It was never about Haiti

Back around the time that I got too busy to regularly stop, reflect, and write, I came across a thoughtful post on aid work in Haiti by Quinn Zimmerman called “The Aid Bitchslap.” I cross-posted it, and then, coincidentally, I stopped blogging due to time constraints. So Quinn’s post has been on my homepage for a very long time. I’m trying to find the time and energy to blog again, but in the meantime, Quinn emailed to let me know he’d written a follow-up to that first post. He’s put some space between himself and his Haiti experience, and it’s a good reflection. Here’s a taste. You can read the rest on Quinn’s blog.

“My first months in Haiti were lived unquestioned. I made friends, I explored the country, I fell in love and drank and danced and swam the Caribbean and made a fool of myself in any interaction with the locals because I could not speak Kreyol and had no background in French, the country’s original colonial language upon which Kreyol is based. It was, in many respects, the happiest period of my life. It was also the period during which, in August 2010, I met James Fortil.  A young man near my age who had come to Leogane from Gonaives, James worked with All Hands as a local volunteer in 2008 on another project in Haiti, and was returning to do the same again. Possessing a basic knowledge of English but stronger in Spanish (a language I also speak) given the few years he’d spent in the neighboring Dominican Republic, James and I bridged the communication gap, and he became my first true Haitian friend. In doing so, the process of a deeper, more personal understanding into the nature of Haiti and her people began, and so too the unraveling of my honeymoon with the country, with the work, with the people, and ultimately, with myself.

 

The process was a slow one. It came gradually, in those rare moments of silent contemplation, which given the nature of the base, and the constant attention that came from the locals upon leaving it, was hard to find. It came in drunken half-remembered conversations with James at the local watering hole (dubbed Little Venice given it sat on a drainage ditch), in which, tongue loosened by the alcohol, he would expose some of the fears and doubts he had about his future. It came in starting to feel disconnected from many of the newer volunteers, focusing most of my attentions on the long-termers, or, occasionally, on a pretty short-termer that made tent time more enjoyable. Mostly, it came from the gradual fading of the rush of being where I was. When the sensational transitions into the normal, and the normal is every day there, and you in it, you cannot help but begin to see things through a different lens. The rose-tinted glasses begin to slip. This was not a process unique to me. The discussions we had about Haiti were of two entirely different qualities depending on who was having them: the newer internationals fresh with excitement and seeing beauty in all things, and the long-termers engaging the cynical side of their characters. In retrospect, it was so cliché as to be embarrassing. In retrospect, many things.”

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Continue reading….

The Aid Bitchslap

Every now and then, I read something that hits me smack in the stomach. This cross-post is one of those. Originally on Quinn Zimmerman’s blog “These New Boots”, the post came over with an email commenting on “that moment where you get the aid bitchslap… when you cross from idealism to realism… [a] strange and ugly and enlightening process.”

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Day 326: Questions and (No) Answers by Quinn Zimmerman

(cross-posted with his permission)

“It’s going to take a while before I can even make sense of all of this.” I’m talking to Paddy as we make our way down a dark street in Leogane, dodging motos and trying to avoid the mud. “It won’t happen here. It won’t happen until I’ve left.” He nods. He feels the same. Our time in Haiti isn’t over yet, we’ve both got a few months left, but we’re feeling the end now, and we’re feeling what it took to get here. We’re tired, and confused, and frustrated. We’re excited. We’re proud. We’re trying not to pass quick judgements, and we realize how hard that is to do.

Project Leogane is nearly over. Tomorrow marks the final week. April 27th work ends. April 28th we have the farewell party. April 30th the lease on our house is up, and people make their way to whatever is next. In my case, making my way isn’t too tricky, as I’ll be moving in to the base of my friend Jason, along with Paddy and Billy, where we’ll work for the next two months finishing up our obligations to GOAL and the partnership we have with them. We’ll also be mentoring our handover partner, the Haitian-American organization FHED (Foundation for Humanitarian Education & Development), who will be continuing our biosand filter program once we leave. Billy stays until the end of May. Paddy leaves the end of June. Alejandro and Diana will stay until May 15th to support our transition. I will stay until the end of July. I wasn’t the first to arrive here with All Hands, but I’ll be the last to go.

I know Haiti isn’t yet done for me, but the nature of how I’ve lived and worked here since July 2010 has changed many times, and this perhaps marks the most distinct change. Project Leogane, and All Hands Volunteers, my organization and identity in Haiti, is nearly over. The skeleton crew staying is very much that. We’ll no longer be part of the group. We’ll be the entirety of it. I’ve no problems with that. If I’m honest, I’m excited to see how it will play out, but it does get me thinking. Of what, I’m not so sure, or more accurately, I’m not so sure I can yet explain it in any coherent way. Too many things. So many things. Only through a total disconnect will I have the distance and time needed to sift through all of this, and I’ll have that before too long, but I still feel the urge to try and write about it, to mark it down in some way, although all recent attempts at doing so result in deleted entries, rambling and uncertain sentences that frustrated me but accurately reflect where my head is at these days. I honestly don’t know what to make of this place and this experience.

I do know this. I’m ready to go. Haiti, while still powerful in her effect on me, is beginning to leave a sour taste in my mouth. Going out into the monotonous, seemingly unchanging landscape of Leogane, which some of us have now taken to jokingly referring to as “post-apocalyptic”, is something I try and avoid unless in a state of mind sufficient enough to match whatever absurdity is going to come at me. My patience is near gone. I still feel for people. The empathy is there, but it’s become something different than it was before.

“Fuck you!” The shouts come pretty regularly these days, sometimes from kids, sometimes from adults, always directed at us for no other reason than the fact we are foreigners, that we are blans. I don’t know the people shouting. Sometimes we shout back, other times we shake our heads at the stupidity, sometimes we laugh, other times we stop the car, get out, and watch the guilty children run away, or the guilty adults eye us up. A few days ago it’s a group of guys playing football in the middle of the street. “Fuck you!” We pull over, not because of the comment, but because we’re at the chicken stand we were headed toward to buy some food. My patience is worn thin. We get out of the car a few paces from where the guys are. “Masisi! Masisi!” They’re calling us faggots. Really? Really? I don’t even know you. Fuck this. I hammer back at them. “You think we’re faggots? Is that what you think? I think you’re a bunch of uneducated, ignorant idiots. Instead of playing football in the street and telling blans you don’t know to go fuck themselves, why don’t you go to school? You’re young men. You’re not kids. Do something with your lives.” I want to keep going. I want to tell them they are pathetic. I want to tell them that you shouldn’t tell someone to go fuck themselves one day then come groveling to them the next asking for a job or money or food or a house. I want to tell them they are the problem with this fucked up country. I want to, but I don’t, because I know, despite the anger, that while they are ignorant, and they do deserve to get called on their shit, they don’t deserve to be shamed for their condition. Most people just play the hand they’re dealt. Few opt to really try and change their hand, let alone the deck. That’s not Haitian. That’s human. Haiti just happens to deal a pretty shit hand to most. I’d be a fool to place the entirety of the blame on them. They’re not the cause. They’re part of the effect.

We get the chicken and drive away. One of the guys mimics punching us. I enjoy the five second fantasy of laying them all out in the street, although I know that will never come to pass. I’m not a fighter. We laugh it off, but not really. “This fucking place…” Every day. We allow ourselves some ignorance of our own, mocking the wannabe gangster culture the men in the street all had on display. “Oh you’re a gangster are you? You’re hardcore? You can’t even get food. So hardcore. So gangster.” We laugh, hard. I know the comment is off-color, but I also know I’m doing it to release. I’m aware when I’m allowing myself to mock a situation that shouldn’t be mocked, when I’m engaging something I’m actually against. I’m aware that I’m doing it more and more these days. I’m aware that, at the end of the day, I do it because it helps mask the underlying frustration and sense of overwhelm and guilt that comes with being a foreigner in Haiti.

We come home, tell some housemates about it. They tell us how people started throwing rocks at one of our roommates as he was getting a dance lesson on the roof from a local Haitian girl. They had to come inside and continue the lesson out of reach of the rocks. I get a phone call. My friend Jenny, a Haitian girl I’m close to and care for a lot, tells me her grandmother has died. Paddy and I go to visit her and her mother and sisters to offer our condolences. While I’m sitting with Jenny and her older sister Katia, Paddy is talking to their mother, Madam Michelle. It was her mother that has just passed away. We stay for twenty minutes then say goodbye.

“Fucking hell…” We’re in the car, Paddy looks tired. “What’s up man?” I ask him. “Madam Michelle was asking me for everything – my bed, my table, my mattress, anything I can give her once All Hands leaves.” I can see the frustration in his face. “Your mother just died. For fuck’s sake can you stop for just one minute and grieve?” It is endless. Today, here in my room, I hear a knock. Ornela, Madam Michelle’s youngest daughter, Jenny’s little sister, is at the door. “Qwen? Qwen?” “Hold on a sec sweetie.” I open the door and she’s there. We talk for a bit. She asks me a question. “Qwen, can you buy a painting from my mom? We need money to go to Jeremie.” Jeremie is where their grandmother lived. She’s talking about the funeral. My heart melts, but I’ve learned a long time ago that I have to draw a line. “I’m sorry sweetie, I don’t have money for that right now.” I hate myself for even saying it, but I know I’ve done a lot to help her family. Jenny is back in school because of me and some of my friends and family I reached out to. Seeing her finish high school is a personal goal of mine. I have to keep that in my sights and put blinders on for everything else. A week ago Jenny called me, she tells me Katia is really sick, that she has to go to the hospital. She asks me if I can pay for it. My heart hurts again, but I repeat the line I’ve learned to live by. “Sorry Jenny, I don’t have money for that right now.” “OK Qwen. It’s OK.” Jenny, eighteen and whip smart, knows me pretty well. She’s been on the receiving end of my anger when she tries to push the boundaries of my charity. She’s heard my rants on Haiti and the culture of dependence and expectance. She also knows I really care for her and her family. Still, the requests don’t stop. They won’t stop until I leave. Even then they won’t stop. Facebook chat post-Haiti often involves requests for money from people I know here.

Some things I have become clear on as a result of Haiti:

1. Good intentions aren’t enough.
2. Rose-colored glasses are bullshit.
3. The white savior industrial complex is real, demonstrated daily by feel good aid programs that probably don’t work, or feel good causes like Kony 2012 that generate plenty of buzz but don’t add up to much when people are actually supposed to do something.
4. You can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves.
5. True altruism is an incredibly rare thing. (See #3)
6. Little victories must be celebrated if you want to protect yourself from the crippling effects of the larger failure.

I came to Haiti very much guilty of believing good intentions were enough, and I certainly had the rose-colored glasses. I knew a bit about the idea of the white savior industrial complex, but didn’t know enough to realize I was playing right into it. I believed people inherently do want to improve their lot, and will work hard to see that happen. I also believed myself to be a fairly altruistic person. I’m not so sure about that any more. And while I never came here thinking I could “save Haiti” (an incredibly egotistical idea to begin with), I also didn’t realize the importance of allowing yourself to truly appreciate the small things before the big things break you down.

I still believe in helping people. I still believe my heart is in the right place. But I question myself more these days, and question what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. I question whether the work I’ve done here will really even make any difference. Is it even working? We’ll know that as we conduct final follow-ups over the next two months, now that production and installations are nearly finished. I’m wary though. Every biosand filter I’ve ever seen in Haiti that was not one of ours was broken and unused. Just today I went to get a sandwich and found four or five of them in front of the sandwich shop, all in various stages of malrepair, waiting to be turned to rubble and probably used to patch holes in the street. The problem is we’re giving people a “solution”. They tell us they want it, but it’s not of their own design. And yes, while I have spoken to families we’ve given filters to and heard from them they are getting sick less, and they no longer fear cholera, I also know of families that never used the filter to begin with, and only wanted to be in the program because their 100 gourdes contribution got them both the filter and a new Culligan bottle, which is worth 250 gourdes. Is that our mistake? Probably. Is there an easy work around to it? Not that I can think of. Asking for a contribution of more than 250 gourdes will guarantee that truly poor families will not be able to get a filter, and not providing a Culligan bottle (or any other safe water storage container) will result in families using open buckets instead, which we’ve tested and know 95% of the time result in re-contaminated water. It’s a small problem in the grand scheme of things, but it demonstrates the complexity of trying to “help” people.

If I were to do it all again, I wouldn’t design a solution. It isn’t my place to do that. What I’d do is try and be a useful resource for a group of people or a community that have a much better understanding of their problems than I do, and want to work together toward finding solutions. I wouldn’t come in as the guy with the answer. I’d come in as the guy willing to try and help them in any way possible as they find their own answer, and act as the bridge between that answer, and the money and resources needed to make it happen.

Or, perhaps if I really wanted to help, I wouldn’t ever come to Haiti to begin with. I’d keep my fight at home in the United States, rallying people to try and build awareness that places like Haiti suffer because of policies benefitting our government, our corporations, and ultimately, ourselves. Policies created by our politicians, sometimes with our consent (the Iraq War) and sometimes as a result of special interests (the Supreme Court’s campaign finance reform ruling), result in massive problems for other people in the world. Sometimes I wonder if that truly ever can be remedied.

Nature has a distinct element to it that is both brutal and undeniable: to be alive means to take care of you and yours before all else. There are rare exceptions to that rule, but they are just that – rare exceptions. The lioness doesn’t feel guilt when she brings down the days-old gazelle, despite knowing the gazelle could never hope to challenge her. Is it the same for us? We may all be part of the same species, but we’ve always cordoned ourselves off in distinct groups, be it religious, racial, or geopolitical, and time and again worked to improve our groups at the expense of other groups. We are not a peaceful species. We are not enlightened beings. And history has shown time and again that, like the lioness, we show no remorse or mercy when faced with a weaker opponent. I sometimes wonder what the Taino people, Haiti’s original inhabitants, were like. I’ll never be able to know. They were raped, murdered and enslaved to extinction at the hands of the Spanish. There are no more Tainos in the world.

Is it naive to believe we can ever change this part of being human? I’ve often wondered this. If we ever had a chance at change, now would be the beginning of it. The internet and advancements in communication and transportation have made the world a much smaller place. I’d like to think that will lead to a greater mutual understanding of the fact that we are all, indeed, human. It might, or it might not. I often think we will have to evolve to the point that the idea of religion is cast aside, that the idea of nation is cast aside, that the way we define ourselves (white, black, Christian, Muslim, American, Haitian) have to be abandoned. Without first accomplishing that, we will always have a way to cordon ourselves off from others, to group up, and to grow to believe that our group is the most important group. Those groups must be broken for us to advance.

It makes me think of something a friend of mine who works in Rwanda told me recently. She told me that the majority of Rwandan children today do not know if they are Tutsi or Hutu. Their parents do not tell them. She told me that it is illegal to ask someone if they are Tutsi or Hutu. She told me that all forms of personal identification no longer have the words “Tutsi” or “Hutu” on them. She also told me Rwanda is one of the more progressive and advanced countries she’s visited in Africa. That came at an incredibly high cost, but maybe that’s what it takes. The EU, flawed though it is, and in and of itself a group, was born out of the desire for integration that was the result of two devastating wars that killed entire generations of Europe’s people. I’d like to think we can learn enough from our history to be able to continue that process of integration without the prerequisite of mass suffering, but maybe that is indeed a prerequisite. If so, there’s certainly suffering enough to go around. The world’s groups are still devouring each other. The question is, if we do not feel we are affected by it, do we care enough to try and stop it? And, the skeptic in me asks, if we do care enough to try and stop it, why? What do we stand to gain? #5 – true altruism is an incredibly rare thing.

Indeed, a lot of questions, not a lot of answers, and a fair amount of pondering. If nothing else, Haiti has given me that, and that, ultimately, is a good thing. An engaged thinker is a humbled thinker. I do not yet claim to be either, but I aspire to be both.

See Quinn’s blog “These New Boots” for more.

Katniss and Agency

I haven’t followed all the hype and I haven’t read the book, but I did go to see the Hunger Games movie. And I thought it was pretty good. A lot of people were celebrating the fact that the main character was female and the book was written by a woman.

Then I read an article called “What’s Wrong with the Hunger Games is What No One Noticed” saying that all of us feminist women had been duped. That Katniss, the main character, was not strong at all, and she was just a new version of an old female fairy tale character that appeared strong, but that in reality, it was still all about her clothes and what boy she would pick, and that all the choices around her were made for her by men, and that she had no agency.

The article got me thinking, and quite a bit. And though I do see the author’s points, I related to Katniss’ character differently. The phrase “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” comes to mind.

I didn’t see Katniss as a weak character with no agency. I saw her as doing what a lot of us women (and men) do: playing the game just enough to get by; recognizing that we are playing the game; retaining our dignity and values whilst appearing to play along; and carefully picking our battles in terms of those times when we refuse to play at all, because seriously, sometimes you just don’t have the energy to fight everything all the time. It can be exhausting.

The Hunger Games is reflective of the world we actually live in, not a film about the world we’d ideally like to live in.

In this world, the powers that be force us to play the game. We can stupidly play it, without thinking; we can buy into the commercialism, the sexism, the racism, the violence and the consumerism, with no regard to what is going on around us and no reflection on what we are doing… Or we can consciously recognize our own frustration that our values and principles are not reflected in the game, yet see that we are not strong enough individually to massively change it, and we have to navigate and negotiate within the system while keeping ourselves and our values intact if we want to survive. We have to find ways to work around the system, to confront it when we can’t take it anymore and to exploit those times that we see chinks in its armor. We also need to find allies to join hands with to help us survive and change things. We need to be smart sometimes and approach those who already hold power but have not totally been consumed by the system and its [evil] ways. Or find people who have infiltrated the system but haven’t sold out to it — and maybe we ourselves are those who have infiltrated but not sold out or sold out fully. Sometimes, though  rare, we can convince power holders that the system needs to change. Or through stealth, smarts or just plain ethics, we can force systemic change. This is how revolutions and social change happen.

Once the Games started, Katniss disappeared from the fray. I didn’t see this as weak or lacking agency. Instead, she decided to leave the scene and wait things out as long as possible. This was a strategic decision and a smart individual survival tactic (yes, suggested to her by a man, but so what?), but it was also an avoidance tactic. I saw her as rejecting the game itself and the violence and competition that most of the rest of the group embraced. She distanced herself from it and refused to play. As often happens in real life, she’s punished by ‘the system’ (with fireballs and other manufactured obstacles) to force her back into the game. (Notably it’s another smart and creative woman who creates the situations that force Katniss back into the game. And yes, most of these situations are in the hands of men and being directed by men, but that’s kind of how the real world works these days and has for centuries, isn’t it?)

Katniss opened herself up to alliances with other players in the game. She did this not to aggressively kill as some of the other youth who formed alliances did, but rather for mutual support and patient survival. The last thing ‘the system’ wants is people organizing and supporting each other to reject it, it prefers to pit people against each other, to foster mistrust. Katniss didn’t engage with others in that way. She opened up to Rue on the basis of trust. We see her flipping back and forth with regard to Peeta and it’s fairly obvious that she is feigning a storybook lovestory to the mass media and outside world in order to survive and game the system by momentarily giving it what it wants, yet also forming an underlying friendship with Peeta based on trust. (NB: I was reminded of People Magazine covers and survival tactics of stars whose fame is ebbing – give the public what they want. I’m also aware that mainstream media has hyped up and sexified the actress who played Katniss. I haven’t been following the Hunger Games collateral but I’ll assume we have happy meals and clothing and other such crap… and there is the ridiculousness of this… which kind of proves my point about the world we actually live in and the evil systems we can’t get away from…)

Early in the movie it was clear that Katniss hadn’t bought into the Hunger Games. She wasn’t friendly or likeable. She’s living in a man’s world and the women in that world are relegated to roles of fashion, emotional overreactions, false statements and bad make up. The men are evil manipulating power seekers in most cases. People are pitted against each other. It’s dog-eat-dog.

But it seemed to me that Katniss, as a smart young woman, recognized all of this. She didn’t want to play the game but understood that to survive and keep the values and goals that she had in life — her love for her sister and her own survival — she needed to appear to be playing by the rules of the Game. My sense throughout the film is that she does so with a clear understanding of what she is doing, and she has not sold out, she’s kept true to herself. That is real agency and internal strength. She refuses to kill, perhaps a harder thing than joining into the violent game young people are forced to engage in. She shows us that we can reject that world and that system we don’t wish to belong to. We can find like-minded people and together move, struggle and survive within the mainstream systems that are destroying us as a whole and, one hopes, eventually change or topple them. Sometimes we can even game those systems using guerrilla tactics because the systems do not expect us to maintain our values, ethics and solidarity, because those running them think we are not smart or strong enough to overcome, or because the systems don’t understand us or our way of thinking.

At a personal level, I related to Katniss. I often feel trapped in systems whose values I don’t share and whose games I don’t want to play. I prefer to reject these systems and play by my own rules when possible. When I get tired enough of fighting, or I know I simply can’t win because the system is too big, I’ll bypass it, ignore it, avoid it as much as possible, and do my own thing, or just curl up mentally into a fetal position and let it kick me, knowing inside that it may think it has won, but it hasn’t because I’ve held to my values and been true to myself, and once I’ve regrouped, and when it’s least expected, I’ll be back, hopefully with some other like-minded people.

We all take something different from books and films. We bring their messages into our own experiences. I didn’t see Katniss as a weak character with no agency, I saw her as living out the struggle that many of us do and making choices I could relate to within the limited space that was available to her.

AidSource

I’m super excited to let you know about a new project I’m part of…

AidSource: The Humanitarian Social Network.

AidSource is something that I’ve been working on with Tales From the Hood and Alanna Shaikh. The idea stemmed somewhat from the fantastic community that appeared via Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like. There are a lot of really smart, thoughtful, witty and dedicated people working in aid and development, and not a lot of unofficial and focused space to talk about the industry and to each other about our work, and how our work impacts on a variety of spheres (from personal to global), and what we’d like to see changing and moving ahead.

We have been beta-testing AidSource for about the past two months, but as of today it is open to the public. To join, just go to AidSource and follow the prompts. It’ll only take you about five minutes to set up a profile and join.

Once inside you’ll be able to join working groups and discussions related to international relief and development, see what events are coming up in the aid world, blog, or just hang out with folks in the aid and development industry from around the world (and of course much, much more!). There is a special section for students and educators, too, so be sure to check that out. We’re hoping that local aid workers will find the space useful too.

You’ll find a fair amount of cross-platform functionality present in AidSource. Members who want to can set up their accounts so that once they’re members, they can log in using Google, Yahoo!, Facebook or Twitter credentials. You can also tweet and update your Facebook status from inside AidSource, ‘friend’ other members, upload photographs or documents, and ‘like’ things.

You can also ‘like’ AidSource on Facebook, follow @AidSource1, and read the AidSource blog, AidSpeak.

We think this is not just a very cool idea and site, but also something that (with time) has the potential to drive significant positive change in the aid industry. We hope you’ll take the time to check out AidSource: The Humanitarian Social Network.

I’m *not* down with SOPA

Many websites are blacked out today to protest the ridiculous and corporate-backed proposed U.S. legislation that threatens internet freedom: the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).  I used the WordPress auto blackout but it doesn’t seem to be working. In any case….

Help stop this legislation from being passed.

Consider:

Still not convinced? Think about this:

Seriously. SOPA/PIPA will make people even dumber than they are now. I don’t know about you, but I might just stab my eyes out with a spork if that happens.

Learn more and contact the US Congress now.

More ‘hardcore’ journalism

This post really set me off yesterday.

@Graham_Bowley of @NYTimes Gets His Story. I Want to Throw Up.

Read it.

People are not props. This whole ‘being a journalist in a difficult place’ is not an excuse to ignore the fact that people, even poor people, yes, even poor people living in difficult places under difficult circumstances or in situations that a journalist finds atrocious, are human, with emotions and feelings and rights. And one of those rights is the right to privacy.

What gives a journalist the excuse to further violate the rights of someone who has already been through some kind of abuse or tragedy?

Individuals, especially children, especially especially children, especially especially especially children who have been through horrific experiences, are not objects or props to be insensitively identified, photographed, used and showcased for the glory of a journalist’s hot and hardcore career.

Did it ever occur to Graham Bowley that people may have been trying to protect the girl that he wanted so badly to get to so he could write his story? Did it ever occur to him that her life and her recovery were more important than his story?

It’s not up to a journalist to decide that the story of someone who survived something terrible should be used as an example for the world. It’s up to the individual to make that decision. And guess what? A person who has just suffered something horrific is often not in the best condition to make an informed decision. Especially if that person is a child.

It’s one thing if a person makes a conscious and willing choice to become a symbol or a spokesperson. It’s entirely another thing if someone else decides that a person who survived something terrible should be a symbol or spokesperson about an issue, without the agreement or informed consent of that person.

Can we show a little respect, please?

HT @elsnarkistani who Storified the whole case here.

Update: If you want to do more than be pissed off about this, Wronging Rights has more on child rights, working with trauma survivors, and a cut and paste letter you can send over to the New York Times Public Editor to let them know how you feel.

Love the way you lie

I’m pleased to feature the fabulous “J,” (retired formerly of Tales from the Hood blogger blog) guest posting here on Shotgun Shack….

I used to think it was up to INGOs to voluntarily be more truthful and accurate in their marketing, more forthcoming with information about program challenges and even failures, and less prone to simplistic, dumbed-down public messaging. It used to really annoy me every time a marketer would go on about how if we don’t “hook” the donor in the first 15 seconds we lose them, or how donors don’t want to hear that aid is complex and difficult, that aid successes are nowhere near as cut-and-dried as our glossy direct mail and interactive websites make it all seem.

But now, I dunno.

Maybe I’m just jaded. Or cynical. But I seriously doubt that the aid industry is going to voluntarily make fundamental changes to the way it talks about what it does. I hate to say it, but I’m starting to think that maybe this kind of change will have to be driven by donors themselves.

* * * * *

Eminem’s controversial 2010 duet with Rihanna, and even more controversial music video captures a theme with which many of us are familiar: the smart, beautiful woman who, against all apparent logic, just cannot bring herself to walk away from an abusive, violent, perhaps deadbeat partner.

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn

Well that’s alright because I like the way it hurts

Just gonna stand there and hear me cry

Well that’s alright because I love the way you lie

I love the way you lie

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Throughout my own career in the aid industry, it has on many occasions been my job to take private donors to the field, either to see projects that they’d already supported or projects that my employer of the day hoped they would support. In every instance, without exception, I found myself in the field with people who had been mis-educated about relief and development work by marketers. I don’t mind admitting that I enjoyed removing the wool from their eyes, in some cases forcibly. I held back nothing about the context, likely impact, sustainability prospects, complexity, difficulty, and so on. I did my best to make sure that they had as clear and complete a picture of what was going on — the good, the bad and the ugly — as possible. In every case their time at the project site with me showed them a picture that contrasted starkly with what they’d been led to believe about how their money made or would make a difference. In some cases they were shocked to learn what we actually did with their money.

But in no instance, ever, did any one of them say, “I think you guys are a bunch of crooks. I’ll be donating elsewhere after this…”, or “This development thing is a lot of bullsh!t. I’m done as a donor.”

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I’m not calling anyone person a liar. Not NGO marketing or comms or PR people. I think that the instances in which NGOs tell outright untruths are extremely rare. But I absolutely believe that the gravitational pull of the aid industry is towards painting a picture for its donors of what it does that is un-nuanced and incomplete enough to be untrue. And we continue to paint this picture because our private donors continue to insist on it.

Donors: you have the power to make this better. You have the power to insist that we tell you what we’re really doing. Based on my own experience, I believe that if we get the chance to tell you, you’ll still support us because good aid makes good sense and you’re smart people. But you seem to be addicted to a fake version. I don’t know why, but you love the way we lie.

8 posts

OK, it’s the end of the year, and thus time for summing up last year and writing listicles, year-in-reviews and predictions for next year and all that jazz. So here’s a list of my 8 favorite posts of all time here on Shotgun Shack, in no particular order.

Fragility
Butterflies
Holes
Promises
White Woman
Finding Meaning in Africa
Rwanda, Bubbling Quietly
Pot Bellies

I hope to find time and space this year to do some more reflective writing. That’s going to take some maneuvering of workload and focus, but it’s what I like doing most, so I’m going to give it my best shot.

Bullets, beads and CDs

A former neighbor of mine has a Lesbian Christmas Party every year and she invites a few current and past neighbors. If I happen to be in town, I go. It’s a catered party with fantastic food, lots of good drinks and a high energy, extremely competitive Yankee Swap.

A Yankee Swap is not a Midwestern thing, I’m pretty certain it’s of East Coast origin. The way my old neighbor does it is that everyone brings a wrapped gift of around $20-25 and places it under the tree. After everyone’s pretty sauced up, numbers are drawn out of a hat. Whoever gets #1 picks a gift, opens it, shows it around, and sits down. Then whoever has the highest number goes next. That person picks a gift, opens it, shows it around, and has the option of keeping the gift or switching it with the gift picked by person #1. It goes on down the line till you get back to #1, with each person picking a gift, opening it, showing it around and then deciding if they will keep their gift, or swap it for a gift that someone else has picked. At the end, #1 gets to swap whatever he or she has for any gift in the room.

Normally the Swap gets pretty out of hand. My neighbor plays MC, calling out what the gifts are, hustling people along, reminding people who has what, and generally getting folks riled up. So there’s some rowdiness. People hide things. There is generally a lot of hooting and laughing.

Customarily, certain gifts carry the party. One year it was a tool belt. Another year it was a waffle iron. Whoever has one of the prized gifts knows they won’t have it for long, because someone else will draw something boring and swap it for the coveted item and they will get left with the dud. If you have the Wonder Woman Snuggie but someone down the line unwraps some Tupperware, you can guess what you’re going to be left with.

This year, the swap starts. And it’s really really tame. Disappointingly so. No one is stealing anyone’s gift. There’s minimal competition. It’s not as crazy loud as it usually is.

So I think, ‘I need to do my part to get this party started.’ I pick a gift, open it, and it’s a couple pairs of fuzzy socks. All devious like, I think ‘I’m stealing that nice bottle of Kahlua over there.’ Never mind that my old neighbor has been announcing that particular gift bag as ‘bullets, beads and CDs’ — my eyes are on the Kahlua portion of it.

So I make a show of going across the room to change my boring gift for the Kahlua. ‘These socks are great! But I’m switching them for this!’

‘Ohhh! She’s going for the bullets, beads and CDs!’ shrieks my fairly tipsy former neighbor to some applause and cheering.

I take the gift bag and go back to my seat on the sofa to relish that nice bottle of Kahlua and see what else might be in there…. And…. Well….

As you might notice, it’s not Kahlua at all. It’s chili chocolate beer. And it’s not anything like the bullets or beads I might have imagined. It’s anal beads, a vibrating bullet and a Marvin Gaye CD so you can get your sexy on. Aha. So that’s why she kept saying ‘bullets, beads and CDs.’ I feel my face turning a bit red as I sit hoping maybe someone will eventually want to swap with me and thinking that from here on out I’ll be known as the kinky former neighbor….

So, the moral of the story, I suppose, is that things are never quite what you think they are.

So pay attention, or you may just end up with the anal beads!

The Clanging Chimes of Doom – Bandaid Remade and Remixed

Reposting to get you in the holiday spirit…. The original post appeared on Nov 20, 2010…. Enjoy! 🙂

This is perhaps one of the most impactful and damaging songs in history. I heard it on the radio today and got pissed off like I do every time I hear it.

Apparently the image of Africa and Africans hasn’t changed much since 1984. Twenty years later comes Band Aid 2 — because every multi-celebrity charity pity song needs a remake…. Love the intro sound of a crying starving child and the astonished yet highly concerned British commentator.

I don’t even know where to start on the stereotypes and disservice that this song (and similar charity marketing and sensationalist journalism) has done to the image of Africa (the Continent) and Africans themselves. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in African countries and I could post photo after photo of rivers and rain there. And things growing.  I never heard any clanging chimes of doom while there. There are lots of people who are not looking out their windows onto “a world of dread and fear”. Many of my African friends won’t celebrate Christmas because they are Muslim, not because they are starving to death. And many others will celebrate Christmas, but not American or Euro style. Not everyone is sitting underneath the burning sun. Africa is not a giant desert. Can we please not show famine in Ethiopia and pretend it’s representative of the entire continent? There won’t be snow in Africa? So what? Gahhhhh!

Luckily there is the glory of social media to take the edge off the fury…. If you don’t like the original version, there are plenty of re-makes to be found on YouTube. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. Here is a selection of the, uh, finest. You be the judge on whether these are worse than the original…. Taking votes in the comments section.

Feed the World with Friends (I wish this were a joke) Version. Wow. Just wow. E for effort. C for caring. D for Do Gooders. But the singing makes me doubt the potential for quality in anything crowdsourced.

Bad 1980s Sponsorship Organization Commercial Photo Montage Version. The original didn’t have enough pictures of crying children and flies in the eyes so this kind person overlaid some of the best of the worst charity photos on to the video to encourage us to care.  (Commenter: So, there won’t be snow in Africa this year? And you say the only gift they’ll get is the gift of life? So, no shoveling, and no commercial holidays? Sign me up.)

Singing Cartoon Turkeys Version (aka PETA Version?)

Dance Aid – Do they know it’s Christmas (Rave Mix) Instrumental so you can dance at your Christmas Rave without feeling guilty because of the lyrics.

Winnipeg Tea Party Version? “Dedicated to the poor children of Winnipeg School Division 1. Children whose childhood is less happy because schools run by tyrants will not say the word Christmas….  Christmas… A holiday so terrible according to commies that it can’t be named….” Special appearance poster by the Folsom Street Fair (the grand daddy of all gay male leather events) whose attendees “mock your religion while demanding that you get rid of the word Christmas…” ends with “glad this baby (Jesus) wasn’t aborted… stop the ACLU”.

2006 College Version complete with a lot of bare midriffs and self absorbed cleavage and blowing hair and dramatic effects which turn into…. a drink infested Christmas party… which ends up in a teenage mums against war protest slash terror attack… and ends with… um. Well if you make it through to the end maybe you can tell me what the point was?

Chris Brown feat. T-Pain laid over Karaoke Instrumental Version (?!?!)  I’m still not sure which lyrics are more awful — these or the original…. this is as bad, maybe worse, than the homemade versions– hard to make it through til the end.

High School Christmas Concert Version with uh high quality filming. (comments section: 3 letters is all this will take. OMG. And 2 words: bloody awful)

1985 High School Talent Show Version. Has that Risky Business feel to it. As a child of the 1980s I’m digging the outfits:

Canadian Version with lots of Tim Horton promos in the background…. “In 1984 the top recording artists across Canada gathered to raise money from the famine in Africa… when the public viewed Canada’s version, the world decided it was best for Canada to just make a fincial (sic) donation instead.”

Hipsters in a Mansion Version (TV Allstars) (“Bless ’em, they seem to think the clanging chimes of doom are something to be cheery about.”)

People in a Toystore with Tambourine and Ukelele Version? Commenter: “Sick! Sick and WRONG! I LOVE IT! My favorite lines: “There won’t be snow in Africa this christmas” (nor in LA, nor Hawaii…???) and “Thank God it’s THEM instead of You” ??? and “Here’s to them underneath that burning sun” – the stupidest lyrics ever !! YOU GUYS ROCK”

Status Quo Video Vault Version (anyone else love and remember The Young Ones? “All the homos in the place goin’ mental now….” “HomeOwners you mean, don’t you….”)

The Clanging Chimes of Doom are Back and Better than Ever Version. Voice and video don’t sync. There’s a dude singing in a shower. There’s a fake adopted black baby. Make it stop.

I’m happy that at least some musicians in the 80s were on the ball.  High 5 to Chumbawamba.

Feed the World. “In 1986, the anarchist band Chumbawamba released the album Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records, as well as an EP entitled “We Are the World”, jointly recorded with US band A State of Mind, both of which were intended as anti-capitalist critiques of the Band Aid/Live Aid phenomenon. They argued that the record was primarily a cosmetic spectacle, designed to draw attention away from the real political causes of world hunger.”

*****

Update Nov 29, 2010: And hey, it seems like Bob Geldof would totally agree with me on this post! I’m starting to gain a little respect for him. According to this Nov 29, 2010, article in the Daily Mail. Geldof, who penned the song 26 years ago together with Midge Ure, says: “I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history. One is Do They Know It’s Christmas? and the other one is We Are The World. Any day soon, I will go to the supermarket, head to the meat counter and it will be playing. Every ****ing Christmas….” The former Boomtown Rats frontman, 59, added: “Sometimes I think that’s wild because I wrote it. Or else I am thinking how much I want them to stop because they are doing it really badly.”