you could ask why these ones don’t come to us,” Olivia had responded, looking up from where she squatted over a child’s scrawny pink arm, the measuring tape showing that he was just on the healthy side of malnourished. “There are always those who try. But for so many of them, this is home. And no matter how hard it gets, they won’t leave.”

Jarrod had made some noise indicating his lack of understanding.

“I don’t expect you to get it,” she had gone on in her melodic Kiswahili. “You’re one of the placeless. You were born in the camps, weren’t you?”

Jarrod had nodded. His father had been a surgeon, which had pushed the man to the top of the waiting lists. That had been before Jarrod, when his parents were newly wed, then thrust into the chaos, that destruction and terror that had seen a world torn down. Madagascar had taken them, an ark that even then had only so many places, and the foresight to ration them. At terrible cost to those unable to board. But for Jarrod’s family, it had been a beginning, of sorts. A fragile salvation.

Working in the survivor camps, Jarrod’s father had earned UN, and later government, contracts, eventually enough to rent them the small flat they shared with another family set back on the new developments among the lower hills, and later buy it freehold. The jagged skyline of Antananarivo today was a far cry from the coloured jumble of two- and three-story houses along the ridgeline that stills from the turn of the century showed. The towering slums of condominiums- frequently unpowered and unwatered, that swayed sickeningly when the cyclones barrelled through- were no paradise. But neither were they the camps, those ramshackle neighbourhoods that nearly thirty years on were still hives for desperation and disease of every kind but that one, overlooked by the tower-blocks like passers-by ignoring a dying derelict on the street.

“I don’t think they were as bad at first. Not when we were there,” Jarrod could recall his mother telling him one afternoon, as he stared from forty-three stories through shafts between the concrete trunks, down at the mess. It hung with brown smoke even on a day like it had been that day, wispy clouds against a burning heat-haze. His mother’s Kiswahili was affected, a little drawled, like her mouth was never quite willing to accept that it had to speak it. “Back then there was hope. Perhaps it was only temporary. And there was a sense of, oh I don’t know, it was almost paradise, back then, before the towers, when there were forests, and the elation of having survived. But now, the quarantine, the waiting lists, the wire and the guards and the watchtowers…”

She had tailed off, but something had lit inside Jarrod. A curiosity, at first. Nothing more. But it grew, at first into a hunger to know what it was like inside the camps and finally, when he saw firsthand the quarantine zones and the struggle to survive that so many failed, a passion to help.

Now, Jarrod drops into a crouch and pauses, getting his bearings in this growing maelstrom of humanity. He’s seen the camps. Seen the survivors in Fort Bitterroot, and over on the Eastern AirHead where the camps still feel a little like actual settlements, like the chaos of life in Antananarivo, only colder, more frantic. But this is different. He can sense the hunger. The fear is tangible, like a sweat, pervasive and inspiring and almost dizzying. There is something basic, primal, utterly desperate about the people as they come in. Grown women in bare feet, some of them in dresses so ragged they fail to protect their dignity. Children as filthy as any he’s seen playing in the gutters in the poorest of Madagascan slums. Young girls, teenagers, with lifeless eyes, slack jaws, the signs of a lifetime of poor diet and terrors unspoken.

Everything here is different. Even the soil, dark and loamy and moist, so unlike the red crumbly dirt at home. He had wondered. Wondered whether, coming here, he would feel a connection to the place. After all, he’s white, just like these people. He wants to feel something, some connection, some kinship. Wants the smell of the earth that he grinds between his fingers to awaken some sense of familiarity, a little voice that says You’re here, you’ve made it. But he remembers the first time he saw an American out here, one of the survivors at the fort. They locked eyes, and Jarrod gave what he hoped was a smile, though it felt uncertain. The man, a little older than him, just stared back. It wasn’t hostily. Just a blankness. No recognition.

You’re not one of us. You’ve not survived like we have. Just an outsider, scrammed in here, and you’ll scram out again when your shift’s over.

He breathes the cool highland air and tastes the acrid scent of the pines. Flavours of wood settle on his tongue like a grit. He hears birds he’s never heard before singing. Sees the pale skin of the troop of survivors stumbling towards the food stash. He wonders, if it all ended tomorrow, and the world righted itself, would he have a place in this land.

Could I die here?

*

It all goes ahead in silence. Words are spoken with heads leant in. Children are subdued. Babies muted. Jarrod wonders whether it’s because they’re malnourished, or if they sense the same terror that hangs like a blanket over the quietly milling knot of dulled colour.

He sees Juarez, the force commander, pacing the circle, checking with his men, eyeing up posture and readiness. His eyes are never still. He soaks in everything, that man. Never misses a detail. He pauses for just a moment, to ruffle the head of one of the sniffer dogs- a black lab- the first line of defense. Then he’s striding again, one eye on the survivors, another on his men, and somehow, both of them on the forest at the same time, on those dark trunks behind which anything could be lurking. Behind which, somewhere, something surely is.

He climbs a stack of pallets and watches the distribution for a few moments. Each pallet is pre-packed with tins of vegetables, condensed milk, cans of cooking oil, salt. It’s a monthly ration, to be shared among households of a predetermined size and number which is stamped on the base of the pallet. A short distance away, sacks of dried corn in 110-lb sacks are being handed out. Distribution staff with hand units read the ID chips of each sack and pallet as its passed over, then scan the wrist-band of the receiving survivor. Once, Jarrod understands, there would have been networks that such information could have traveled along, same as the data towers that dot Madagascar’s spine like a porcupine’s quills. But any such infrastructure would have fallen derelict some twenty-odd years ago out here. They’ll upload it when they get back to the fort and it’ll be transmitted, then collated centrally and checked for discrepencies. But the World Food Program runs a tight ship. They’ve been doing this stuff for about eighty years now. The systems are waterproof.

A girl reaches the front of the line. He can’t tell how old she is, maybe sixteen or seventeen. She’s got long white-blonde hair which she’s clearly brushed through and tied back in a tail before setting out, but the walk’s left renegade strands smeared down her cheeks. Her grey eyes meet Jarrod’s for just a moment. He can see dirt streaked on her sallow face. A figure clings to her leg, and he sees a toddler with the same colouring, naked except for a t-shirt. A little brother perhaps. Or her child. Her eyes fall away. There’s no flicker of connection. Just a hollow resentment.

This is my life. What do you know of it? Go back to your island.

*

Olivia’s overseeing the health tent, which is an insulated inflatable, double walls and an airlock, to keep the sound in. Jarrod zips up the outer layer, unzips the inner and steps through. In here he can hear the soft grumble of a supressed pump, and the bawling of infants.

Out in the open,they’d just be bait, he thinks to himself.

The makeshift clinic is insulated, but people still talk in quiet murmurs. Force of habit. A mistrust of the technology, perhaps. Olivia’s at the bloodwork desk. A male nurse who’s been brought in from Bitterroot pricks each child’s index finger as they’re presented. Some know what’s coming and start howling even before the tiny needle has had a chance to penetrate. The smear gets read on a handset.

“Clear,” Olivia says in English with a smile. “You have a healthy child, ma’am.”

The woman gives her a hunted look, as though the pronouncement is some kind of curse, or perhaps its Olivia’s dark skin that unsettles her so. She waits near the exit lock for her child’s crying to settle down and stares out, as though summoning the courage to pass through.

The next in line is a young teenager, not more than fifteen. She has loose dark hair that hangs in strands over a narrow face. Hazel eyes. Dirty, greyed-out skin that needs more washing, more care. Her infant is listless and doesn’t cry with the finger-prick.

“How old is he?” Olivia asks, as the nurse runs the sample.

“Seven months.”

“She yours?”

The girl’s eyes shift unhappily and she looks at the floor as she nods. Jarrod looks at the child’s skeletal arms and thinks he can practically see the bone through the pale wrap of skin.

The handset chimes, a tiny whistling noise.

“Oedema,” Olivia says softly, switching back to Kiswahili. “We’ll need to evacuate this one.” She straightens up and fixes the girl with a smile, speaking soothingly in English. “We need to get some more help for your child. You can both come with us to Bitterroot. Do you have a husband? Do you need to ask permission to come?”

The girl shakes her head but looks anxious.

“I tried to feed her,” she protests, and gestures unconsciously towards her flat, limp chest. “I try, but nothing… nothing comes.”

Her voice is thick, slow, her accent strange to Jarrod’s ears. Nothing like the clipped sing-song language he’s used to hearing from his colleagues, from his friends in Antananarivo when they speak English.

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Olivia gives her best motherly smile and touches the girl’s face. “It’s not your fault. We’ll get you fed and your little one sorted out. Just come with us.”

*

They leave as the afternoon is lengthening. The light is taking on yellow hues, and catching in the beads of the damp air. Jarrod is starting to feel like he’s never spent so long without a clear view to the sky. Even though the clearing itself is broad, and ringed by an open stretch giving line of sight and fire to the treeline, the imposing firs hem them in, shrinking the circle of crisp blue overhead.

“We’ll take two half-tracks and the two thin-skins,” Francois says as he steps away from Juarez. “We’re better off getting back to Bitterroot early. I don’t want to get caught in the dark in these Land Cruisers.”

They’re old vehicles, but trusty. Patched together from a thousand cannibalized husks. Scavenged from the African mainland, then shipped on over on the salvation barges. Nobody knew what states the vehicles would be in over here. They’re around. Abandoned everywhere. But rusting. No one in Madagascar knows how to repair an old GM. But every tinker in the slum can do up a Cruiser.

They leave the rest of the convoy- five half-tracks and half a dozen flatbeds- packing up the distribution site as the recipients melt back into the forest. The survivors have a couple of critical hours of light left to get back to the refuge. To make sure they’re not followed.

There’s a peacekeeper for each of the truck cabs, and firepower in the half-tracks too. They’ll be okay if they have to be out after dark, Jarrod tells himself. Though truth be told, he’d rather be riding in one of the armoured vehicles than in the bouncing thin-skins. The four-by-fours are an old legacy, Olivia tells him. Francois is a traditionalist.

The engines are muffled. They run quiet. Windows cracked, eyes open. Jarrod sits in the back of the second Cruiser. There’s a half-track behind him. The other fronts the convoy. Flags taken down. No need to attract undue attention with colour and movement. Apparently the white is harder to see in the daylight. Something about their eyes. Something about processing bright tones.

For the first hour or so, the track is pitted, just a set of old depressions carved into the forest. The trunks are close, and foliage scratches against the flanks. The gunners in the half-tracks duck into their hulls to avoid being swept off their perches, and Jarrod feels exposed. He tries not to stare out of the windows, to see something that isn’t really there.

Don’t be really there.

They hit asphalt. It’s a relief, of sorts. The road widens and a thin strip of light-leaching sky appears between the crowns. The shadows are deepening with the rolling of the miles. The gunners are out of their hatches, back on the mounted weapons, by parts bored and anxious.

The road’s in terrible repair. Roots jut up from underneath and it heaves like waves frozen in a storm. The bush grows thick to its very edge, gnawing at the artificial stone, enclosing the way like a corridor. Like a tunnel. Nobody speaks. With the windows slightly open, they can sometimes hear the birds over the sound of the murmuring engines and the hiss of rubber rolling on tarmac, the crackle of the treads of the armour.

Once, the roadway opens out a little. A natural clearing where a vast tree has slammed across the road. The leading halftrack slows to a halt. Francois’ Land Cruiser draws up alongside. He gets out. Stretches himself nonchalantly. As though this were just a jungle laneway in the Madagascar that once was. He talks with a soldier in the forward vehicle, gesturing with his hands, the only clue to the nature of the conversation.

“What’s going on? Why have we stopped?” Jarrod asks.

Olivia shrugs. She reaches forward, taps the driver- a fair-haired local- on his shoulder and signals for the handset. The teenaged mother watches on, wide-eyed and wordless. The infant is limp in her cradled arms.

“What’s happening?” Olivia asks in English- another protocol hangover.

“Just some disagreement about the route,” drawls the driver from the thin-skin up front.

“Disagreement- are we lost?” asks Jarrod.

“I didn’t see any turn-offs to disagree about. They’re just men. Disagreeing because they like to.”

Olivia casts a glance around them, at the still bush, at the lengthening shadows merging into one.

“Don’t worry,” she says, just a little too cheerfully. “We’re still on track.”

*

The forest is darker the next time they stop. The sun’s gone behind some hills. The conversation is briefer. Francois is visibly wary when he dismounts.

The third time, he doesn’t get out at all. Just speaks to the soldier through the cracked window. That’s when they turn around.

Back when they could still send things into space, there used to be some global location system. Jarrod’s learnt about it. Like so much of what went on, before. They still have the old HF radio kits for communication. But they won’t get a signal through the trees.

The headlights show the back of the first Cruiser, dirty grey in the wan light. Ahead, the half-track rolls forward, retracing their steps. Above them, the sky is now just a lighter strip between the jagged black tips of the firs. Every now and again, Jarrod can see the passenger in the back seat of the Cruiser- a Malawian named Cecil- turn around and stare back at them. His face reads little expression, but his eyes are oddly round in the artificial light.

Jarrod can feel his heartbeat.

The sensation is a frustrating one. He wants to be back at the Fort. Wants to be off the road, away from the trunks that hem them in, wants to be safe. Their wellbeing now lies in the hands of other people. Entirely. Somebody else’s decisions and somebody else’s mistakes. He’s trusted Francois, but now the old aid veteran seems to have let them down. They’re rolling through the forest in the dark, somewhere they shouldn’t be, and the brittle silence tells him that everybody knows it. His mouth is dry and he can feel the perspiration making his back clammy where he rests against the seat. He’s twitchy.

The birdsong is a clamour of ecstasy outside, the dying chorus before nightfall. Right now, it’s so loud it masks even the passage of the four vehicles. When it fades, there will be quiet. They will lose one more sense, one more early warning. And in the crisp forest air, the sound of their passing will carry.

*

The avian chatter fades with the last of the light. The indigo of the sky, now barely discernable from the black trees, shows there’s no moon out tonight.

“Shut the windows,” Olivia says. Her voice is soft, a deep bass rumble all but lost in the hum of the suppressed motor. She doesn’t look around as she says it. In the rear seat, Jarrod snaps his windows shut.

Nothing to hear now anyway.

An eye on the road, the driver reaches forward and pops open the glove box. When his hand returns, it’s gripping a pistol which he lays on the consul behind the gear stick.

“Where did you get that?” Olivia chides him. “You’re not supposed to have a weapon!”

The driver snorts. “You people don’t carry guns, that’s your choice. Me, I figure y’all’re stupid.”

“We never carry guns,” Olivia tells him, tells the world in general. “It’s not how we do things. We’re here to help.”

“Them Lyssa-ites, whatever you call ‘em, they don’t care if you carry guns or not. Y’all taste the same to them. But tell you what, ma’am, I ever get done with mine, you’re welcome to pick it up and use it yourself, no hard feelings, ‘k?”

Olivia sniffs and the driver focuses his attention on the road outside.

A loud smack echoes through the cabin and Jarrod jumps, but it’s just a branch bouncing off the roof. He gets that they don’t carry guns. Gets that they’re humanitarians, that they don’t want to frighten the survivors, don’t want to risk starting a fight. He gets that killing isn’t what they do.

But right now, with the darkness outside and the light from the last half-track illuminating him through the windows of the thin-skin like he’s in some shop-front display, and a crushing sense that they’ve lost the Fort which makes it hard to breathe, Jarrod really, really wants a gun.

“Olivia,” he says, “What exactly is it that-”

Something flashes out of the forest and they hear the metal clang as it slams into the flank of the first thin-skin, an impact so fierce that they see the lights rock from side to side. There’s time for the driver to stamp the brake. Olivia gives a squeak as she catches her breath. Jarrod feels a disorientating prickling sensation down his head as the blood flees from the skin of his face.

The vehicles stop. There’s a brief moment of silence. Nobody moves. Shadows crawl as the foremost half-track continues to roll ahead.

“Dear Jesus,” the young mother whispers, clutching her arms around her starved child.

Then Olivia screams “Go! Go! Go!” and suddenly the forest is moving, pouring in on them, and like magnets to a chunk of iron they can see shapes tumbling, tearing out of the treeline, slamming into the Land Cruiser in front of them, five, six, seven, eight of them, at full tilt and still coming. The driver kills the lights and throws the engine into reverse with a grinding of gears and a scrambling of tires on the rough asphalt, and Jarrod sees the fading image of the creatures hanging off Francois’ vehicle, scrabbling at the metal, pounding at the glass, imprinted on the soft tissue of his retina.

Their flight is short-lived as they slam with a jolt into the half-track behind them. The mother wails. The driver is cursing, swearing, fumbling for his gun. Something barrels into the vehicle and rocks it hard on its suspension. They hear the faint sound of shattering glass. The engine stalls. They’re struck again, and then again. Then with a pop, a window bursts inwards and cold night floods in.

“GET OUT!” Olivia howls.

They’re shrieking as they come now, like the wail of a kettle boiling on a gas stove, and the snarl of a cornered hound, and the screams of a cat slowly being crushed in heavy machinery. It’s ear-splitting. Paralyzing. Jarrod wants to be sick.

The gun on the half-track opens up. Jarrod sees lines of tracer walking off into the forest, and by the flash of the muzzle can see more of the distortions pouring forward, arms flailing, fingers hooked and nails clawing. The driver has his gun, fires two rounds through his window before hands seize him and haul him screaming into the darkness, pistol and all. In the blinking strobe of the machine-gun, Jarrod can see the rear doors of the Land Cruiser in front of them have been sheared off, and the dark shapes are crawling over one another in a frenzy to fit inside, crammed like meat in a sausage press. The vehicle is rocking from side to side, but if the occupants within are crying out, their voices are drowned by the howl of the once-were-humans.

They’re crawling in through the shattered front window. Olivia kicks out with her boots. In the headlights of the half-track, Jarrod catches a glimpse of grey flesh, raw putrecense, of a gnarled hand with broken, clawing digits and darkened with fresh fluids. Then he can feel rounds punching into the seething mob outside, the visceral sound of soft meat giving before fast, hot metal. A bullet smashes through the back window, and he’s shaken from his stunned trance, coiled as he’s been on the back bench.

“Come on,” he urges, looking behind him. The mindless creatures are still pawing at the front window. The back is clear. He reaches for the frail infant. “Give her to me.”

The young girl stares at him, eyes already blurry with tears, and hesitates.

“Now!” Jarrod yells. Olivia’s grunting, lashing out with her feet as fingers scrabble for a prise on her legs from the front seat. The girl passes the child over, and Jarrod tucks her under one arm, reaches for the back door, and shoves it open.

“Follow me!” he yells, not turning to see if the young mother is with him. For the briefest moment, he knows he’s done something terribly, terribly stupid. He’s alone. It’s dark. They’re everywhere. The thunder of the machine-gun is ear-splitting, and the little girl in his arms, light and spindly as she is, begins to cackle an ugly cry. Then he’s reaching for the railing on the side of the half-track, just a few paces behind, and yelling to be heard above the roar of the weapon as he realises he has only one hand to climb.

Something seizes him out of the darkness. He spins, crying out, but it’s the young mother. She’s tumbled out behind him and is trying to rip the child out of his arms.

“No! Climb! I’ll pass her up to you.”

He looks. Olivia is crawling frantically over the back seats of the Land Cruiser, reaching for the exit. Jarrod can see shadows behind her, a writhing bush of limbs in the splintered light. He can see her face, twisted with more terror than he’s ever seen in human expression before. Then a silhouette darts between them, and in that moment, they both know.

“My baby!” the girl cries out. She’s scrambled onto the hood of the half-track, ducking beneath the lance of flame as the gunner puts out burst after burst into the horde of creatures. Jarrod reaches the child up, and as he does so hears a scream from Olivia. It’s defiant, a war-cry as she fights back, kicking and scratching, and for the briefest moment, Jarrod’s filled with the sense that he can cross back to her, fight them off with her, seize her and drag her to safety. But he doesn’t move. Because he knows its a sick fantasy. And then her screams change, and grow gutteral, animal, and he can hear the snap and tear of shredding flesh beneath her shrieks.

The roar of automatic fire splits into his mind, deafening, agonizing, and his first thought is to scream at the thoughtless gunner who’s fired so close to his head. When he stumbles out of his flinch he sees one of the shapes staggering away just paces from him, head cleaved open by a well-placed round.

“Get up here you stupid mzungu!” yells a voice. He leaps at the railing and hauls himself up onto the armoured vehicle, and feels clawed hands slapping at the metal his body had been in contact with just an instant before. The yowling is all around them. The young mother is still crouched on the hood, cowering beneath the spear of fire put out by the machine-gun.

Jarrod clambers up to the hatch in the roof and sees a dim light glowing from the hull within. He wants to weep. Wants to throw himself down. But he turns instead, reaching out a hand to the young mother. As he does, a shape hurtles out of the night behind him, and he hears a grunt from the gunner, and then a howl of pain. A sea of darkness surges around the vehicle’s nose.

“MOVE!” he yells, reaching again for the child.

The girl looks at him from where she cowers. She hesitates. Her eyes are pale and round, lips trembling, body rigid. Jarrod can hear the struggle taking place just behind him on the roof but he doesn’t take his eyes from hers.

“Come on,” he urges through clenched teeth, as much to himself as to her. “Come on.”

Gingerly, almost timidly, she stretches her arms and passes the child to Jarrod. Jarrod seizes the little girl and pulls her tightly to him. He half-turns to slide into the hatch, and the girl straightens where she stands, finally finding her determination to move, and claws seize her ankles from below. She gives a prolonged wail and plunges backwards into the void. When Jarrod turns back, he’s in time to see her pale form disappear beneath a mob of writhing shadows on the asphalt, frenetic in their excitement as they mob over the quivering flesh.

He leaps down the hatch and lands heavily, rolling.

There’s a loud clang as the hatch is bolted shut, competing with the whine of dancing stars that fills his head. When he sits up, he’s aware that he managed to shield the infant in his arms as he rolled, and that he’s staring into the muzzle of a large handgun.

“Where are you cut? Where are you cut?”

The massive Haitian peacekeeper holding the pistol is bellowing at him, and Jarrod balls up around the infant. He’s aware of a second uniform struggling with a bulky shape down the gunner’s well, of moaning, of the hammering of flesh and bone against the armoured hull.

“I…” Jarrod stammers. The second hatch slams shut, and the sounds of howling diminish slightly. He can feel the vehicle rocking in the frenzy of the physical assault, tipping on its suspension. He glances inadvertantly over at the second soldier, crouched over the gunner and shaking him.

“Are you bleeding?” the Haitian roars, and Jarrod’s focus is back on the ring of darkness that is the muzzle of the gun.

“I’m not hurt. I’m not hurt!”

He holds up one hand to show his extremities, then shifts the infant and waves the other. He lifts the little girl. Her oversized head, more skull than face, lolls, but she is unblooded.

The Haitian spins from Jarrod and looks to his comrades. The gunner who has been dragged back inside the half-track is lying curled and twitching, his face and torso riven by tear-marks and gashes. He’s whimpering. When his hands come away from his face briefly, Jarrod can see one of his eyes has been gouged out.

The Haitian gives a tremulous sigh. The other soldier is a Dominican. He’s breathing hard, the exhileration of terror.

“Step back,” the Haitian says.

“Please,” his companion replies.

“It’s the only way. You know it is.”

The Dominican closes his eyes and turns his face away. The maimed gunner senses what’s going on and flinches. His blood is red, his palms are pink, but beyond that Jarrod has no idea what his background might be. The stricken soldier raises one hand to shield himself, and the Haitian squeezes the trigger. A roar pressurizes the tiny cabin, plugging ears already ringing from the thunder of the machine-gun. The contents of the gunner’s head splash thickly onto the metal hull and his arm drops, instantly limp. Wedged as he is in the corner, his body absorbs any ricocheting fragments. Red blood drains out of his skull, and the two peacekeepers avoid it superstitiously.

*

For a while they sit there in silence. The Haitian is sweating, beads standing out on his dark skin, his eyes wide and pale in the dim light cast by the instruments board. The Dominican is weeping softly, staring at his dead companion but not touching him, save to periodically pat at his booted ankle. Bodies continue to slam against the hull outside. The shrieking does not abate, but it’s somewhat muffled by the thick metal. The infant is putting up its frail, crackling mewl, and does not appear to be the least bit assauged by the rocking of the truck on its suspension.

“We’re not moving,” Jarrod says.

“Your driver punched a hole in the motor when he slammed back into us. The towbar was welded to the chassis.”

The Haitian falls silent, staring blankly at the interior flank. Something scrabbles at the slits at the front of the cab, hissing through the narrow gap at the prey it can sense inside. The air outside is cool, but it’s muggy in the claustrophobic half-track.

“So what do we do now?”

“We wait.”

A fresh wave of impacts slamms against one side, jolting Jarrod forward where he sits cross-legged on the floor. He counts five or six, hard, with purpose.

“They’ll come for us, right?”

The Haitian says nothing. Just stares. Jarrod turns to the grieving Dominican, who senses Jarrod’s stare.

“Right?”

“Sure. Of course.” The Dominican tries on a smile, but it comes out more as a grimace.

The creature on the hood is still hissing, a wet, gutteral sound that gurgles at points, growls at others. By the faint interior light, Jarrod can see it’s peering inside. An eyeball, distended and grey-green in colour, is staring back, rolling with fervour. A snapping, snarling sound renews as it recognizes what it cannot yet reach. Filthy digits reach in, two of them snapped, bone exposed, and scratch for purchase against the metal interior.

“Zonbi,” the Haitian mutters, then crosses himself and looks away. He takes the pistol and drops out the magazine, checking the rounds before slamming it home again. He glances back at the creature still trying to find a way through the impossibly narrow slits, and Jarrod can see the man thinking about it.

“How many do you have?”

The Haitian shrugs. “Not enough.” Then he shares a look with the Dominican and adds, “But enough.”

There’s a rattling outside. Something, maybe several somethings, pawing at the exterior handles.

“What are they doing?” Jarrod asks, rocking the young child awkwardly in an effort to keep her calm.

“Trying to find a way in, of course.”

“I thought they couldn’t think.”

Another shrug. “Lyssa desolates the cerebrum. Pieces of cerebellum and spinal column remain intact, enough to support life. Who knows what else?”

“I was told…”

“You were told what they thought you wanted to know in order to accept the assignment,” the Haitian says curtly, and doesn’t elaborate.

There’s a renewed scrabbling outside. A fierce shaking. The beast at the window has been joined by a second. This one has four fingers all chewed fleshless, the bones gnawed into sharpened points like a claw, like four tiny sculpted daggers. The fingers explore the slit. Then the creature retreats. A short while later, when Jarrod hears a tapping sound on the roof, he imagines those same jagged bone-tips exploring for weakness.

The Haitian crosses himself again. The front of his uniform is drenched in a deep ‘V’ of perspiration, although the air that seeps into the hull is cool. With each fresh hammering of bodies against the half-track his eyes widen and roll, and a pink tongue rolls out to lick his top lip of moisture.

He’s fiddling with the gun. He and the Dominican are sharing more glances. Jarrod tries to focus on the little girl.

“What about her?” the Haitian mutters. The other shakes his head.

“No way I’m going to God with that on my conscience.”

“It would be a mercy.”

“Will she even know about it? She’s so small. She looks half-dead anyway.”

“They wouldn’t care. They’d crunch her like a chicken. She still feels pain.”

Jarrod looks up. “What are you talking about?”

The two fall silent. After a while, Jarrod sees the Haitian is praying. He’s pulled out a crucifix that shares a chain with two dog-tags, kissing it then pressing it to his forehead. Then he looks up and says,

“My home has gone. I’ve always known I wasn’t going to die there. But I hoped I would at least be with my family. That’s my home now.”

Jarrod can feel the accusation. He listens to the howling, roaring mob outside. The metallic tang of blood mixed with the death-stench of spilt bowels. Feels the cold metal beneath him, shaking with the unrelenting impacts. Remembers the glaze of a tropical sun on the harbour, and the scent of spices and woodsmoke in the Old Quarter, and the spiralling eddies of hot wind worrying garbage ahead of a summer downpour.

This place was never my home, he wants to scream out.

Instead, he strokes the child’s head and says gently to her unknowing face, “But we’re not going to die here, are we.”

*                    *                    *                    *                    *

Aaand, if you read this far- congratulations! I haven’t titled this story, because I suck at titles, but if you’ve got any good suggestions, stick ’em in the comments section below and if I like one, I’ll credit you with it!

Filming Fun with Cam and Mike

While trolling through my blog archives I found a bunch of posts which I wrote months (in some cases, like this one, years) ago, and never got around to publishing. So I might drop a few of them onto the site from time to time. This one was originally written in September 2010, when I was deployed managing an emergency response program in Niger, and had spent a few days with a TV news team filming a couple of pieces. I thought it would be good to share. Seeing as I wrote it and all.

-MA

If I were to want to tell you about my week filming with a foreign media team and wanted to use pseudonyms, I might flippantly call my reporter ‘Mike’ and my cameraman ‘Cam’.

In a twist of truth being at least as amusing as fiction (and frequently far weirder)’ these are actually their real names. ‘Mike’ is correspondent Mike McRoberts, and ‘Cam’ is news cameraman Cameron Williams, both of TVNZ in New Zealand. They’ve been here in Niger putting together some pieces about the current emergency, and about aid workers, and I’ve had the privilege of keeping them company for the last four days while we’ve bounced around the central Nigerien countryside.

(Here, of course, ‘bouncing’ is not simply a euphemistic reference to the extent to which we travelled across the far reaches of rural Maradi, but has a visceral tangibility best experienced in the back seat of our Land Cruiser troop carrier…)

Over the years I’ve found that the professions of aid work and international journalism (particularly war journalism) tend to attract similar personalities (albeit with certain key differences as well). The contexts and activities to which we’re drawn are similar, the situations we put ourselves into providing a similar kick to the system. They’re high-stress jobs on which driven people with an experientialist bent tend to thrive. They’re drawn by the opportunity to make unique contributions in unique locations, and the added risk factor is often an appeal.

Mike and Cam both fit that bill, and the rugged and frequently confronting context of Niger, the world’s poorest country and in the depths of a tragic nutrition crisis, seemed to excite rather than daunt them. I felt quickly comfortable with them. They were personalities I could identify with. The war-stories they shared were like those I’ve shared with dozens of relief colleagues in bars the world over. And to top it all off, they were consummate professionals.

I’ve dealt with the media a fair bit over the years now. Most of it has been more remote- phone interviews from garbage-strewn streets in central Niger and hotel rooms in Colombo jump to mind. Around the time of the Haiti earthquake I also did a few TV interviews with the Australian press, including a particularly daunting live appearance on a daytime chat show, which I have no desire to repeat. So the chance to watch a couple of experienced hands put together some foreign correspondent pieces was a chance to observe the process from both sides of the camera lens- something which as a photographer I found fascinating.

Mike and Cam were making a couple of news slots, as well as a longer in-depth piece about aid workers, and were in-country for about 5 days. I, with a couple of our media staff, accompanied them to the field, and took the opportunity to combine the story-gathering work with an assessment of how our emergency programs are functioning in the bush.

Reporting on these situations is always a challenge. Article 10 of the Red Cross Code of Conduct insists that in their communications material they present beneficiaries as survivors with dignity, not helpless victims. Media has its own internal guidelines- driven mostly by the integrity of the individual reporters and producers (and I’m happy to say that Mike defines himself as a Humanitarian first, a journalist second). Just like NGOs are wanting to have an emotional impact to encourage people to donate, the media wants to have an emotional impact to encourage people to watch the show or buy the edition. This can lend itself to a tendency to focus on the shocking, at the expense of balance and dignity.

It wasn’t hard to find shocking stories, of course. We were all particularly struck by the plight of a 9-month old boy who weighed roughly what Mike’s own son had weighed at birth, with skeletal limbs and a bulbous head. We spent time returning some women to their village who had walked more than 30km that morning to be at the distribution site. But so too they focused on the positive- the children whose weight can be seen improving over several weeks of treatment, the agricultural work helping farmers diversify their income and food intake, the schools offering children who have fallen through the cracks of the educational system a second chance at building a future for themselves.

I enjoyed watching Cam at work. Like me, he’s a student of light and form, and he’s at the top of his game (shortlisted as he’s been for a cameraman of the year award in New Zealand). He took great care not just composing his frames, but also ensuring that the light worked for the image he wanted to capture. I speak from personal experience when I say this is no mean feat in the Sahel. Sunlight during the middle of the day is harsh and washes out features, burns out backgrounds, and casts unsightly shadows. During the magic hours of dawn and dusk, when the light is soft and warm and beautiful, the angles change rapidly as the sun moves quicker in the tropics, presenting unique challenges for a documentary attempting to capture some stability in the light.

Like photography, putting together a piece for camera is a blend of science and art. We spent time finding locations and sometimes having to reshoot when circumstances undermined the quality of the work we were doing (one such instance involved a generator ten feet from where I sat giving an interview which, 20 minutes into the piece, decided to roar to life after the main power-grid failed; it took us an hour to find another location, and we had to restart the whole thing from scratch).

The visit captured yet another aspect of why aid work is a fascinating profession to be involved in. I doubt I could have had the experience of being so intimately involved with the creation of current affairs news in many other professions, but aid allows you to cross a lot of different paths. It was an enjoyable learning and fun to be a part of. But most of all, like so often happens in overseas postings, it was just a great opportunity to meet a couple of really good guys, share some fun, unique experiences, and more than one hearty belly-laugh with guys that get it.

Mike, Cam, thanks for good times on the road.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Maradi, Niger

Long Distance Relationships: Keeping the Home Fires Burning (Guest Post)

Guest-post by @MadamInsideOut, whose self-titled blog about matters of the heart and mind can be found here.

A couple of months back now, I wrote a piece on Long Distance Relationships from the perspective of an aid worker, and the way that my family and I deal with the challenges that arise. It seemed to stimulate a fair amount of conversation- not least of all with my wife, MadamInsideOut. Because her experience of this is different to my own, I asked if she would share some of her thoughts and experiences on what it’s like to be in an LDR with an aid worker, when she has to stay home and look after our eight-year-old by herself.

M.I.O. wrote this as I was on my way back home for a visit. At the time of her writing this (Valentine’s Day), I had been out of Australia for 3 months- 96 consecutive days, during which time I had seen my wife just 10 of those days, and my eight-year-old stepdaughter precisely none. In fact, with our current schedule, I’d been at home less than 5 weeks in 5 months. We’re really getting a workout in the LDR stakes at the moment.

Without further ado, here’s what my brave and lovely wife has to say about this all.

Incidentally, it is very nice to be home for a bit.

 

Keeping the Home Fires Burning

I put my husband on a plane to Ethiopia over thirteen weeks ago. This is our longest stint apart yet, never ever to be repeated. He has missed our second wedding anniversary, Christmas, the new year, his birthday, the birthdays of most of his family and the Mayan End of the World. (This was the sort of event I would have really liked my husband around for, as you may have gathered, he is handy in a disaster.) He arrives back the day after Valentines Day. So we miss that too. Yes, there is a strong theme of missing here.

Sigh.

Mr Morealtitude asked me to write something on maintaining a relationship long distance from the perspective of the home-front. Ultimately, there isn’t anything unique about our general situation, as demonstrated by the 2000+ hits Mr Morealtitude’s last post generated in the first few days of its release. Long distance relationships are as ancient and common as our need to hunt, gather and go to war. Recently I read Charles Frazier’s, Cold Mountain; an achingly beautifully tale of two lonely hearts living through a separation during the American civil war. Phew. It hurt. The mutual throb of longing, the challenges for the vulnerable Ada, left to fend for herself with no food, no money, no knowledge on how to run her farm, waiting, watching the horizon. The struggles, snares and wistful yearning on the long road home from war for Inman. No way to connect. Hoping. Longing. Striving. Both finding a way, but not without significant struggle and grief. We are lightweights comparatively, but some of those feelings are universal. Despite the fact that we have more props than ever to manage separation from our loved ones, being apart is still fraught with challenges.

There is just nothing that can replace the physical presence of your dearest one.

In saying this, I actually really enjoy my own company. I’ve lived and traveled alone and my dad traveled extensively whilst I was growing up. And, while these experiences have helped in equipping me to survive our time apart, I love hanging out with my husband. I really really don’t like it when he’s gone.

As was mentioned, we find that any time apart under 2 weeks can be deemed as somewhat healthy and manageable. Beyond that, forget it. Five weeks out from sharing life with my numero uno compadre, love and life mate, we’re seriously stretched. Maintaining contact with Morealtitude at odd hours of day or writing lengthy emails gets difficult to fit in with the demands of doing everything. A disconnect sets in. My legs officially turn to jelly from exhaustion. All the meals in the freezer mysteriously disappear. My old friend, adrenaline abandons me and I crumple into a weary little shell of a person, rather than the otherwise required ‘Mama Extraordinaire’ persona.

I was a solo parent for 4.5 years, so I thought I would take slipping back into this over-functioning space on occasion in my stride. Not so. The issue being that as a family we establish a healthy rhythm and interdependence with each-other, and when MoreAltitude boards a plane, we wave goodbye to both him and our rhythm. I handle the initial shift with relative ease, however our daughter does not. Suffice to say, having children and needing to maintain a long distance relationship makes things much trickier to manage. Morealtitude and I never had the luxury of courting each other without the additional needs of a little person in the mix, so I can only speak from this perspective.

I must say, I have great admiration for my own mother, as she brought up four children, whilst my dad travelled regularly, loving (and hating) his various international adventures. My Mum was the stabilizing influence in our family. I credit her with any semblance of sanity or consistency I may possess as an adult. It has also become very clear to me that she played this irreplaceable supportive role to my dad’s travel at great cost to herself.

However, there was also a cost for my dad. In order to provide for us, he missed out on milestones and cuddles and the comfort of home cooked meals with his family around him. He slept poorly on lumpy pillows, in stark hotel rooms or with strangers and had to power on, despite a weekly scratchy phone call with his wife saying she had no money for groceries or that the children were sick. Not being able to physically be there for your family in a crisis is a very frustrating, even heartbreaking thing for a functioning loving adult to deal with. Dad always came through though. Always. He was ultimately motivated by his love for his family.

My husband also has such noble motivations- although there are some serious questions emerging around the reality of continuing this line of work with the, at times, conflicting needs of a family. He is an amazing person and a wonderful husband. He puts us at the centre of everything he does. He is generous and caring and wise beyond his years in knowing how to nurture a family. His advice around maintaining long distance relationships is fabulous. He has taught me a lot. He is a brilliant communicator and despite whatever stresses he may be experiencing whilst in the field, he has an excellent ability to be present and understanding of whatever issues are occurring for me a million miles across the oceans. He still manages to be right there in spirit. Many times, I have felt the challenges on my side of the world are petty or mundane compared to fighting poverty or implementing medicine and food distributions. But Morealtitude is always genuinely interested, appreciative and validating of my experiences and will indulge them more so than I will let myself. This is marvelously helpful. I imagine it would be very easy to get resentful or feel insignificant if he could not do this. After all, challenges are challenges, no matter where you experience them.

And there are genuine challenges with being the one left behind. It can be difficult not to feel as though you are missing out on the adventure. Difficult at times not to detect pangs of resentment, when your life resembles your own version of the set of Groundhog Day. Particularly between the hours of 5-9pm when dinner needs cooking, the kid gets whiney and wants entertaining and feeding and attention and washing and, and, and. And there’s just you with your two hands, one in the sink, the other manning the stove; probably an additional foot artfully applying a band-aid. It becomes exasperating when your kid refuses to sleep alone for the 95th night in a row, but you know they will immediately right themselves upon your partner’s return. Doing those evening stretches alone night after night can be overwhelming and a more than a little lonely. I’m talking specifically about a loneliness that can only be quieted with adult company. That variety of loneliness tends to surface during those marathon evenings, or when an important decision just has to be made without the consultation or inclusion of your humanitarian husband who is in a 6 hour meeting with the United Nations several continents away. A very real exhaustion can set in from doing everything solo, where you had a partnership before.

I try and offset this by using the opportunity to invest more into my family and friendships. I find it easier to do this in summer than in the hibernation months of winter. I’ve been asking myself to watch that I’m not completely holding together all of the relationships my husband is absent from and unable to fully invest in, although my being anchored at home inadvertently maintains a connection and may help his return home to be a little more seamless. That is okay with me, but I have seen this dynamic become unhealthy when the traveling partner loses meaningful connection socially at home. I think this is a strong reason for jobs requiring extensive travel to have an expiry date.

As time wears on, daily details can really get swallowed up by the miles between us. Details of which we would normally share or witness together can be vaporized by opposing schedules and time zones. We have to work hard to keep the intimacy from flailing – which we absolutely do.

So, you might ask, how exactly does one keep healthily connected to their crusading globe trotter and keep the home fires burning without getting resentful? A few thoughts…

• Empathy: I’ve covered this one a fair bit already. Empathising with what your significant other is experiencing is profoundly important in managing your relationship long-distance. Our communication centers around this. Honestly expressing, listening to, connecting with and validating each of the others experiences is vital. That is not to say that we don’t sometimes talk utter nonsense and laugh and joke. We just talk – or write. For the most part, words are really all we have. We keep building shared experiences this way. We do this on a daily basis. If I ever start feeling sorry for myself or resentful of the distance, I just think about the hard stuff my other half is experiencing and what he is sacrificing. And, if he is enjoying himself, I am grateful, because I like him and I want him to be happy. That usually sorts me out. We are in the same boat. We’re just at opposite ends of a very very large canoe. Oh and if you are the one away, try not to post your experiences on facebook before you have had a chance to tell your partner what has happened. I’m talking specifically about pictures and captions like this, Morealtitude:
  

  Facebook caption accompanying the original posting of this photo: “For those who noted my comments about flying in and out of Somalia on a jet with a shattered windshield, THIS is what I was referring to. Yes, at 22,000 feet. Thank you, UNHAS.”

• Be Mature: Own your reactions. Ultimately your responses to the separation are only in your control. Do what you need to do to look after yourself. This might mean seeking extra support from family, friends or professionals. In doing this, look after your partner as well. Express your feelings, but don’t hurl them at your loved one as something they need to fix. Try not to blame or punish your partner or freeze them out while they are miles away – or in the same room for that matter. That stuff is really unfair and destructive.

• Be Deliberately Active: Know what you need to get through, make plans, so you don’t slump into sad-feels and find it all too much. I like filling my house with people – our daughter is happiest when surrounded by energy, I also like to cook, so I try and hook up lots of dinners and visits in advance. We had a lovely friend staying with us this time and her company made a world of difference. Take the empty spaces and fill them with other things. Things you like. Get out. Exercise. See friends. Meet people. See a show. Do the art gallery. Be spontaneous. Take the kids to eat ice-cream on the beach. Then keep doing that stuff when your other half gets back, but include them. It’s a nice way to bust out of a rut and experience your hometown anew.

• Be Flexible: Go with the flow. Some days, connection may not be possible. It just is. Save up your stories for when it happens. Similarly many of the routines that we establish with Morealtitude home just don’t work when he is gone, so we shake them up, mix them around. Things are a lot more fluid, including meals and bedtime. Our daughter sleeps in with me at nights. It drives me crazy, but not as crazy as having her scream and whimper half the night for weeks on end because she is scared and she misses her step-dad. I pick my battles.

• Sleep: Obviously this is a corner stone of sanity. However, I have somehow found myself becoming a terrible sleeper when Morealtitude is away. When he is gone, I avoid bed because I am wired and anxious and struggle to wind down. I’ve found a few useful tools. These include completing a relaxation meditation – free from the internet- and, my most recent find, audio books. These are calming, they slow my thoughts down and stimulate my imagination in a healthy way. The more I sleep, the better I cope. It’s not rocket science, but it gets mixed up when you’re apart and you need strategies to help make it happen.

• Visit: If you can make it happen, it is incredibly useful to get out to the field and take part in your partner’s world. Obviously it is not possible on most trips. It has taken us over 3 years to make this happen with all the various pieces in play. Recently I visited Morealtitude in Ethiopia. The first hand insight I gleaned from this trip into his work and all of the various complexities he faces was invaluable. It has made a HUGE difference, as it has helped me gain a more balanced perspective of humanitarian work and our situation on the whole. I connected with my husband’s daily realities with all of my senses. In that 10 day trip, I witnessed the impact my husband was having on huge programs – which made the struggle of the previous 8 weeks worthwhile. I also saw the nuances of the aid industry. The questions. The two steps forward, three steps backward daily dance of humanitarian work. I ditched my first world guilt, as I realised that human suffering is human suffering, no matter where it occurs – this sounds obvious, but it was an important perspective shift for me. Just, if you can, DO IT!! 

What about when they get back?

Of course you are beside yourself with excitement and relief to have them back. But, it can be a bit weird and take a bit of adjusting to. You’ve just spent the last X amount of weeks figuring out your own systems and making it all hang together without your partner and suddenly they are back ready to slot into all those spaces you’ve managed to fill. The systems you had together have been remodeled. I have friends who need to spend a couple of days in a stand-off-ish space until they readjust, as they feel a sort of resentment at having been ‘abandoned’. I personally don’t experience this, but I think it’s very understandable. My parents used to have a ripper fight after every trip. That is not our style of re-entry, but it shows it can be turbulent.

It just takes a few days to reconnect properly, there is probably jet lag and fatigue in the mix. We just try and be gentle and patient with each-other. And, yep, you guessed it. We keep communicating. The shift to having more modes of communication other than words at our disposal, is um, advantageous. We can give gifts, we can do stuff for and with each-other, we can say how much we appreciate what the other has done for us whilst we’ve been apart (recommended) and we can touch (highly recommended).

Dagnabit. It is so much better to have the full suite of expression available; to physically share spaces, dreams, doldrums, laughter and life.

So tell me, why do we do this apart thing again?

Reflections on a Refugee Response: Dolo Ado

It takes us ninety minutes to traverse the 54 kilometres to Kole, and by the time we get there there’s nothing shiny about our two Land Cruisers. The plume of orange dust that’s been chasing our wakes rests in a fine silt over every available surface. There’s not much shiny about us, either, the feeble efforts of the rattling air-conditioning doing little to counter the burn of the desert sun through the windows. We’ve been bracing against the bucking vehicle the whole way, and are sweating and achey.

We pass through the village in moments. It’s little more than a collection of mud huts at a bend in the track. Set back from the river, the land around it is more rock than soil, scorched like an overexposed photograph. Villagers gather at a public tap-stand with jerry-cans and donkey carts, the ground dark with the stain of their labour. Another k or so up the broken roadway, and the drivers haul us off to the left across open terrain.

At the bottom of a steep outcrop, we stop. When the engines die, it’s a tangible relief. We clamber up the rocks, careful of our footing. It’s myself, a couple of my team leaders from down here, and our guests- VIPs from one of our donor offices. There are eight or nine of us all up. At the top of the rise we perch on a small space pretty much shoulder-to-shoulder and survey the land around us.

In the middle distance we can see the line of the river, marked by a strip of dusty green, dark against the rest of the scenery. This side of the road, shoulders of raised rock- the remnants of an eroded plateau several hundred feet high- serve as two arms demarcating the edge of our little vista. They are treeless save for a few bushes stubborn in their refusal to wither. In the flat ground between them, the terrain is broken- flat-topped trees, thorny thickets, patches of sand, and a lot of orange-brown rock. A wadi snakes around the bottom of the outcrop and wends its way towards the river several miles away, the only source of any green nearby. The tops of termite mounds, eight and ten feet tall, emerge from among woody growth. With the engines stopped, when conversation lulls, the only sound is the wind. The sun makes the sun tingle with latent threat, even this late in the afternoon. Even with my darker complexion I know I’ll burn within thirty minutes out here.

A month from now, this- Bahale- will be the newest refugee camp in the Dolo Ado complex.

Dolo Ado, a series of small pastoral communities in a southeastern corner of Ethiopia bordering Somalia and Kenya, first started taking refugees in 2009. It was in 2011, however, that it came to the attention of the world as hundreds of thousands of Somalis fled a combination of civil war and famine, seeking shelter here and, more prominently, in Dolo Ado’s Kenyan cousin, Dadaab.

Never subject to the massive influx of Dadaab (which at its peak was thought to have well over half a million refugees), Dolo Ado’s camp population has risen to a more manageable figure of around 180,000. Nonetheless, with an offensive in south-central Somalia to overcome al Shabaab militants, the encroaching dry season, and the continued closure of Dadaab and the Kenyan border to new Somali arrivals, December 2012 saw one of the camp’s busiest months for over a year, registering more than 6,000 new refugees. Currently between 150-200 Somalis are arriving each day.

Dolo Ado is in Ethiopia’s Somali Region, and as the name suggests, it’s more Somalia than Ethiopia in many ways. It is vast- over a third of Ethiopia’s land area- and underpopulated- just 6% of the population. Dolo Ado is one of the most remote points in the country; even accessing the regional capital Jijiga is a six hundred kilometre trip on poor roads. Air access is granted to aid workers via a five-day-a-week flight operated by the United Nations Humantarian Aid Service. A twice-weekly Antonov-26 from Dire Dawa flown by a squad of Russian pilots bringing a precious cargo of qat is the only commercial service operating here. It’s two days of committed driving by four-by-four from Addis- far longer by bus. Insurgent groups ply the bush further north, the legacy of decades of disatisfaction with Ethiopian rule and a failed Somali invasion in the 1970s.

It’s the details, not the context, that highlight the Ethiopian link in Dolo Ado town. The government administrators, Amharic-speaking and ethnically distinct from the Somali majority. The round, tin-roofed Orthodox church on the edge of town that stubbornly blares Friday morning prayers over the surrounding populace, as though at tacit war with the mosques. License-plates scribbled with hand-drawn Ge’ez script, evidence of the vehicles driven over the border illegally and registered with the grudging acceptance of an administration that knows there are some battles it can’t win.

Other battles, though, it is fighting harder. The Ethiopian military essentially controls a 70-kilometre band of Somalia inland from the border, implicitly annexed to shore up its own frontier from incursions by al Shabaab and other armed groups that aim to destabilize their longstanding enemy. We visit the border, a couple of k’s outside town. A dusty road leaves town via the rubbish-dump, where a healthy crop of plastic bags adorns the briars and hooks of the thorn-fencing of nearby properties. Evil-looking storks, tall as my shoulder with beaks as long as my forearm, stand watch by the dozen over the waste like vultures on a battleground. Their bald red heads are topped by a tuft of fine hair, and they glare menacingly at anything passing them by.

The border is active. A stream of donkey carts pours up the track from among the trees, bringing merchandise into Dolo Ado from the Somali side. However fragile the government might be, capitalism is alive and thriving despite the war, and doing a better job of servicing Dolo Ado’s needs than the Ethiopian economy, by the looks of things. In front of the final checkpoint (a stack of hescoes- large earth-filled sacks- manned by a bored-looking soldier and a male and female guard with a metal-detector wand) taxis wait beneath the trees to transport people to the village. We see one with a shattered windshield, the glass punched out in front of the steering-wheel so the driver can see. People come across in small clusters, family groups. I see a weary looking woman, two older children ahead of her, two small boys behind. One, barefoot, carries four empty jerrycans over his shoulders as he walks in their footsteps.

The guard at the checkpoint stops us. It takes ten minutes to talk our way past him and his commander. We watch life slip past, mostly boys driving more donkey-carts, loaded with everything from fodder to iron rods, from truck tires to plastic drums. A man has a monkey. It sits in the dirt by his feet, and whenever he moves it jumps up and seizes his lower leg, riding his foot like a kid on a merry-go-round as he walks around. It mouths at its surroundings with big wide eyes, looking for all the world like an anxious, overly-attached toddler. I keep my distance. I don’t want to find out if my medical plan covers ‘monkey bite’.

Dolo Ado is seperated from Dolo-Somalia by a shallow river, brown in colour where it seeps under a steel tressle-bridge. We wander over onto the Somali side of the bridge before security good-naturedly stops us from going further. Boys bathe in the water and come running up unselfconciously beneath the bridge to wave and get our attention. A couple of days later, we’ll be back to try and arrange a meeting with our staff on the Somali side of the border and discuss how to support one another, but will be thwarted by bureaucracy. The Ethiopians are highly protective of their borders.

We visit the reception centre, a refugee’s first port of call. Knots of women and children, mostly, gather in restless groups, finding shade from the sun beneath wood-frame lean-tos with galvanized zinc sheet roofing. In different sections of the centre, their names are recorded and checked against databases, then fingerprinted on a digital scanner and issued a wristband that identifies them as refugees. I see a small boy- no more than four- with one of these near-indestructable tags wrapped around his tiny arm and I wonder how that must feel. I find the things irritating after a single evening at a club or concert, but now his very identity- his rights to shelter, food, water, healthcare and education- are tied inextricably to a plastic strap on his wrist. For some reason, the indignity strikes a deep chord with me. Later they will receive the ration cards which indicate which days they’re supposed to attend food distributions, how many Core Relief Item distributions they’ve received, and so forth. A help-desk sits in one corner to support children who come across on their own, without an adult family member to support them.

Our compound is not dissimilar to many others I’ve now stayed in. In an area a couple of football fields in size, it’s got a set of portacabins for offices, another set for accomodation, a communal dining hall, and some cement latrine and shower blocks. It’s rudimentary but workable. It has a stark, barren feel during the height of the day. Although January is not the hottest of months here, it’s easily forty degrees and more in the early afternoon, and the sun is fierce enough that it’s unpleasant to cross the compound without a hat on. Around lunchtime, the generator is killed for part of the afternoon to save power and stop it overheating, and staff take a nap for an hour or so until the heat subsides. I find the intensity of both silence and heat a heady blend, and enjoy sitting in the shade for a while, watching the sunlight burn off the crushed rock and soaking in the stillness. When I try and nap, sweat gathers beneath me, wetting my mattress, and shines slick in every fold of skin. I drink litres of water each day.

Buramino is the newest of the five established camps. We visit child nutrition programs, alternative learning centres and a new primary school, and interview refugee families. I take myself away from the drama of the trip and walk out into the middle of the camp. It’s arranged into blocks, which in turn should reflect community dynamics, although this isn’t always possible. Each block is separated by a large open strip of land, which should allow for drainage, and also for latrine and shower-block construction slightly away from dwellings. The dwellings themselves vary, some with tin roofs and square adobe-mud walls, others built around metal rod frames provided by implementing partners, others still more in the traditional Somali style, dome-shaped over a frame of sticks tied together and clearly initiated by the refugees themselves. Some are an odd hybrid of several styles, and the only common demoninator linking all buildings are the blue-on-white UNHCR tents that have been incorporated into each structure.

It’s crushingly hot. There’s no electricity out here, and in the absence of vehicle engines and generators, oddly quiet for a town of 35,000 crowded into an area that could be measured in football fields. The wind is a constant. A donkey brays, a plaintive, distressed sound. I watch women in colourful headscarfs cross the dusty spillway, gusts tugging at loose material. It’s mid-afternoon. At any one time I can see three or four dust-devils spiralling amidst the camp. Vortices, mini-tornadoes formed by the rapid heating and rising of air, they roll over the landscape, briefly engulfing tents and refugees alike with a swirling tube of roiling dust, before moving on with little trace of their passing except a fresh layer of settled silt, like powder snow. Sometimes when the wind blows, it rolls out a sheet of dust before it, obscuring the camp behind a hazy orange veil and staining the horizon for minutes at a time.

Our visiting VIP is interviewing refugees. The whole thing feels a bit of a circus, and I keep my distance, but also recognize this is part of the process of convicing people to push money the way of these refugees who desperately need it. So with my team we put in guidelines to keep it as respectful as possible, and I step out of the way. He comes out from the last interview and does a final piece-to-camera describing his experiences in the camp. I watch him from the back seat of the Cruiser and let him do his thing. He’s a life-long businessman, a former highly-powered CEO and high-flier used to dining with ministers and Presidents. I watch as his face crumples and he bursts into tears and has to break off the interview. He turns away for a couple of minutes, regains composure, and starts over. Fifteen seconds later he’s sobbing. When he climbs onto the seat next to me afterwards, he’s subdued for some time. I find myself wondering when all this stopped touching me emotionally, and whether that’s something that should bother me.

We drop our visitors at the airport in time for the mid-week UNHAS flight, while I stay on to work with the team. Meles Zenawi International Airport is the grandest name for a strip of gravel ever devised. The waiting area, newly refurbished, is a WFP rubbhall with the sides rolled up. Bags are thrown into the back of a waiting pickup, passenger names ticked off against a computer printout, and the passengers themselves settle back to wait for touch-down.

It’s a scene essential to any remote but active relief hub, and the flight is a game in aid worker cliches. It’s logo’d Land Cruisers lined up just beyond the earthen berm, and similarly logo’d expats and local staff milling around beneath the shade, all sat-phones and VHF handsets. There’s Crusty Old Bad-Tempered Aid Worker swearing alernatively down his handset at some driver who’s forgotten to bring something he needed, and at the local WFP staff inconveniently wanting to check his bags; Skinny, Weathered Gallic Aid Worker with VHF hanging from her fishermans pants, in ethnic sandals, an NGO t-shirt and a headscarf, talking nonchalantly with her local counterpart; Heavily Branded American NGO Team, standing awkwardly to one side; Frantic UN Agency Coordinator, with UN ID card flapping, a VHF in one hand and a satphone in another, trying to manage too many staff and agencies at one time; it’s like a SEAWL post all by itself.

The nights are hot and breathless. The generator goes off by nine, its tiresome rattle replaced by a deep quiet. A full moon lights the compound as well as any spotlight, casting deep shadows. I relish the embrace of warm air in the absence of the aggressive sun. When I cross the compound to brush my teeth, I keep a wary lookout for scorpions. Apparently the local staff caught a whopper two weeks ago.

My mosquito net has been poorly fixed, and although I usually like sleeping under the things, I have to drape this one over me like a blanket- neither effective nor cooling. I sleep without sheets until around five-thirty in the morning, when the air finally cools enough to chill my skin- a relief. The cold shower I take when I rise with the sun at half-six is at first bracing, then deliciously refreshing. The low sun casts long shadows over the open ground. Mornings, before the heat of the day sets in, are a beautiful time in the desert.

One night, I inadvertantly leave my eye-mask facing down when I spray the [highly potent] insecticide around my room before bed. Woken at 3am, I fail to equate the burning sensation over my eyes with the mask, and it’s not until dawn that I finally realise I’ve had toxic chemicals pressed against my face all night. My skin burns until the early afternoon, and I half expect to find epidermis sloughing off when I check myself in the mirror.

Early morning, and a pall of smoke and dust hangs in a breathless blue haze over Dolo Ado town. Minarets and cell-phone towers protrude, fitting landmarks of this frontier outpost. Heading back for the border we drive into the rising sun, misty and opaque where it drifts in the murk. Scraps of torn plastic festoon the thorn trees in an oddly joyous display, gleaming in the sunrise with celebratory fervour. We pass the rubbish dump, the storks ominous sentries. Boys race their empty donkey-carts across the flat, putting up plumes of dust that hang in the air, a canvas for the shafts of split sunlight. When we eventually draw up and kill the engines, the air is cool, and irridescent weaver-birds flit among the thorny branches, plumage shimmering in the low sunbeams. The first of the day’s refugees begin their journey into Ethiopia and a new life to the eager chippering of birdsong alongside now-laden carts pulled by protesting asses.

From ten thousand feet, I watch the camp complex slip below me as the UNHAS Dash-8, flight UN47W, follows the road north and west, back towards Addis. I recognize Buramino- I identify it from the layout of our project sites that I can see on the outskirst of the grid of huts, so much more ordered than the host communities- then follow the road along. Eventually I spot Kole in its bend in the track, and the river, and then the Bahale camp site- still just a near-empty plot of scrubland- right down to the outcrop of rock we stood on to survey the ground. Two months from now, this patch of desert will look like the other five sites. Shelters in neat rows, clustered in blocks, seperated by wide stretches of open ground and punctuated by NGO compounds and project sites. Deceptively ordered, from ten thousand feet. Deceptively clean.

You can’t feel the heat up here. Can’t taste the grit that blows between your teeth, or smell the stench of full latrines, or make out the heaps of disused relief packaging collecting at the edge of compounds. Can’t see the shelters wrapped over with mosquito netting, or the ones that have fallen down completely. Can’t sense the intense thirst beneath that unquenchable sun, or the fatigue that accompanies the mid-afternoon zenith. Don’t need to brace against a sudden squall of hot wind that grinds dust into the eyes, or answer the questioning gaze of young children against whom the world has stacked unfathomable odds. Can’t hear the stories that can make a grown man break down in tears. No, from ten thousand feet, it all feels rather hopeful.

In Which an Expat Aid Worker Talks Long Distance Relationships

My wife and I just celebrated our two-year wedding anniversary.

By celebrated, I mean, we shared a 25-minute Skype chat via grainy video, which had to be curtailed fairly promptly after staff started queuing outside my office door. It was a fairly frustrating experience for me, even moreso for my wife, if the expression in her voice was anything to go by as we hung up- and I don’t blame her.

This was certainly not how either of us envisaged sharing our second wedding anniversary, even a couple of months back. Being a full hemisphere apart, however, separated by oceans and continents and eight or nine time-zones, this is what it looks like. We haven’t seen each other for five weeks, won’t see each other for another four, and even worse, my step-daughter and I will be apart for several months.

It sucks.

It’s more than just the fact that we don’t get to communicate face-to-face. Which is, let me tell you, horrendous enough. The time difference is brutal. Finding windows in my work day that fit windows in her routine of managing our home and looking after our child tends to rob very much spontaneity. Because I’m out here sans famille, I’m fair game for the office here, which means the work piles up without my usual incentive for boundaries, and during the [oh so short] workday itself, I’m usually dashing from task to task- but the last thing I want to do is make my wife feel like I’m penciling her in to my schedule. Unfortunately, this is what it can feel like sometimes.

As well, rather than sharing a life, we now find ourselves separated by worlds and lifestyles. My wife carries the responsibility of both of us, doing the work of two people and keeping our life together at home. Meanwhile, I’m filling my days with almost nothing but work, in a continent she’s never visited, and periodically disappearing off to one of our project sites. I know that in the past, especially while on humanitarian missions, she’s struggled to reconcile the need to raise issues that she’s dealing with at home which she feels are mundane, while I have my hands full with so many more ‘important’ things in the field (not a true reflection, but I grasp her struggle).

My wife and I are no stranger to this dynamic. When we first got together, I worked for an NGO’s emergency response team and was deployable almost immediately, anywhere in the world, traveling about six months a year. Three weeks into our relationship, I was deployed at 48 hours’ notice to a typhoon response. I was gone three weeks, back three more, then deployed somewhere else for yet another three. Shortly afterwards, I stepped away from that particular role, recognizing that such travel was not conducive to the survival of a new relationship. That didn’t stop me being deployed for five weeks during our short engagement, to Niger- quite literally as far away from my then-fiancee as I possibly could have gone. I challenge you to try and plan a wedding on two different continents.

Somehow, she still married me.

I’ve been travelling less since the wedding. Generally my trips have been three weeks or less, a total of about three months a year. Absence is still a key dynamic in our relationship, though- and in that of my relationship with our daughter. In fact, it’s a feature of many expat aid workers- and other professions that travel frequently.

It’s not a new thing for me, either. While I hadn’t been in many relationships prior to getting married (in itself part due to the fact that I traveled so much; we’ll ignore the fact that I’m a little clueless in the relationship department), pretty much all the relationships I did have were impacted, one way or another, by travel and distance. When I was a child, my own father- former EAW turned UN HQ staffer- would travel regularly. I literally cannot remember a time in my life that hasn’t involved regularly being away from loved ones.

So that’s my credentials of dysfunctionality out of the way.

I think this post has been brewing for some time. Pretty much any EAW will come up against the Long Distance Relationship (LDR, not to be confused by my supply chain colleagues with a Loss/Damage Report, although there are times you could be forgiven for confusing the two…) at one point or another in their lives, especially if they make a career of aid, and don’t do the wise thing of spending a few years in the field and then getting a *normal* job at home. The aid industry is full of people who’ve not been able to make relationships work with their transient or high-travel lifestyle.

A few months ago, @devxroads shot me a message asking for my perspective on what it was like trying to be an aid worker and a family man- unfortunately I was rushed off my feet at the time and wasn’t blogging, and I feel bad I didn’t contribute to the conversation. More recently, my dear friend, fellow TCK and very talented writer Lisa Mckay (author of two excellent books, the novel My Hands Came Away Red, and her memoir Love at the Speed of Email, about her own experiences of love, travel and EAWs) put out a question about managing long distance relationships, as part of an upcoming project of her own (that we are all very excited about), which also got me thinking.

So in brief, here are a few key pointers from MoreAltitude’s playbook on how to mitigate the risks posed by frequent travel when you’re in a serious relationship.

1. Communication.

Let me stress that for a moment:

Communication. Communication. Communication.

As often as possible, through as many different means as possible, as much as you possibly can. Any relationship lives and dies on the quality of the communication between partners, but distance not only reduces the available windows to communicate, it also compromises the ability to communicate well, because several communication channels (proximity, physical touch, body language, even expression and tone) are compromised. Therefore you have to overcompensate.

On a good day, my wife and I will communicate via Skype (written chat), email, SMS, and still try and have at least one video or voice call on Skype somewhere in there as well. It may not happen like that every day- especially if I’m in the field- but the more we manage regular, several-times-a-day communication, the more we feel better connected, and the more we share in each other’s daily lives. Even just simple little messages about what’s going on for you right now are important and mean something to the other person.

2. Spontaneity. If possible, try not to get locked into too much of a routine with communication. Sure, some of it is inevitable- especially where you have to make two busy lives overlap with massive time-zone differences. But just like a real relationship, when communication and interaction becomes routine, the relationship will suffer. Try and change the times, places and circumstances of chats and calls as much as you can, and where you can be spontaneous, do-so. Whatever happens, don’t let your significant other feel like they’ve become an entry in your daily task list.

3. Limit time apart. This is a total no-brainer too. This varies from couple to couple. For us, three weeks is our acceptable limit- and a lot of couples I know work by the three-week rule as well. I know my parents used it too, after one particularly gruelling 6-week trip by my Dad. It tends to strike a balance between what families can handle, and what people actually need to do their work overseas. Circumstances beyond our control have meant that A. and I are apart for longer this time, but we’ve generally been pretty good (one exception) at sticking to the three week thing. It’s for both our sakes- we generally find our coping ability matches pretty well. Ten days we can take in our stride. Things get painful around the 2 week mark, and by 2 ½ weeks we’re both pretty much done. We’ll push 3 if we have to, but we don’t like it.

This particular long-haul is just terrible.

4. Agree your boundaries ahead of time. Talk through how you’ll communicate before you separate, don’t expect to figure it out on the fly. Make sure you understand what your partner needs from you in terms of communication- and make sure you communicate your needs. Are you the sort of person that really needs to read a nice juicy email from your loved one every day? Does your partner need to hear from you at least once a day, even if you’re okay connecting every two or three days? Does your relationship really benefit from visual time on something like a Skype video call, or can you deal with a few days of seperation without it being a big deal? Sure, you’ll probably need to adjust your communication as you go along a bit, but make sure you’ve taken the time to communicate what you need, and learnt what your loved one needs from you in return- don’t let yourself make assumptions here. When I was growing up, my folks actually found it easier not to be regularly communicating. Dad would head out for ten days or two weeks, and rather than deal with the upsurge of emotion of trying to talk over a scratchy telephone line several times a week, my parents would go cold turkey until he got back. It worked for them. (Though since the advent of Skype, things have changed, and now they get regular link-ups whenever Dad travels).

5. Don’t leave stuff unsaid before you go away. And try not to bring up big issues the night before you go away. If there are any major issues in the relationship, distance is a sure way to make sure they bubble to the surface. Talk early and talk deep, and get things into as healthy a place as you can so you can both leave each other in a peaceful place, knowing that the relationship is as strong as you can make it. Make sure you keep talking about intimate, serious stuff while you’re apart- you mustn’t stick to trivialities or the relationship will become shallow- but any of the big contentious issues, try not to have to deal with them while you’re away, as distance facilitates miscommunication, hurt and damage.

Pro-tip: If you happened to have been involved in an extremely serious security incident on a previous field posting, the time to tell this to your new girlfriend is not the night before you deploy to another emergency response.

6. Don’t even think about a long distance relationship unless you already have rock-solid communication skills with your partner when you’re together, and can talk honestly and transparently about things.

7. Consider the practical implications for the person left behind. This is important, because for the person travelling, although there are hardships, it can often be easier to deal with the seperation due to busyness, and being stimulated by new surroundings. The person left behind is in the same old place, but with a big hole left by the traveller. If you’re living together, what extra work is the partner left behind going to have to cope with (especially if you have kids), and is there anything you can do to help with that or limit the load? What about finances? Does the person remaining behind have access to bank accounts, know which bills need paying, and everything else required to keep life ticking over while you’re gone?

8. Try and make the last day/night together special. Do something romantic, get away, go out together- something nice that will create a memory you can both hang on to while you’re apart, and give you something to look forward to when you come back. Involve kids in this process too if applicable- but always make sure the couple gets time alone together somewhere in there.

9. Ditto for the return. In that first few days to a week, make sure you spend some good quality time together as a couple doing something you both love. Again, with kids, involve them, but also make sure they get packed off to the grandparents (or something) for an afternoon or a night, and have some one-on-one reconnect time. It’s something to look forward to, and also something to help get the relationship back into ‘normal’ space.

10. Manage your goodbyes. Every couple is different, but try not to make goodbyes a traumatic emotional thing- it doesn’t actually help anybody, and can create a certain dread around the departure well ahead of time, as well as leave both parties carrying grief after they go. If you’re the sort of people who can hang out at the airport, have a meal together, say a gentle goodbye, and leave it at that, then great. Otherwise, if goodbyes invariably lead to floods of tears and great heartbreak, think about keeping it short and sweet- catch a cab and say a quick goodbye at the front door, or get dropped off on the curb of the departure terminal.

11. Manage your expectations. LDRs are tough. Difficult things will come up. At times, you will miscommunicate, irritate each other, even hurt each other, and it will be an effort to fix that over distance. Expect to struggle and to have negative feelings emerge. Expect your partner to struggle, and expect to be surprised by the things they struggle with, because they’re not you so their experience is going to be different. Expect these things to come up when it’s awkward to deal with them, for example when you’re rushed off your feet and the last thing you need to deal with right now is an emotional issue with your partner. And be prepared to drop everything and deal with it, because quite frankly, if this is your spouse or life partner we’re talking about, nothing you’re doing right now is as important as that relationship.

Don’t expect things just to drop back into the way they were when you left. It takes time to readjust and settle back in. While you were gone, your partner was busy living the life you left behind, and things have changed. They’ve had experiences, and so have you. Depending on how long you’ve been away, anything from a few days to a couple of weeks is normal, and during that time, communication together may be strained, time together may have some residual awkwardness (even if there’s a lot of relief and happiness at being back together again). Depending on the personalities involved, intimacy may need to be rebuilt. If you travel a lot, your ‘normal’ may be that constant change, limbo, and the regular hellos and goodbyes that, depending on your personalities, may work fine, or may mean that the relationship never really develops the foundations of intimacy it needs.

Utlimately, unless you’re the sort of couple who need time away from each other (and those exist too), LDRs are not fun, so expect them to suck.

12. For the person staying behind- mix up the routine a little. Nothing is as lonely as going through the same routine as before but without your significant other. If you can, fill some of that space with other social engagements. If you’ve got kids, think about changing the routine a little for all your sake- maybe have dinner in front  of the television a little more often, or have them stay up a little later from time to time, eat out, or go away for a weekend. You don’t want changes to the routine to be disruptive to them, you want them to feel like life goes on, but you also want to compensate/distract from the absence of a parent, and also let them know, hey, things are a little different right now, it’s not normal, so don’t get used to it, and here’s a few things to make it a little better.

13. Think creatively. On this particular trip, we’ve asked a friend to come and live with the girls while they’re at home alone. It helps my wife feel safer in the house, gives her some adult company, and distracts the little one too. It’s been a great move and really reduced some of the pressures. If there’s someone (a good friend or a family member) who can be an additional part of life while you’re away, look into it. They may fill some of the gaps and ease the pain a little- or at least distract from it.

14. Kids make things a lot harder. You’re not just maintaining one long distance relationship, but two or more- each one its own distinct relationship that has to be supported. As adults we can cope with a lot- and we also have an element of choice and therefore control in things, which kids lack. Kids are resilient too, in fact they have remarkable bounce. They are also incredibly forgiving, even when you do put them through a hard time- but you must never take that for granted or exploit it. With a child, the dynamic changes, and spend very much time away- or regular time away- and that relationship will suffer quickly. The child may also be very unsettled which can put a lot of pressure on the parent left behind. We’ve really struggled with this dynamic in our family when I travel. Make sure in your communications arrangements you build in time to call when the child is present and awake, and it fits within the daily schedule. Granted, it makes things a lot more complicated- but there’s a lot more at stake, too.

15. For both parties, try and find the silver linings. What are the things that you can do by yourself that you enjoy, that maybe you don’t get as much time to do when you’re around your partner? It might be indulging in reading a book. It might be going out with your friends you don’t see much (equally true if you’re left at home, or if you’re the one travelling). It might be writing, or praying, or quiet time just pottering. Maybe watching dumb rom-coms or stupid action movies that your other doesn’t appreciate. But for each of you, try to make space in your apartness for those things, and give a bit of a positive angle to your separation, minimize the cost. It’s never a substitute for the other, but try and find the good spin.

16. Find as many things as you can to celebrate in your relationship as you can. Talk about your relationship, talk about your strengths together, congratulate each other as you pass milestones apart, and identify those areas that are going strong despite the distance.

17. Compliment each other. As often as you can. Say and write affirming, loving things about each other. Just because you’re apart, that doesn’t mean communicating those things to one another should stop. Make sure the other person knows you love them, and be specific about why. It’s so easy to forget that you’re loved when you’re a long way away, and a loving word from a distance from the person you care most about can make a huge difference to your day and keep that relationship sparking. If anything, this is even more important to focus on, because the normal little ways we might find when we’re sharing life together to tell each other “I love you”- in words or in actions- are missing, so you need to be very deliberate- and genuine- about doing this.

18. If you’re a regular traveler, try and stagger trips with as much time between them as possible. It’s very disruptive to be away for three weeks, back for two and away for another three. That time stable and together is essential for rebuilding intimacy, and if you leave again before you’ve reformed it, you’ll struggle to stay connected.

19. Did I mention “Communicate”?

20. Countdowns generally make the time go slower. Avoid them if humanly possible.

21. Long Distance Relationships suck. Avoid them if humanly possible.

A. and I are lucky. We married as a slightly older couple, with life experience behind us so we know our own characters, our needs, and how to relate maturely. We work hard at our communication, and even if things get difficult, we support each other and we make it through. Neither one of us enjoys being away from the other, and this is going to be a time apart we hope never to repeat. But for now, we just need to push through it, and we’ll make it work, because we’re determined to. We are deliberate about meeting each others’ needs over distance, and while we’ve got areas we need to grow in, we’re gentle with each other, love each other, and ultimately, can’t wait to see each other again.

Let me know your thoughts. What have I missed? Any other advice for couples who spend time apart on a regular basis? And should I try and talk @MadamInsideOut to guest-blog on her perspective on exactly what it’s like to be married to a travelling EAW? I’d love to know what you think or hear your experiences. Share them in the comments below. Thanks!

Snapshots of Addis

It’s 6pm. I sit on the deck on the 6th floor of the hotel while my camera perches on its tripod, taking time-lapse shots of the traffic on Road 22. The sun’s gone down, just a burnt smudge on the sky where its fleeing rays catch in the city smog. Sunday evening traffic rumbles, steady but not chaotic. The air is cool, refreshing. I’ve an Amber Beer on the table beside me, the latest release from the local St George brewery, just a few months old, and with its sweeter notes of burnt caramel and hops, one of the continents better brews. As I look out over the city skyline, it’s a muddled jumble of mid-rise towers, basilica domes and construction scaffolding, all backed by the lurking hills that ring the city basin.

The two weeks I’ve been here since starting my contract feel like two months. At least. I’ve stepped- finally- into a senior role in an HRI-affiliate (Coming to a Community Near You™). The mental overload of learning the ropes of a new job have been overlaid with learning a new city, a new country, and the nuances of a new culture.

To say nothing of memorizing Ethiopian names.

It’s November. The rainy season has been, and the skies are blue. All day, every day. A few clouds lurk in the evenings behind the hilltops, but that’s about it. One morning a smog so thick it recalls a winter fog in the home counties chokes the city. Rush hour traffic tumbles from the murk, darkened silhouettes dashing from the throat-burning, eye-tearing fug, until a brisk midday breeze sweeps the air clean. The wind is cool and fresh and fidgets with plastic bags and the airborne detritus of the city.

Poor is layered on rich here. There aren’t clearly deliniated quartiers split between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Here, a hotel backs onto unpaved tracks and run-down alotments. There, street children gather outside an expat-frequented supermarket stocked with Malaysian imports with Arabic scrawls and stamped حلال‎. I join new friends and eat at a fancy French restaurant that sets us back forty bucks a head- a pricey night out here where you can buy lunch for a dollar and a dead-jarring coffee for fifty cents. Through the cracked windshield of my taxi heading back, I see the homeless lying in rows beneath the overpass fifty paces from my hotel.

I spend a morning getting my medical checks done, a part of the work permit application process. It’s a slow, bureaucratic tedium that involves drifting from one department’s waiting line to the next. When I get my ECG done, I’m one part amused, one part appauled by the contraption, all crocodile clips and vacuum-bulbs wired up to a device like the electro-shock therapy machine in Return to Oz. As the doctor smears a conductive jelly over my bare torso, I’m just impressed they have an ECG machine. Three days later I still have the bruises from the suction cups beneath my nipples.

A Kenyan, a Ugandan, a German, an American and I sound like the start to a bad joke, but we head out to dinner at Face of Addis, a restaurant perched halfway up one of the hills overlooking the city. The little blue taxi of Eastern European design fails to scramble up the angle of the crushed rock street and we get out to alleviate its weight, wherein its tinny motor wails and eventually convinces it up the ascent. A glass frontage gives a magnificent view over the blooming metropolis. We watch plane after plane land at Bole International, one of Africa’s busiest airports and a hub for European access. Ethiopian Airlines is the newest member of Star Alliance, and we watch five jets come in to land in no more than ten minutes, their starlike landing lights queued out to the horizon one behind the other.

Our conversation is banter, periodically dark. We’re mostly emergency response folk. With us is the manager for one of our refugee camp responses, and three of the staff are based in Nairobi, where tensions run high ahead of the upcoming elections. Our Kenyan colleague, half Kikuyu (infamous for their business acumen), bears the brunt of our humour. We promise to hold her a spot in our Ethiopian refugee camp when she has to flee her country next March.

“How can you tell if a Kikuyu is dead?” Jokes the Ugandan. “You take a ten cent coin…” He mimes dropping it in front of the presumedly-deceased.

Growth is constant here. As with elsewhere in Africa, the Chinese are huge investors. They can be seen throughout the city. Another night we eat at a cultural restaurant, popular here as they showcase local food, music and dancing. Over a meal of tibs and gitfo (cooked), we watch a Chinese businessman lose his inhibitions over beer and tej, the local honey wine. When one of the lithe dancers invites him to dance, he gives a performance worthy of a YouTube phenomenon, one part jitterbug and one part funky-chicken. He lurches onto the stage and after embracing a drummer who goodnaturedly surrenders his instrument, animates the drum with much flailing of the arms. The dancers subsequently adopt his movement into their routine, to much appreciation from the crowd, but our table is torn between laughing at the smooth adaptation of the performers, and the cubit-lengthed rat that has emerged from the straw roof and is now picking its way along the top of a wall at the back of the stage.

The people are understated, gracious, and quietly proud. Ethiopians speak of how they have never been colonized, quietly brushing over the brief period of occupation by Mussolini’s forces that has left pasta an almost national dish and named the Mercato, the city’s market district and a national monument. I walk a tightrope, trying to build relationship and trust, while following my own instructions of pushing through change faster than any of us are comfortable with. After some meetings I come away with my head spinning from the concentration of trying to maintain a dynamic of respect, while at the same moment having to implement an unpopular decision.

I’m shown round an apartment. It’s spacious, clean, and has a beautiful view of the city. It costs a fraction of what a similar place would cost in Australia. Afterwards I sit down with two colleagues and share a cup of tea. One explains to me how he ‘adopted’ two boys, one off the streets of Addis who used to sell him cigarettes, the other from an impoverished regional town. Both are adults now, one a teacher, the other a scientist. In his own humble way, his pride both at the boys, and the difference he has made in his own country, shines in his eyes. Apparently such an undertaking- to financially sponsor and support the less fortunate in their community- is fairly commonplace among middle-class Ethiopians.

I hurtle along in one of the little blue taxis. They’re ancient, decrepit vehicles, clearly from the Communist era. Sitting in the front seat, safety belt unavailable as we hare down an empty avenue late in the evening, I’m twitchingly sensitive to a sense of my own mortality. The time of the Derg is evident here in the charmless concrete tower-block apartments and the deep respect for government authority. Posters of the late Meles Zenawi, President and then Prime Minister since the overthrow of the communist government and the war with Eritrea, are everywhere. He passed away of natural causes a few months ago, and is revered as a saint and national treasure.

An LED screen is mounted outside Edna Mall. At night time it is garish, blasting colour and movement over the gridlocked roundabout as people hustle beneath its glow, neon-tinted music videos lending a Blade-Runner-esque atmosphere to the crowd. Glass-fronted restaurants and fashion boutiques overlook the avenue. On a Sunday afternoon, Amhara youth in spray-on jeans and designer tops lounge together in cafes and browse their iPhones. I step onto the street with a friend and across the avenue, golden sunlight from the settling dusk paints the domes of the Orthodox cathedral while prayers sing from the loudspeakers. As we pull away, an old man hobbles across the street on makeshift crutches, head weighed down by a vast, grubby turban, a gold cross dangling at his neck.

The food here is good, the coffee better. I read an accurately descriptive quote in a travel article the other day: “The prefered caffeine delivery mechanism here is the macchiato.” It comes at morning-tea time without fail in a shot-sized glass, rich black coffee with milky froth on top. I watch my Ethiopian colleagues spoon two, three, even four shovels of sugar into their brew and suck it down, and feel saintly for my half-spoon concession. I buzz for the rest of the morning and half the afternoon. At lunch I join them in the canteen and pay sixty-five cents for shiro wat and injera– a tasty red sauce poured onto a bed of the spongy teff-based bread that is a national institution. The fingernails of my right hand are already stained yellow with the remnants of spice.

It’s dark now, and the traffic is steady but thinning. Come tomorrow morning, it will be a choked grind up and down the clogged arteries of Ethiopia’s throbbing heart. My commute- a brief walk from the hotel to the office- reaches its climax trying to cross the four-to-six lanes of moving metal, waiting for the right moment when I can step out and not be pulverised. A dead bitch lies swelling in the sun in the lane across from the hotel. In my brief time here I’ve already seen one man hit by a car, but fortunately not seriously.

My waiter comes round with another Amber. He sees me working away on the computer, next to my constantly-snapping camera.

“You make movies with that one?” he asks me. “What software you are using?”

I try to explain the concept of time-lapse photography and fail to find an example on my hard drive. He tells me that in his free time he does video-editting for weddings and likes to integrate photographs into the process. A short while later he brings me a plate of toasted grain, on the house because he wants me to try some. It tastes like roasted corn kernels, and keeps great company with beer.

There’s a lot up in the air here. I’m not sure how long I’m going to be able to stay. Hopefully, a long time. I’m desperate to follow through some of the changes that are already happening, and have a chance to put my experience in this industry to the test, hopefully make a difference in this office and in this program. Some things are out of my control. If there’s one positive in the limbo I’m currently in, it’s that I’m determined to make the most of every minute this place gives me. Ethiopia is fascinating. It’s enriching, invigorating, inspiring. I’m delighted to be here, despite knowing that challenges doubtless lie ahead. So I’ll share what and when I can, and hope you enjoy the journey with me.

*PS– watch the bottom left corner of the time-lapse video to see the planes coming in to land at Bole International Airport, one after the other

An Update from Famineland

Donors tire of hearing about droughts and food emergencies. We know this, because we know how hard it is to raise funds for these places, and once a critical emergency has dropped off the headlines, the chronic crisis behind the scenes drops from public awareness. Following on from a disaster like the Horn of Africa famine, interest in the place kind of dries up. There’s little way aid agencies can come back to the public the next year and say, “Hey guys, guess what? There’s more starving people in East Africa”.

Which is unfortunate on two counts. First, because there are more starving people in East Africa. And second, because now we find it hard to raise support for them.

Take this, for example. This year has been a good year in Ethiopia. The rains were good, and the harvests pretty solid. Also this year, there are between three and four million acutely food-insecure people in Ethiopia. Think about that number for a moment. Three to four million. The size of a large city in most western nations. All those people, struggling to feed themselves for a variety of reasons- locally poor rains, low entitlements, poor infrastructure, lack of access to markets, displacement- there are dozens of reasons, all complex and all intertwined.

In fact, that’s only part of the issue. Because there are an additional seven million people chronically food insecure. That means that their ability to feed themselves and their families is compromised in some way in a long-term capacity. They may be able to meet some of their food needs, but not all of them. Seven million. We’re talking the population of a massive city, or a small country now. Switzerland. On top of the three to four million who are acutely food insecure.

And this is a good year.

Sound bad? It is. For every one of these ten million or so people who are either acutely or chronically food insecure, this is an unpleasant, demeaning and possible life-threatening situation, particularly for young children. And these concepts of ‘food insecurity’ are not just plucked out of the air- they are based on hard statistics, on international standards, carefully monitored by teams of sectoral specialists feeding into early warning systems nationwide.

And yet, lest you think I’m out here Ethiopia-bashing, I’m not.

Ethiopia has a population of around 85 million people. That means that across this large, diverse and populous African nation, 75 million people are in fact more or less completely food secure. We’re talking Ethiopia- the nation that brought us Band Aid and Live Aid, ghastly and inappropriate images of human suffering in the midst of famine.

More than that, Ethiopia’s government has a safety net program in place that caters for the needs of the seven or so million that are chronically food insecure. With a combination of cereal redistribution and import, bilateral and multilateral aid, the government, supported by operational partners, ensures that the seven million people struggling to meet their own food needs are catered for.

In other words, the Ethiopian government ensures that a good 81 to 82 million of its population of 85 million are in good hands.

And the balance? The balance are also catered for, through a mixture of NGO and UN aid programs, all overseen by the state. It’s not a perfect system. But it is a system. There is coordinated, nationwide monitoring and early-warning systems- which admittedly need tweaking to ensure greater resolution, but which are nonetheless present and functioning. There are welfare programs which, again, certainly require improvement to avoid over-dependence by communities on outside assistance, but which nonetheless prevent millions of people slipping into life-threatening starvation. And there is a network of response agencies funded by a mixture of outside sources who ensure that, under the coordination of the government and the United Nations, those who slip through the safety net receive appropriate levels of assistance.

The needs here are massive, in terms of simple numbers. And yet, at the same time, so is the capacity of both response agencies and the state. We can say three million, even ten million people in Ethiopia are in need of assistance, and we might be inclined to roll our eyes and voice with exasperation that question when will these African countries get their acts together and stop starving? The fact is, Ethiopia has a phenomenal capacity and has made enormous strides for the wellbeing of its population over the 25+ years since the 1984 famine. Most of the population is self-sufficient, and it is able to meet the needs of almost all people, even facing issues such as overpopulation, climate change and displacement. While the material backing for some of this assistance may come from outside, much of the capacity to implement is in fact domestic. The balance, though representing a large number of humans in absolute terms, is a relatively small proportion of the nation in context. And their needs are real.

It’s important to understand the nuances of a country’s context when calls for assistance go out. When a nation like Ethiopia declares a food emergency, as it did in 2011, it’s not because it’s some despotic failed state that simply can’t manage its own affairs. Instead it’s a nation that has made enormous strides in improving the level of support to its own people. It’s a nation in which nearly all people are able to meet their own needs, and the majority of those who are not are covered by ongoing state welfare support networks. It’s a nation facing geographical, historical and environmental challenges, and for the most part, coming out on top. But there’s still a small proportion slipping through the cracks. And for those people, we hope the world will hold back its assumptions and its impatience with what appears to the casual glance to be an intractable, unchanging problem, and provide the assistance needed.