A Mighty Purpose

by Adam Fifield

  Still, he had to figure out a way to justify the highly unusual arrangement. A trust fund was briefly considered but ultimately ruled impractical. The argument that Grant and his adviser Michael Shower eventually concocted was put to staff in a memo from Shower: Selamawit’s photograph, which was widely used for fund-raising purposes, could “qualify in the category of ‘personal services’ and should be compensated accordingly.”

  The initial agreement with Selamawit’s mother, drawn up at UNICEF headquarters in September 1988, stipulated that UNICEF would support Selamawit and her family for three years. Grant felt this was too short a period of time. On a draft of the document he wrote: “What happens after 3 years? Selamawit will be 13 and finished only 6 years of schooling—her brothers who are older will have had more. I propose that, after the first three years, we continue to pay Selamawit’s schooling, as long as she stays in school, through high school, and as long as she stays in school, we contribute to house rent and to subsistence.”

  Grant prevailed, and UNICEF agreed to subsidize the family until Selamawit’s graduation from high school in 1999. This included about $1,300 per year, enough to cover school fees for Selamawit and her brothers, rent, food, and money for furniture.

  UNICEF also moved Selamawit and her family from the decrepit, one-room garage that had been the only home she had ever known to the main house that had always loomed over them—just feet away but nonetheless in another world. With the UNICEF stipend, they could now afford to rent it. UNICEF renovated and furnished the six-room house. The family had suddenly vaulted into an entirely new and better life. Everyone had a proper bed. They had electricity and plumbing, a bathroom and a kitchen. They even had a dining room table. Selamawit’s grandmother, who had become ill and so depressed she started refusing to eat, was now “in good health and happy to be alive,” according to a memo sent to Grant by UNICEF staffer Stanislaus Adotevi, who visited the family in their new home.

  Local UNICEF staff arranged for Selamawit to be admitted to Nazareth School, a competitive private Catholic girls’ school in Addis Ababa. She started in the third grade and did well during her first year. “She understands this is a chance of a lifetime and is determined to succeed in her studies,” Adotevi wrote.

  Grant would check in on her, every now and then, to make sure she was still in school and doing well. And for the next seven years, as long as he remained executive director of UNICEF, she was both. But several years after his death, her good fortune began to come apart. She was unable to finish school. UNICEF continued providing some support for her family’s basic living expenses but could not go on doing so forever. In 2008, when she was around twenty-nine and had children of her own, UNICEF paid her a final “goodwill gift” of $3,500. At this point, Jim Grant had been dead for thirteen years. (Efforts to contact Selamawit were unsuccessful.)

  At the twenty-fifth anniversary summit of the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa on May 26, 1988, Grant brought a special guest. Into the cavernous meeting hall, past a forest of tall flags, he walked with his hand on the shoulder of a small Ethiopian girl. Wearing a white robe, a neatly trimmed Afro, and a white necklace, she looked elegant, mature, and nervous. Grant led Selamawit Gebreyes up to the stage. He guided her to a spot to the right of the podium and then turned to her and smiled reassuringly.

  She kept her hands crossed in front of her and looked down. Every now and then, her eyes took a quick scan of the big clamorous room, which contained thirty heads of state from throughout Africa as well as the secretary general of the United Nations. It is hard to conceive of a more intimidating atmosphere for a nine-year-old child who has never been in such a setting before.

  Grant leaned toward a tangle of microphones.

  “Mr. Chairman, your excellencies, Mr. Secretary General, distinguished participants, honored guests,” he began, glancing over at Selamawit, as camera flashes started popping. “It is a great honor … to address this session … in the year of the … African child.”

  He then held up his hand briefly and made a somewhat awkward, pause-laden introduction to the girl who stood next to him. “Mr. Chairman … if I may first … take this opportunity to introduce … the African … child … Selamaweet …”

  Reaching up, he gently clutched her arm and pulled her closer to him and continued: “… who has done the most of any child … to help promote … the child survival … and … development revolution.”

  He spoke of his desire to find a “symbol” for this revolution and said he knew he had discovered it when he saw Selamawit’s photo. As he spoke, his hands, every now and again, spasmed in small frenetic loops, as though operating separately from his body—the hands of an overexcited child.

  He relayed the story of how Selamawit’s picture was taken and then held up a copy of the poster that had made her a celebrity. “It has been seen by hundreds of millions of people, been on the cover of magazines,” Grant said. “It says on the top, ‘What would you like to be when you grow up?’ ‘Alive’ …”

  He folded the poster.

  “Now, five years later, it is my privilege to actually meet her in person … here in Addis Ababa.”

  He told the audience that she was ranked second in a third grade class of one hundred and added that she was “of course, fully immunized.”

  “Mr. Chairman, with your permission …”—here Grant held up his finger, like a lawyer asking to approach the bench—“may she say just a few words … to this distinguished summit?”

  He adjusted the microphones and then stepped back. A man walked up and placed a stool behind the podium. Grinning widely, Grant took Selamawit’s hand and helped her to climb up and stand on the stool, so she could reach the microphones.

  Standing at Grant’s height, she looked out at the crowd for a few seconds, her eyes big and discerning. Then suddenly, she began speaking breathlessly in Amharic, pushing the words out as quickly as she could, pausing two or three times to inhale. Her voice was high and faint.

  When she finished, applause rippled across the hall.

  “I am told,” Grant said, “that what she has said to us in Amharic is, ‘My name is Selamawit … A few years ago … someone asked me, What do you want to be?… I answered, I want to be alive. Now I am alive … I want the same for all children in Africa … so please help them. Thank you.’ ”

  He looked at her and nodded his head very quickly, a crisp military gesture—a signal of approval, as if to say, Ya done good, kid. Then he lifted her off the stool and gingerly set her down.

  Chapter 11

  EVERYTHING IS NOT ALL RIGHT

  In the middle of 1988, many people at UNICEF started to realize they might actually succeed—they just might make history. The global target for universal childhood immunization (UCI) had emerged from a fog of skepticism and, while not yet in reach, now hovered plainly in sight. They had come so far, so fast. Countries large and small—from China to Saint Lucia—had responded heartily to Grant’s call to immunize their children. Coverage rates had already doubled and tripled in some places—despite a suffocating recession, despite wars, despite nonexistent roads or roads that were mined, despite the near absence of health infrastructure, despite resistance from local doctors and medical personnel. An estimated 1.9 million children’s lives were being saved each year as a result. When the goal was set a few years earlier, even the most bullish believers had their doubts. Some had felt that even if they made it halfway, that would still be an extraordinary accomplishment. Many lives would still be protected. Many families would still be spared the ultimate grief. In other words, maybe reaching the goal was not the main point—if that goal had nonetheless produced a significant payoff.

  Grant did not see it this way, according to several former staff members. Meeting UCI was all or nothing, a conquest to be won essentially at any cost. Grant couldn’t really afford to be anything but absolutist about it—if anyone detected in him the slightest hint of hesitation or complacency or willingness to accept an
ything less than a total victory, the whole thing could start rattling and wobbling and falling apart.

  The actual goal was not 100 percent immunization coverage. In 1977, the World Health Assembly (WHO’s governing body) had proposed immunizing “every child in the world” by 1990. But Grant believed the global target should be more achievable and suggested it be fixed at 80 percent. Though not “universal,” it would hopefully approach “herd immunity”—the point at which a critical mass of people is immunized, making it much harder for an outbreak to occur and offering a degree of protection even to those who haven’t been covered. That was not the only factor, says Ralph Henderson, who then ran WHO’s immunization programs. Grant wanted the 80 percent goal, he says, because he “could sell it credibly to national leaders.” In Africa, the target was set at 75 percent—in recognition of the unrivaled challenges facing the continent.

  Keeping track of all the numbers and of each country’s performance was Dr. Nyi Nyi. The short, intense, no-nonsense Burmese man was then the director of UNICEF’s program division. Known as Grant’s “enforcer,” he donned a beret and often wore a completely inscrutable expression. An unquenchable reader—described variously as a “flipping genius” and a “bulldog”—Nyi Nyi could keep a swirling constellation of facts in his head, much like Grant himself. The former Burmese government minister was a formidable and widely feared taskmaster. If you were a UNICEF country representative, and Nyi Nyi began scrutinizing your performance, you had better be ready to defend yourself. He would probably know your country’s statistics better than you did. He was withering when he needed to be. And everyone knew he acted at Grant’s command.

  Nyi Nyi’s office at UNICEF headquarters was known as “the torture room on the thirteenth floor.” Files and papers were piled so high on his desk that when you first walked into his office, you could not tell if he was sitting there or not. And when he needed to find a particular document amongst the dense towers of paper, he knew exactly where it was—he could retrieve it in seconds. He was in the office at 6:30 every morning, and he would stay until at least seven at night. He estimates now that he spent about five months of the year traveling, a month or two less than his boss.

  His loyalty to Grant was total. In describing him years later, Nyi Nyi says unreservedly: “When you met him, you fell in love with him.”

  Nyi Nyi’s ruthless devotion, if off-putting to some, was also crucial—without someone like him prodding UNICEF representatives to prod their governments, it is unlikely such considerable strides would have been made.

  Some people felt the frenzied push for UCI—and in particular Dr. Nyi Nyi’s relentless browbeating—was so extreme that it bordered on abuse. Many representatives were throttled by panic. Some complained to their colleagues: What was being asked of them was unreasonable; they were being judged by a brutally unfair standard; how could they work in conditions like this?

  Nyi Nyi says his interrogations were simply to get information. “If I don’t grill [them], I won’t get the information,” he says now. “If I don’t have the information, I won’t be able to help them … Like performing a diagnostic test on a patient—you have to find out what’s wrong.” His main purpose, he says, was to help the representative come up with a solution to overcome whatever was in the way.

  But the unyielding pressure to meet the targets—and Nyi Nyi was not the only source—may have spawned some ugly offshoots. According to several former staff members, some countries fudged their immunization coverage numbers to make it look as if they were doing better than they actually were. Some UNICEF staff members may have even been complicit in “cooking the books”—perhaps because they were terrified of giving Grant or Nyi Nyi bad news. How much Grant knew about this is unclear. While he did not expressly ask for false figures nor tell people to manipulate information, he doesn’t seem to have actively discouraged it either. Several staff members suggest that he viewed the matter as another pesky distraction he simply chose not to deal with.

  Rohde got into bitter arguments with Dr. Nyi Nyi over this issue. He believed that Nyi Nyi was pressing people too hard, and as a result they were coughing up false figures. At one point, says Rohde, “Nyi Nyi said, ‘I don’t care how you reach 80 percent, but we’ve got to reach it.’ ” Rohde raised the issue with Grant, who replied that Nyi Nyi knew what he was doing. “I think [Grant] dodged the issue to the point that it was uncomfortable,” Rohde says now.

  Nyi Nyi claims he never pressured anyone to alter immunization numbers and, in fact, vigorously guarded against it. If he suspected numbers had been changed, he would order another round of evaluation to ferret out the real figures. “I would not allow fudging,” he says.

  One of Grant’s most dynamic field operatives, an American named Richard Reid, was involved in several big immunization campaigns and says concerted efforts were made to ensure the accuracy of the data. “I think we were extremely strict and did all kinds of follow-up and house-to-house surveys,” he says.

  Nyi Nyi, a meticulously spoken Buddhist, notes that his religion forbids him to lie. Beyond that, he adds, duplicity is impractical. His mother once imparted advice that he says he has followed his whole life: if you make a habit of telling lies, you won’t remember what lie you told to whom. Fudging immunization stats is a form of lying, he says, and he would never have tolerated this or encouraged anyone to do it. He says his famous interrogation sessions were, in part, designed to expose dishonesty. He would then insist upon using the correct figures, though he would make a point to never publicly shame anyone—“you want to preserve their enthusiasm.”

  But as 1990 drew closer and some UNICEF representatives grew more frantic, the reliability of immunization numbers became a vexing, stubbornly lodged thorn in UNICEF’s hide—no matter how much Grant wanted to ignore it.

  Bearing the brunt of Grant’s mania on a daily basis—probably more than anyone else—was Mary Cahill. A sharp-witted, keenly observant Irish woman with uncommon multitasking abilities, Cahill ran Grant’s office and served as his de facto chief of staff (there was no actual “chief of staff” at that point). She had to match his energy and his hours—Grant performed the jobs of three or four people, and hence so did Cahill. She often trekked into the office on Saturdays, at Grant’s insistence. The work was ceaseless, demanding, and largely thankless.

  “Mary worked probably eighteen hours a day, and she was always behind the scenes,” says Doreen Lobo, the former assistant to Grant’s speechwriter Mike Shower.

  Cahill’s devotion to Grant rivaled Nyi Nyi’s, and Grant needed her perhaps as much. She started in June 1982, and it took her close to a year to understand and appreciate her manic boss. At first, she says, “I thought he was a lunatic.”

  She got used to his fanatical pace. Though perennially late and always rushing, he would still listen to whoever came to see him—even if they spoke at excruciating length about something peripheral or irrelevant (there are a lot of “talkers” at UNICEF). Grant might have stopped listening during such conversations, but he would never brush anyone off, according to Cahill. “He never made anyone feel stupid,” she says. “He never said to a person, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ ”

  Though he often quietly disregarded what people told him. And in some meetings, his behavior could be perplexing. He would sometimes lean back in his chair and close his eyes. And keep them closed for a half minute or longer. “You’d think, Jeepers, he’s gone to sleep,” says Cahill.

  But then, after a thick, thoroughly uncomfortable span of silence, he would abruptly snap back up and say, “Three things.” Then he would fire three incisive questions at his guest, who would be scrambling to keep up.

  Cahill tried to relieve the surging stress for other staff members, particularly visiting regional directors, who often arrived in New York and were immediately swept up in a gale of meetings. “It was all work and no play,” she says.

  So she organized some fun. At her urging, Grant and his three deputies agreed to buy the
visiting regional directors tickets for a Broadway show like Les Misérables. Mary and Mike Shower planned a special dinner: Mike made meatballs, and Mary brought salmon, salad, wine, and homemade chocolate mousse. Cahill, Grant, and his deputies would join their guests for a potluck feast in the office, and then they would all head out for a night at the theater. “It became a tradition,” she says.

  Cahill also made a tradition out of Grant’s birthday, May 12, which usually fell right after a laborious, two-week board meeting. “I used to do silly things,” she says.

  She once stayed up until four in the morning making a papier-mâché replica of Jim Grant. She fashioned the figure out of newspaper, glue, and wire, and painted on a navy blue suit. She made a tiny papier-mâché packet of ORS and stuck it in the doll’s hand. An avid equestrian (in her scant free time), Cahill clipped some of her horse’s gray hair and glued it on the doll’s head. She even made a miniature bookshelf with tiny copies of The State of the World’s Children reports, created by reducing photocopies over and over again.

  After Ethel’s death, Cahill was a vital source of support. She often heard Grant mumbling to himself about things he needed to do—things Ethel might have taken care of before. “His focus on work helped him overcome the void,” she says.

  Cahill knew better than anyone how demanding Grant could be. She ultimately never resented it, because she knew that he worked harder than anybody. And she, of course, knew what was at stake. Many staff members recognized that the difficulty and the exasperation and the long hours came with an immeasurable reward. UNICEF was now a changed place. Grant had instilled in its people a newfound belief in themselves and their organization. They were altering history, redefining the boundaries of global health and children’s advocacy. Many would later realize that working for someone like Grant, someone who gave them the chance to truly change the world, was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.