How to survive as an aid worker without losing your soul
Last week I spent an hour on Skype trying to talk another young aid worker back from the ledge. Her issue? That deadly emotional cocktail of constant jet-lag, poured slowly over a tumbler full of organisational stupidity, then garnished with the growing, nagging sense that the link between what she spends her day doing and poverty becoming history is more obscure than previously imagined.
Once the glow of having landed that first real aid job begins to fade, and the reality of the aid world sets in, the mental and emotional demands of life vis-a-vis work can be extraordinary. Not to be dramatic, but it can often feel as if your very soul is on the line. Volumes could be written about why this happens the way it does, but for now I’ll simply share my go-to advice. Not the end-all, be-all, by any means, but here, for posterity and the greater good are four things that will make a difference when the dark days come.
Understand that this is a job. If you read no further in this article, at least get this: Aid work is work. It’s a job like any other. It’s your job, and it’s important to call it that. I can’t think of a more important thing to keep in focus, whether you’re a bright-eyed hopeful future aid worker, or a battle-scarred veteran. There’s your job, and there’s your life work. Maybe your job (aid/development worker) and your life work (making the world better) overlap, but don’t conflate the two. No job, even the one you think is your aid dream job, is the end-all, be-all. As with many other jobs, some days in the aid world are great, while others plain suck.
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Especially on those days that suck, you need to be able to acknowledge that it sucks. You need to be able to acknowledge that your job is just that, your job. And you need to be able to acknowledge these things without it killing your idealism, your desire to make the world better. Your life’s work and your job are not the same thing.
On those days when your job sucks, come home, unplug, practice your hobby, binge-watch your favorite show ... Most important, don’t let one sucky day (or even one sucky month, or mission) make you question your life’s work. You’ll live longer.
Understand the limitations. One of the things we seem to most consistently get wrong is in how we talk about what we – the aid industry, our NGO employers, and even we as individuals – accomplish. We tend to either overstate it by orders of magnitude (“We’re totally making poverty history”) or fall into an endless cycle of seeing only the negative (“the aid industry is broken”).
The truth is, it’s somewhere in the middle. It’s not all broken. We do accomplish some good. And there’s plenty that needs improvement, too. If you focus only on the positive rainbows and bunnies, and children in poor countries grinning at the camera while saying “thank you”, you will have a rude awakening one day. At some point, the reality of the industry will slap you in the face, and you’ll have a meltdown, crisis of aid faith, and maybe quit your job. Or if you only focus on the negative – it’s all bad, all the time – you’ll quickly become depressed, or perhaps worse. Try to find the balance. Try to neither oversell the contributions nor wallow in the dysfunction. Know where you fit into the process of making the world (incrementally) better, as well as what role you have to play in making the aid system better.
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Be honest and uncompromising about both. You’ll live longer.
Be able to say what you want out of it, and what you’re getting out of it. You should know and be able to explain why your aid job is good for you. Me? I have bills to pay and a family to support. I want the benefits of a global life without having to either join the military or line the pockets of corporate shareholders. Hopefully, I’ll be able to retire one day, ideally near water, preferably in the Caribbean. Any of that ring true for you? Yes? No? Doesn’t really matter. Figure out what you want and know what you are getting out of your aid job. And not as in, “I just want to make a difference”, but as in, “I want to go to cool places with interesting people.”
One of the most damaging things you can do to yourself and to the relationships that matter to you, is to think of and articulate your choice to be an aid worker in terms of sacrifice – that is, in terms of you only giving and not getting (or at least giving more than you’re getting). Of course, at some level, we do this because we believe we can make the world better. That’s normal, and I’m certainly not suggesting that we should all revel in hedonistic materialism. But it is also perfectly acceptable to expect to get something tangible in return for your aid or development work. This is a job, remember? How do you personally benefit from being an aid or development worker? How do you want to benefit?
Be as specific and honest with yourself as you can. You’ll make better choices all around. And you’ll live longer.
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Know when to get out. Think “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers: “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em”. This seems basic, but it tends to be complicated in real life by the aid worker’s propensity to complain about everything all the time. It can be easy to lose track of where the self-important, jaded, whinging ends, and where issues of actual, serious substance begin. Among the harmful, debilitating things that I have personally witnessed in the lives of my aid worker friends and colleagues is simply their inability to see a toxic situation for what it is and remove themselves from it. Maybe it’s something about the external context, maybe it’s your organisation’s R&R policy, maybe it’s the jerk who never cleans up after himself in the team house kitchen, maybe your relationships are melting down because you’re always gone. Very often, though, these situations sneak up on you, and what started out as a minor grievance suddenly becomes a massive issue.
Go through the exercise of thinking through your own personal triggers now so that you’re not caught by surprise, wondering what to do when they actually happen. What would you leave the aid industry over? What would you leave your current employer over? Identify your limits now. Maybe you’ll change them later. But think through them now. You’ll live longer.
Last time I spoke to that young aid worker she’d managed to find her way back from the ledge. Maybe it was just a few nights of good sleep. Maybe she’d seen something work – tangible evidence that aid and development gains, however difficult and incremental still do happen. Or maybe she just found that Zen space between (sometimes harsh) reality and possibility. It was not the moment to fold ‘em, quite yet.
“J” has been working in aid for many years. He blogs pseudonymously at aidspeak.wordpress.com and Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like.
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