La Vie Humanitaire – Part 5: Dishwater Ditches

High up the hillside beneath the imposing ramparts of ko-e-murgh (literally mountain of nails) lies a school which serves the children of the surrounding valleys. The high altitude and long winters mean the students only attend classes for about seven months of the year.  The terrain is difficult and limited educational service provision leaves some of them walking three hours each way if they are to get any schooling at all. Latrines for boys and girls have been installed and a protected water source high on the mountain delivers pure, cold water in great abundance to the campus. I filled my bottle direct from the tap stand and drank with confidence – something I have rarely done in four years of aid work and is surely the crucial test of faith in our work. Before Medair started this project three years ago, children were regularly getting sick and missing school because of waterborne diseases. Since the implementation of the water, sanitation and hygiene programming (WASH in NGO jargon) diarrhoeal rates have decreased and student health has improved. This is the kind of success story that makes this work seem worthwhile – the vulnerable assisted in their time of need and given hope for the future.

Further down the valley women and children hunch over an open drain and scrub teapots, pans, plates, cutlery and glasses. The ditch runs down from the mountain, along the road, through the village and then into the fields back towards the stream from where the water it carries came from. It is open and exposed to run-off from this route used by livestock, vehicles and people on foot. The water is dirty and yet it is a popular place among local women and girls for doing the dishes. Simply put, if clean, potable water is not used for drinking and washing people get sick. The children at the school know this and yet something has gone wrong here in a project which was supposed to serve the school and this village from which some of the students come.

There is a tap stand less than twenty metres away but the source was never protected at the head wall and the four hundred metres of sturdy plastic pipe to ensure delivery of potable water to the holding tank was never fitted. Consequently, dirty water from the ditch is used for washing up rather than the much needed clean water. Clearly there was a failure to get the work done and the community will have suffered as a result. That said, within the population there is knowledge about good water practice and this ditch is not their only option. A large percentage of the community would have also received the same messaging as the school during this project on health and appropriate water usage. Water can be boiled (one simple option but not the only one) and there are local means and knowledge to create a good water source independently of NGOs. While this situation reveals the inadequacies of humanitarian projects there is also a question to be addressed about who takes responsibility for WASH provision and good practice. Even when all the necessary information and resources are available it does not follow that people will adopt new behaviour. A disconnect exists in such contexts and communities clearly have different priorities and motivations despite attempts at local collaboration.

Unfortunately this sorry tale and variations on this theme are not that uncommon across the poorer nations of the world. You do not need to travel far to see wells that do not function for lack of an easily available part, even with a water management committee in place to maintain it. When you enquire about why a water source has fallen into disrepair or observe poor hygiene practice the response will invariably end up with requests for more projects even though the evidence suggests little would change if another project was implemented. During a project you may see changes in practice but once the resources stop flowing into the community the trend appears to be that people will return to their earlier habits. You could argue that there are deep cultural and personal reasons for it but it could also be said that durable results are rare and that behavioural change is very slow and may take generations. Worse, if by engaging with such communities it actually disempowers them and makes people dependent on outsiders then it could also be argued that in the longer-term the relief sector is not helping. It is a deeply unpopular but not original idea to suggest that doing nothing may be better. Doing no harm is a central tenet in humanitarian work but the sector systematically creates dynamics within societies which often seem to disenfranchise them from ownership and responsibility for significant aspects of their lives. This is where aid and development is akin to colonialism and the civilising mission whereby it claims to be a redemptive intervention while trapping people in a subservient condition.

The aid and development sector always bandies on about accountability, integrity and compassion and uses images of the child with distended belly or women doing dishes in ditches to engage them emotionally and move them to give money. If the humanitarian sector really made the difference it claims to then perhaps this PR machinery would be justified. The reality, however, is much more convoluted and deeply informed by ideas of race, economic exploitation by the West and its militarism for geo-political ends. This is not to undermine the good intentions of many aid workers who dedicate their lives to serving the poor but to say that we are all caught up in an industry which is; not accountable in any meaningful way; committed to the status quo; and driven by powers which do not seek first the dignity and interests of the people they claim to serve.

You would think clean water, latrines and hygiene training in rural Afghanistan could never be a bad thing and, in and of themselves they are not. But, writ large, what can be observed is a troubling development during at least the past fifty years in its current form which bares an ugly resemblance to aspects of Europe’s imperial past. Moreover, it is simply not bringing about the change it seeks however noble or good the stated goals.

C’est la vie humanitaire.

La Vie Humanitaire – Part 4: On the Wing

The white kite flip-flops above the houses, its movements muddled by the dirty, broken clouds behind it and the early winter snow of the mountains that surround Kabul. My neighbour’s small boy, who never lived through the ban on kite flying during the Taliban era, is learning how to manoeuvre his one with skill, perhaps also becoming aware of the history of various battles over the skies of the capital. Traditionally pairs of boys, a pilot and runner, work as a team to chop down other kites by using the kite string. This is covered with finely crushed glass to strengthen it and enable the pilot to wrap his line around other lines and sever them. Once loosed, his runner predicts where the falling kite will land and sprints to claim it ahead of other boys who have seen the prize tumble. You don’t see men flying kites. Needless to say, unfortunately, neither do you see any women or girls. Afghan men seem to progress to other pastimes – keeping pigeons is one. From the rooftop opposite a middle-aged man calls to his birds with sucking lips as he waves a long dark flag, calling them home. Similar to kite-flying the goal is to attract other birds and acquire them into your flock while avoiding this happening to yours. The pleasure of kites and pigeons share a joy in the act, but even more, what you can gain.

Afghanistan is a country that has known much war. This is an understatement of course. The past forty years have seen multiple violent takeovers of the country including two foreign military occupations. To be ruled by the gun is what everyone knows here as well as the fear and uncertainty of violence. Amniyat (security) is what everyone longs for but has never really known in their lifetime. When there is not a foreign ‘infidel’ taking over Afghanistan and using it as a pawn in their geo-political games, there is a domestic ethnic dimension which is as fierce and bloody as any mujahedeen resistance. When the Russians left in 1989 after their ten-year proxy war with America, the warlords who had fought to evict them, rich and well-armed from CIA support funnelled through the Pakistani secret service ISI, used their power to vie for control over the country. The worst of the fighting happened in the capital with the various warlords taking up positions on the commanding hills that dominate Kabul’s skyline, bombing and blasting all hell out of each other. Thousands of civilians were killed, maimed or scarred in the process. In those days, so the history books tell us, the night sky was full of flares to illuminate targets and daytime littered with rockets winging their way through the air to devastate government ministries and innocent peoples’ homes with impunity and lethal intent. Such was the fatalism of some locals that they started to walk brazenly down the middle of the street rather than scurry along close to buildings and walls – a dangerous form of liberation from fear but all they could do in reaction to the horror engulfing their lives. Most staff members I talk to have personal stories which tell of how they experienced this – a limp, a fatherless man, a family in exile or lost to them.

Sunshine streams into my room while a green mesh gives privacy but also creates a barrier between me and the kite-flying boy. A pigeon belonging to my neighbour lands on the rusty, spiked perimeter fence designed to keep out would-be intruders and peers at me through the cracked, bird shit-stained window pane. I am warm, secure and trapped. I long to fly up and away from the control, threat and suspicion of this place. Flight has long been associated with freedom. For many Afghans to fly away from here is all they long for – to abandon this place which offers little hope and many dark memories. I became an aid worker for adventure, a challenge and mostly to bring relief to those who were suffering and help them build a better life. These are flights of fancy.

C’est la vie humanitaire.

Postscript

The sun is setting and the pigeons are returning to the roof top coop on the third floor of the building next door. Children are playing in the last light as the call to prayer echoes in the Taimani district where I am staying. There are many constants that have endured down the centuries in Afghan life but belief in God, however twisted or culturally contorted, enables Afghans to accept their fate and find joy where it can be found. Everyday hobbies are important and give a sense of normalcy and continuity, especially in places where life is hard and violence an everyday reality. Perhaps in keeping birds or flying kites there is distraction and escape. Pigeons circle in groups now all across this part of the city. Round and round they fly readying themselves for home and the feeding and preening which precedes roosting for the night. Afghans think of the common pigeon, particularly white ones, in the same way that westerners think of doves – bringers of peace and messengers of hope. As long as they fly over Kabul I will deep down keep on quietly believing that better days are possible for all who reside here.

La Vie Humanitaire – Part 3: Lonely Mountains

This vain portrait above shows me on a fairly typical day in Bamiyan travelling between bases. The photo was taken on a pass outside Panjâb where we stopped to check out the impressive rock formations. They are a striking red colour and the climbing potential is wonderful. However, there was no time to explore further or seriously bother with the unlikely organisational approvals that would be required to have an outing. Local community permissions would be straightforward enough and the chance of a fall would be the biggest risk not any turbaned men looking on with guns and a glint in their eyes.

It’s all very glamorous or so it seems (and you tell yourself) is the impression of those you meet between contracts or on R&R from some war-torn or other disaster zone. Back home, if you still have one after a few years of aid work, you often become some kind of irrelevant misfit hero or simply misunderstood depending on how well you have stayed in touch or how well you are known. Joyful moments amid the reality of field life are more like occasional diamonds hidden within seams of coal rather than reefs of gold. Mostly it is all about enduring simple hardships and trying to achieve the most basic service provision or project implementation and not go completely mental in the process. For example, there is no firewood so we’ll all be cold because the guy responsible has no sense of planning ahead but instead spent most of the day, and previous weeks as the pile decreased, sitting in the early winter sunshine keeping warm and then using up the fuel supply at night while we were in project locations. Meanwhile we were monitoring water points, three of which were never completed even though they had been reported as functioning prior to last winter, which means that for a whole year families have gone without when they should have benefitted from plentiful, clean water and thereby reduced the incidence of waterborne diseases and improved health because they weren’t losing nourishment to diarrhoea. Rather than tell the truth about both circumstances there were ‘complex cultural reasons’ why they lied and didn’t do their job properly. What this actually means is that the shame they would feel would be too much and so to retain their “honour” they blamed others or denied knowledge completely. And that pile of horseshit is what an aid worker deals with every other day.

Still, in these ‘richly textured cross-cultural experiences’ there is in fact a complexity as to the reasons why and the same guy who will lie to your face will keep you from an offence causing faux pas ensure you are welcomed to hang out with his mates and play cards, joke and share his social time and space instead of retreating to a single cell room to watch a trashy TV series you’ve seen before or stare blankly at the wall trying forlornly to comprehend what was actually going on when you realised once again that you were lied to and there was a massive cover up going on. And so when the scene is stop-the-car-stunning or warm comradery embraces you in the lonely mountains, you remember again what a massive privilege it is to be in a place like Afghanistan and are grateful for any companionship on this journey. Yet, the dominant themes of dislocation, frustration and isolation remain while aid workers tend to pitch these experiences as something to be envied even as they criticise their work, just as I do as in this attempt at disclosure. So much of this is vanity and our deepest motivations are equally opaque.

C’est la vie humanitaire.

La Vie Humanitaire – Part 2: Securitised

Leaving Kabul after a week of confinement at the NGO compound felt like a release from an internment camp. Not that I was a prisoner but the base was like a place where you are obliged to stay because those in authority think that this will be best for you. Often beneath this reasoning is a more honest layer of reality which means that it is safer for them if you don’t venture out because it allays their fears of perceived threats, gives a sense of taking responsibility and avoids possible lawsuits. It has always confounded me that that humanitarian organisations are so bureaucratically risk adverse when the nature of the work they do naturally puts their field staff in objectively unsafe environments. This is not to say that I or any other aid worker necessarily seeks out the adrenaline-fuelled highs we sometimes find ourselves caught up in, but, we implicitly accept that the work we do exposes us to situations that may cause us harm. It comes with the territory. Organisationally however, there is an attempt to create a security bubble around us that isolates us from the local context and in some cases makes it more dangerous to operate effectively because we are so removed from reality on the ground. UN and foreign diplomatic staff are an extreme example of this. Some work in Kabul for years but rarely, if ever, venture or even see beyond their compounds walls. The sense in which they are meaningfully experiencing living in Afghanistan is very limited (they could be anywhere) – much less so for me but on the same continuum. I call this phenomenon ‘securitisation’ – a noun but also verb done to such workers.

One might think that Medair, whom I work for, would fly me to project locations themselves because surely air travel is a core part of their work. Don’t let the name (or retro logo above) confuse you – we have no planes and offer no air service. Our work is not medical either. Although, health and nutrition programming does form an important part of our core activities. I flew out of the Afghan capital on a plane operated by United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS). As we rose above the city, the dirty brown cloud hovering in a polluted faecal haze was clear to all on board. This undoubtedly explains the origins of the mildly rasping cough I developed within a day of arriving. The plane headed west over dry, rocky mountains into thin, clear air and bright light towards Bamyan. This is where I will be based for my stay in Afghanistan and the prospect of clean air and relative calm will be a welcome change from life in the capital. All things being equal I will be relatively free to move around town and the province. I look forward to the prospect of strolling through the bazar, eating in local restaurants and even short walks in the Hindu Kush – Afghanistan’s central massif – which all fall outside the ‘No Go’ list of proscribed places. Of course, I will be accompanied by a driver and translator at all times regardless of my experience and local language ability. Like it or not, I will be fully securitised. Whether I will be safer as a result is a different matter.

C’est la vie humanitaire.

La Vie Humanitaire – Part 1: Bread of Life

Nân is the staple food in Afghanistan. Afghans eat this with most meals and so it is perhaps unsurprising that the word also applies to food generally. There are a number of varieties such as nân-e-roghanî (pictured above) which is made using oil which makes it sweeter and richer with a taste somewhat like a croissant. This is a generous comparison but when freshly baked it is soft and delicious. However, by the end of the day it is stiff and lost most of its tastiness. Bread is usually eaten the day it is made. However, not for the first time in Afghanistan’s history, many people in this country don’t have a choice and are fortunate to have nân once a day. Nân is indeed their daily bread and the country’s rhythms revolve around the daily preparation or purchase and breaking of bread together. Meals are invariably shared and at a minimum accompanied by tea which is often sweetened with sugar. This round flat bread is baked locally from Mazar-e-Sharif in the north to Herat in the West, and from Khandahar in the south to Jalalabad in the east. Naturally there are regional variations but it is nân that has sustained Afghans rich and poor for centuries. It is prepared and sold daily from small bakeries with wood-fired clay ovens or by the children of widows from woven baskets on street corners trying to supplement their meagre income. In the three years since I was last in Afghanistan there has been much hardship, conflict and inflation largely due to the staggering amount of foreign aid funds which have flooded in, much of it to sustain the US-led military project which began here following 9/11. Still, the price on the street of a nân remains ten Afghanis (the local currency and not a word used to refer to Afghan people). The enduringly low price of bread means that even the poorest people, of whom there are many, can afford this essential food item that gives life to all. I would love to say that today I could walk to my local bakery in Kabul and buy my own nân but I cannot. Working for an international NGO with very restrictive security protocols means I am cut off from everyday life on the streets by explosion-proof, sand-bagged walls and not permitted to venture out for such a simple task as buying bread and talking with my neighbours. This task is done for me whereas previously I knew the baker and happily took the same risks as the chowkidâr (guard) now takes for me. I’m not sure the risks are much higher than previously, although security across Afghanistan has steadily deteriorated over the past few years and more so since American combat troops left in 2014, but I simply don’t have the choice or pleasure of buying my own nân as long as my stay here is mandated by my current employer.

C’est la vie humanitaire.

Untitled

The young foolish dreamer
Who wishes upon a star
Knows, like twinkling twice
Hope can carry you far

Even skipping and jumping
Along moon beams beyond
Into the heart’s imaginings
No faith in magical wands

Or witch doctor juju
Beneath dark African thatch
That conceals in shadow
A smoky deceptive catch

The celestial Congo sky
And way out milky haze
Too wonderful to behold
At heavenly bodies gaze

Looking for something known
The Southern Cross perhaps
Or a promise of new life
Like the magis’ maps

Nothing cries perfection
Beauty and strength, gone
Eyes once starry dimmed
Oh how her qualities shone

Alone, lonesome once more
The dirt road stretches out
To Saramabila and Kindu
Empty and without doubt

Human flaws exposed, ugly
Like an open cast mine
Diamonds and gold hidden
This scarred earth a crime

That weeping cannot cry out
The soaked up innocent tears
Or the blood of Mai-Mai
For too many years

Base instincts dominate
Sexual appetites ravish
Where savage violence reigns
Love surely must vanish

Vacant eyes mask the smile
Oh how we are weary Lord
Yet little ones still beam
Before fathers bored

Where in this land are you?
Your fabled fulness of life?
For these Congolese and me
Companions in this strife

The final flickering light
Of a planet that is dying
Once lovely, enchanting
Neither known nor crying

When wishing wish again
Let it be as children do
Hopeful and expectant
Light shining through

My Saturday Poem

Orchids and birdsong

Lake Kivu tranquil

Verdant bush-clad hills

Painted hazy in green

For a balcony exclusive

This Bukavian idyll

Almost colonial

In the NGO style

Too removed perhaps

From everyday life

A helicopter arrives

Obliterating the calm

Like coffee in China

Instant made fancy

A veneer so common

Like peace in Baraka