Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid

by Jessica Alexander

  Still, I was glad that Jenna was there—people on their first field postings brought a certain kind of urgency to the work. The shock of what Jenna was seeing allowed her to challenge people who had already seen it all and had become complacent and burned out. New people, even if they were young, provided a foil to our cynicism.

  Meanwhile, after six months away, my phone conversations with Jack were starting to grow tense. The longer I was in Haiti, the harder it was for us to communicate with each other, and the clearer it became that the situation was unsustainable. Before I left, I had promised Jack—and myself—that I could successfully inhabit two worlds at once, living a life in Haiti while maintaining the one I’d left behind in New York. But that had been wishful thinking. Not only was three weeks a long time to go without seeing each other, but our everyday realities couldn’t have been more different. I’d often text him from a chaotic food distribution where people were on the verge of rioting, pushing each other up against barbed-wire fences, while others were collapsing in the sweltering Caribbean heat. Picking their way through this chaos would be uniformed MINUSTAH soldiers, assigned to patrol the crowds. I tried to picture Jack receiving these texts: he would be at a board meeting, wearing a tailored suit and sitting around a polished table with a bunch of other white men in equally nice suits. I imagined platefuls of bagels and pastries, trays stacked high with fresh fruit, thick carpeting, and unobstructed views of the Hudson River. New York was only a three-hour flight from Haiti, which sounded close enough, on paper. In reality, leaving one city and arriving in the other felt like traveling to another planet—and Jack and I were worlds apart.

  After six months in Haiti, I realized our one-year anniversary was approaching, so I came home to spend a weekend with Jack. We drove up to Lenox, Massachusetts, near Tanglewood, to spend the night.

  “It’s been a year, I can’t believe it!” I said, toasting him.

  “Well, it hasn’t really been a year.”

  “What do you mean?” I had been of the opinion that I had a boyfriend who I had been with for a year.

  “Jess, you’ve been away for six months of it. The relationship’s stalled. We’re not where a couple who has been dating for a year would be.”

  I had taken time for granted: a year was a year, I told myself, the same no matter how you spent it. The months I was in Haiti I was also in a serious relationship—or so I had been able to delude myself. I knew I didn’t want to end up as one of the Sheilas of the aid world, so I had convinced myself I could have both a career abroad and a stable relationship at home. But that equation became harder to understand. And now it was clear: one of the two had to give.

  Charles met me at the airport and before I got on the plane we hugged for a long time. Charles would stay in Haiti as long as he could—he knew that the benefits he reaped as an international aid worker were worth holding on to. I thought that in another time, another life, things maybe could have worked out differently for us.

  “Bye,” I said softly, as we pulled away from each other.

  “Good-bye, my dear,” he said.

  “Do you remember promising you would see me again when you left me at the airport in Kigali?”

  “I do.”

  “Can you make that promise again? Please?” I didn’t want to let go of Charles again. I wanted him in my life.

  He laughed. “I will see you again. Of course, I will.”

  Epilogue

  2013

  It’s now been three years since I left Haiti and I’m living in New York. When I got back, I picked up my PhD right where I had left it. I also began teaching courses on humanitarianism at three New York City universities and consulting for various humanitarian organizations. Aid is still my profession, but my role is different. For now, having a home base feels satisfying. It’s not the same thing as living in the field, but it allows me to contribute on my terms.

  And I still travel. I led program evaluations in Pakistan after the floods of 2010, and in Ethiopia and Kenya after the severe drought in 2012. These trips, even though they only lasted a few weeks, allowed me to touch the field and stay connected to new trends in humanitarianism. But now, instead of unpacking my bags and digging in for months at a time I can return home and wake up in my own apartment and get coffee in a city I know. It’s a compromise I can live with. Friendships aren’t interrupted every few months, romances don’t die over Skype, and family problems can be squabbled about over turkey and stuffing rather than summarized over a hopeless phone connection. These things matter more to me now.

  Yet, I didn’t say good-bye to Haiti for good. I go back every year around the anniversary of the earthquake, and spend a week helping write the annual report for the office in Port-au-Prince. When I returned in early 2013, much of the agency’s emergency programming was coming to an end, and our field offices were shutting down. Most of the 1.5 million people who had flocked to tent camps in and around the city had been relocated to more permanent housing.

  But in Haiti, where for years the government was characterized by corruption and general inefficiency, circumstances tend to be difficult, and difficult circumstances bred difficult choices. Take the cholera treatment center the agency built in Port-au-Prince. Two years after cholera hit the capital, donor governments discontinued funding to the clinic. Their attention had moved on to the more recent events in Syria and Yemen. The Haitian Ministry of Health had neither the resources nor the capacity to pay clinicians, maintain the building, procure the necessary supplies, and keep the place running properly. Without outside funding, the doors of the clinic would be secured shut with a padlock.

  Health care, like education, is a social service that is the responsibility of the government or the Haitian people themselves. In the long term, we can’t take these over and create a parallel system entirely dependent on the international community’s support. Otherwise, there’s very little incentive or demand for the ministries to provide these things themselves. You sometimes wonder by doing this whether you are just allowing political leaders to avoid dealing with problems that are theirs to solve. But when there is no stable government, or when the one in charge doesn’t have the resources or capacity to run these most basic services, and without them people will die, what choice are we left with?

  Although our agency didn’t plan well for this abrupt ending, the circumstances reinforced what I had begun to feel toward the end of my time in Haiti. Even though my role was more senior, I was only a cog in a large wheel whose spokes were twisted and interconnected—a tangle of aid agencies and governments sometimes working together, sometimes at cross-purposes. In the immediate term, emergency aid funded by foreigners could help save lives, but agencies took on tasks that in the long run would be the responsibility of the local government. Our work in Haiti, like aid work in any failed state, is just a Band-Aid stuck on larger political problems, ills that can’t be fixed with food rations and jerry cans, and that don’t heal quickly. The needs are urgent and pressing, but they are also recurring and seemingly endless. Even the most thorough emergency response wasn’t going to cure Haiti of the years of neglect and international indifference it had endured until the earthquake. There are critics who suggest that our presence just prolongs the government from having to rebuild the country and repair its decrepit infrastructure. Some even say that it’s better to let the disaster and recovery run its course without us. I’m not one of them yet, but I do believe that saving lives today without critically thinking about saving lives in the future can just perpetuate a dysfunctional situation.

  But over the years I learned to be realistic in my expectations of what aid could achieve. Whatever the context we’re working in, it’s never simple. Things take time, it’s messy, there are always mitigating factors and extenuating circumstances. But to focus on just the negative aspects of international aid work—of which there are many—and conclude that aid is a failure is not the solution. Our work in humanitarian settings matters, and to wait for broader socia
l, political, and economic reforms to address the needs of the most vulnerable is not an option. Systemic change is only possible through an amalgamation of short-term/long-term, micro/macro, national/subnational, policy/project investments. We will never be able to prove a counter-factual argument—What would people’s lives be like without aid? Would they be better, or worse off?—so in some ways it is a profession based more on belief than empirical evidence. And I stay with it because I believe in the purpose of aid: to alleviate suffering of people when they need help most.

  As I tell my students, we need to remind ourselves that aid is still a nascent profession although its roots are centuries old. The industry is now bigger than ever with $17.9 billion spent to respond to humanitarian crises in 2012. That may sound like a large number, but when you compare it to other figures—the $114 billion the US government has provided to Katrina relief, the $50 billion pledged to Sandy relief, and the $13.7 billion spent on the 2012 London Olympics—and when you consider that the $17.9 billion is a figure of all donations combined—from government donors ($12.9 billion) and private donors ($5.0 billion)—used to respond to all global humanitarian crises, it no longer seems all that impressive.

  Prior to the 1990s, few humanitarian organizations measured the effect of their actions, assuming that the mere fact of having provided assistance was itself evidence of positive outcomes. Today, the industry is teeming with standards and certifying bodies to make agencies more accountable to affected populations and ensure minimum standards of aid delivery. We are also becoming more transparent about the money we spend, more honest with donors about our failures, and openly reflecting on our work and the impact it is making. Aid may be an unregulated industry, but it’s also highly self-reflective and self-critical. And there are a lot of smart people committed to improving the way we deliver aid to make it more effective and relevant.

  THE LATEST OF THESE EFFORTS is cash transfers. The use of cash in emergencies is one of the clearest examples of empowering beneficiaries and allowing them to decide for themselves what they need most. A lot of times, the food, shelters, kitchen sets, and soap we ship from our warehouses somewhere halfway around the world are resold so people can get what they want: cash in hand. Agencies provide people with either vouchers or incremental cash transfers (sometimes with conditions attached). Cash might not make for a nice press-release photo, but it can simplify the logistics of distribution and eliminate many of an agency’s expenses. People spend at their own discretion, buying locally, thus ensuring that local suppliers aren’t cut out of the market. Advocates of cash transfers call it the future of aid. And for those who worry about where the money will be spent, the aid community has come up with a semiofficial rule, which some in the industry refer to as one of the Ten Commandments of cash transfers: Give the money to women. Women will spend it on the family. Men might be more likely to spend it on alcohol and prostitutes.

  Another change in the industry has come with the advent of mobile technology, which is pervasive in the developing world. People may not have eaten for a day, but you can bet they have a cell phone. Twitter and texting enables affected people to have a greater say over the services they receive and communicate with the world about the aid response. Agencies are only one YouTube video away from being called out for bad practices, and aid recipients are becoming savvier about using these vehicles to demand what they need.

  But people don’t want to need help. The aid community is investing in making people and communities more resilient and better able to manage and recover from disasters themselves. When we go in, we need to work with development actors to strengthen national capacities so that humanitarian aid can phase out. We still need a system that underwrites a humanitarian intervention when national governments are overwhelmed. But aid should leave people and their governments in a position to better cope next time disaster strikes.

  It is exciting to be part of these developments, even from afar. Of course, I’ll always feel the pull to go and respond. Being in the field means living in an intense, driven environment, surrounded by all kinds of ambitious people, with moments of extreme connection and accomplishment. That life is hard to beat. But if I wanted a stable life, I had to actively choose one, because the path of least resistance would have been to continue working abroad. When I returned from Haiti, though, I was tired. Not tired in the way I had been when I came home from Darfur. Tired of running around and putting what felt like real life on hold. I no longer needed to be part of the latest breaking emergency, and not only that, I didn’t want to. But I did want to remain involved in the profession I loved, and I found ways to do so here. It’s been a spectacular and surreal journey, and some days I find the destination—my life as a humanitarian aid worker—nearly as astonishing, particularly when held against the distant backdrop of the life I might have had.

  When the conflict in Syria began earlier this year, so did the Facebook updates—“Headed to Amman tonight,” “On my way to Lebanese border—tens of thousands of refugees there already,” “Packing bags for Southern Turkey”—I couldn’t help but feel tempted. Syria and the neighboring countries to which Syrians were fleeing were about to have a do-gooder invasion on their hands. But I’d read this storybook before. I knew what it would mean for me, for my life if, once again, I dropped everything to join my friends and former colleagues.

  Then one afternoon, a Skype message popped up on my screen from a former boss—“I’m putting a team together for Syria, you in?” My hands were perched over the keyboard, ready to start firing back questions—When? Where? For how long? But I stopped myself, chuckling at the same old predictable reflexes. I sat back, sighed, and knew what I would tell him.

  Author’s Note

  The stories in this book are written from my memory. It is a true account based on my best recollections of the events and my experiences. In a few instances, I rearranged and/or compressed events and time periods in service of the narrative. I have changed the names and identifying features of all of the characters in this book and in some instances I created composite characters based on real people I met. Dialogue matches the exchanges to the best of my memory. Finally, for many of the statistics and figures cited, it is difficult to find precise numbers. For the most part, I have used UN sources.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was written over several stages of my life, in multiple countries, passing through the hands of many friends, loves, and family members. So many people have helped shape these stories and the book could not have materialized without them.

  First, I’m grateful for the people and families from the places I have worked who took in an often clueless young American, and who were so open, generous, and eager to help, and asked for nothing in return. I remember the faces of your children, the rooms of your homes where we sat to eat or drink tea, and the stories you told about your lives. I recall, above all, the bravery and humor you showed despite having to endure some of the most horrific circumstances imaginable. The time I spent with you made it feel like what we were doing, despite the frustration and the constant obstacles, was worthwhile.

  Katie Dunn, Seth Searls, Ben Tishler, Christian Lewis, Ed Sien, Keith Gessen, Trish Rapaport, and Jesse Samberg read early, messy drafts which I’m now embarrassed I let ever leave my computer. Your enthusiasm gave me the confidence to continue.

  Kasia Laskowski and Laura Risimini, thoroughly fact checked the manuscript. You were both so positive and smiley even on those long days when I wasn’t nearly as perky.

  Charles Salzberg believed in this book from day one of writing class and helped me first imagine this could actually happen. He and fellow students who provided affirming feedback—especially Julia Scully, Corey Maloney, Diana Ventura, Dean Gordon, Whitney Dangerfield—made the writing process so much more fun. Vivian Conan read the entire manuscript with a careful eye and offered smart edits. Laurence Klaven also provided wine and constructive feedback.

  Jane Dystel had confidence in this projec
t even when I didn’t and helped me navigate the publishing world as an enthusiastic and determined advocate.

  She connected me with my editor and friend Meagan Stacey, who regularly took frantic calls with the calming words, “I’m sensing anxiety, what’s going on?” She patiently reassured me through every worry, coached me through every question, and continually pushed me to make the book better.

  The gifted editor Elizabeth Gumport took a red pen, a smart eye, and some serious elbow grease to the manuscript and cleaned it with care, good judgment, and talented writing.

  I’m grateful to have been mentored by the best: Les Roberts, Dirk Salomons, and Neil Boothby. You taught me to keep questioning, and fostered my passion for this work. Neil especially, you have been instrumental in shaping my career and I’m grateful to you for taking me under your wing. I’ll never forget the wisdom and compassion you showed me through a rough period after Darfur.

  Zbysek and Barbara Szulc, so much gratitude to you both for the many times you helped me pack, unpack, picked me up at an airport, dropped me off at another, always with energetic hugs and smiles over these years.

  Colleagues, and friends from overseas, it is extraordinary that our paths crossed in some of the most unlikely of places, but I’m so happy that they did. You have influenced the way I think about the world, this line of work, and the stories I have to tell. I’m especially grateful to have met and lived with such special people in the Millicom house and the Bungalows. Cynthia Koons, Paule Neale, Charlotte Balfour-Poole, Kristy Baughman gave useful comments on Haiti and Amy Brathwaite let me borrow some of her beautiful language and images to make that chapter much more rich. I’m grateful to have had my dear friend Anne Althaus with me in Sierra Leone and even more grateful for your continued friendship and generosity as you welcomed me time and again to Geneva.