On second thought...

Well well…it is clear from the previous post that I was a bit grumpy. It had been quite rightly pointed out that I was suffering from an element of culture shock - having left the honeymoon stage I was starting my decent into the depths of despair. I thank you for your help, it is a funny thing that it takes someone else to note it before you realize.

There is more to it than that. I have always wanted to be part of this organization because it represents excitement while doing a world of good to some people we work with. There is a frenetic energy and an excitement which comes from jumping into the morass of a CHE or a natural disaster. Things are black and white: save a life or not. Build a shelter or not. Do the right thing or not. There is no reliance or requirement on 'sustainability'. There is no concern about 'cross-cutting themes'. When you reach the IDP camp the work is easy to define: measles, water, shelter, and food. Since THEM is an 'independent medical aid agency' who advertises proximity, the work is self-defining enough - save a life (leave the water, shelter and food to another player).

However, here in Liberia our project is clearly more transitional in nature than emergency relief. This is a bit of a bother to me as the folks here are not able (or unwilling) to answer the question of 'where do we stop with our work and where does another agency step in"? So our in our hospital, we pay the salaries of the local staff, fix their plumbing, fix the electricity, build extensions, paint the wards, build clothes lines, supply furniture...., our clinics, all four of them, get built, roofed, staffed, painted, furnitured, supplied with stationary, be given training..., our outreach team goes to over 100 villages in the country-side giving out condoms, repairing broken water pumps, desires to build spring casings for those places with spring water but no pumps, gives training to the traditional birth attendants, gives training to midwives, gives training to..... I am saying that every time we see a need (and there are always more to be seen) we seem to fill it with no consultation to a budget or to the logframe. These are irrelevant documents here in the field. Our logframe says provide MEDICAL supplies to the hospital and clinics. Cést tout.

I don't like 'development'. I had my fill of it in the Philippines. Some 30 million CAD over 10 years and there was nothing to show for it but a bunch of rich opportunist folks at head office- and the folks in the country preferring handouts over travail because it is too hard to work. I want to get my hands dirty and save a life. Instead, I am the supplier who has to give people pens and paper because we have ‘em and the MOH decides it does not want to cover their obligations.

Remember Mary B Anderson? Creating dependency is doing harm. Providing aid so that agencies/governments can redirect their money to other things is doing harm.

In your PPD, ask how many folks know Mary Anderson, or the Sphere guidelines. You will be surprised. Your PPD will be full of idealistic folks, mostly sub-30 who like to party and drink lots (be careful). Most smoke. Most will be young doctors who have a head full of medicine but not much info on the world of Emergency relief. The PPD instructors will not delve into what it means to be Emergency Relief. How to triage or how to accept that there will be death you cannot control. Or Culture Shock, or how to deal with other expats when cooped up for long time in a small area. These are critical topics to me that should be discussed but are passed over for THEM brainwashing - because if folks knew before they went they would not go...let them figure it out when they get there and it is too late.

Interesting note: in my PPD we had a log (female, if that means anything) that gave a first mission briefing. She was HARSH and told of one problem after another and how she struggled. How she got shafted at her EOM evaluation and how she had to go to the mat to protect herself - and did successfully - from unjust evaluations. She was very clear, wanted to be very clear, about just how difficult things were and she made a strong impression - the only POSITIVE impression - that I got out of the whole PPD. I thanked the PPD advisors for permitting her to talk in realistic terms about what it was like in mission, because I think it was the only 'real' content we got at the PPD.