I worked in humanitarian disasters - AMA

[Moondust001]

Inspired by a thread about the current situation on St Vincent's Island. I spent 30 years travelling around the world as a "first / early responder" to natural and man-made "disasters" - from war zones to famines to earthquakes.

AMA.

@blueshoes

OP, what is the personality or traits of a person who would do this. Why do you choose the hard and high road when you could a comfortable more stable and conventional life.

I am full of admiration for people like you. I would get secondary PTSD in a moment and question God immediately if I even saw a fraction of what you do on the field. Just reading about it makes me so sad and, where it is cruelty that humans inflict on each other, angry. How do you deal with these emotions.

You have to care enough, but not too much. To separate out what you see and focus on what you can change. Why choose it - I think it possibly chose me. But I wanted to make a difference, I was young, idealistic and probably also stupid. I'm not young any more. The rest, probably I am still. I honestly didn't intend to end up doing this - it was a couple of years that just never quite got to the end!

It probably goes without saying, but it's partly personal resilience, but also - that army of professionals I mentioned before include counsellors and mental health professionals. Even when we are at home and not on site. Looking after our welfare has to focus high on the agenda.

@Enrosadira

Have no questions at the moment OP but thank you for this thread, it is so interesting.

Thank you. I'm glad it's interesting.

Oops - the internet just lost my latest answer and i have to get off - I promise I will answer the questions left later on!

OP, firstly, thank you for doing this and what an interesting insight so far
I would like to ask your opinion on refugees. I use to always think that they are here and they had no choice, they are ordinary people etc. I think that's quite a common view.
However my mum, who experience war and upheaval in her own country (but came to the UK for economic reasons) had an extremely low, and surprising opinion on asylum seekers and refugees. Her reasoning was: the ones with sharp elbows, money and connections make it through, IE the ones who have the pocket or favours of the antagonising parties in the conflict are the ones that make it to safety. Or the ones that snitched on others perhaps. What do you think? She was a bit flamboyant so I have no idea if she was personally snubbed by a refugee or if this is from experience 🤣

Wow, what a fascinating life. A woman I greatly admire goes out to the Gaza Strip to help build homes for families whose homes were bulldozed by soldiers. We live in such a lucky bubble here in the UK.
This is a question I wouldn't dare ask in real life, but was the No More White Saviours movement a help or hindrance? We were told by Trisha that Ed Sheridan and Stacey Dooley etc were on vanity projects, and that gap year students helping to build wells just get in the way. Do you think that put people off helping, or does it make people think about what they are actually contributing?

@Maskedrevenger

How do you cope mentally with “repeat events” such as repeated famines in certain parts of the world. For us watching news bulletins at home, we can donate, raise awareness, do what little we can then in a few years it’s happening again on a bigger scale it’s heartbreaking. What is the most effective way that we can help? Now you are back home do you take normal things for granted again like plentiful food, reliable electricity, sanitation and running water?

Right, I lost this reply last time.

How do you cope with repeat events. Well the human made ones - the "never again's" (wars) that we do again and again. I am not sure anyone "copes" with that. But famines and so on, yes, it is frustrating at times because you know that often changes could be made and it isn't happening. Do you know, for example, that the region of Ethiopia that experiences the famines you keep seeing sits on top of massive natural water supplies? Ethiopian farmers are amazing - they can grow crops on dry rock, and have miraculous irrigation systems based on minute amounts of water. But they can't get to the water underneath them - yet the basic technology to enable them to is easily available, they just can't afford it. It seems we would often prefer to give them food and aid that makes them more reliant on us than what they actually need. And what that does is create dependant populations who wait to be given what they need, rather than using what they have to be independent. Go pretty much anywhere in the world and you will hear people saying that. And it applies to the UK too, where we spend a lot of money keeping people on benefits when we could use that money to give them what they need to be able to work. We have too many dependent cultures across the world, and it is not good for them or us.

So look to change those things. And sometimes that means looking closer to home than you'd think. Don't make people complacent and accepting of what they are given - don't give them a fish, teach them to fish and give them a net!

No, I don't think you ever get back to taking things for granted. I hope not anyway. There are people in the UK who don't have those things even now.

@Enrosadira

Have a question: what’s the shortest and longest time a stint has lasted?

Shortest - 8 weeks in West Africa for Ebola, and if there was any place that I was happy to see the back of that was it. People wonder why I think Covid is nothing much (and seriously, I don't underestimate it, but Ebola is bloody scary!)....but I was only supposed to be there for that long and would have stayed longer if I was needed. I am just glad I wasn't.

Longest - Probably Ethiopia if you consider that I was there twice, about 18 months in total. Longest single stint was Haiti, for 8 months, because that was a great example of how to make a bad situation a lot worse, so what we started off needing to do ended up being very different than what was later needed.

@Steph64

Are some NGOs and charities more efficient than others?

What can I do to ensure my charitable donations are most wisely spent?

I don't think I can answer this. I'm not sure the answer will help you. They are all supervised and monitored somewhere, and I don't think any of them do a bad job. I know that there have been concerns about the amounts some spend on "back office", but that is a tough one to call - people in aid work still deserve decent salaries and conditions, and sometimes people think that we just do it for the love of it. Of course we do (usually), but that doesn't mean we want to be paupers. Mother Theresa, I am not!

When I give I decide what values and activities matter to me, and that is how I make my decisions amongst the many good things I could give to. For example - not an aid case here, some people will know that my lifelong "family" have been working Broder Collies (who yes, travelled with me - they also worked, and I come from a farming background). So dogs are another passion of mine. I give to the Dogs Trust not to the RSPCA. I do not believe in putting a dog down unless there are health / clinical reasons why that is the best option; I don't believe in killing a dog because humans don't want it. That's a personal choice.

So what matters to you? Think about it properly, and don't be guided by gut instincts and emotional pulls. If you donate to every worthy cause you will be poverty stricken, and just because there is a disaster now, today, doesn't mean you should give because you feel sorry for them. I'm not saying don't, obviously, but think about what you think will make the world a better place and find somewhere that agrees with you. That's the place you should support.

Damn, damn damn. It ate my reply to someone again! Wow is it just me or is this site really weird at times? I'll try again in a bit. I was up to Jay55. In the words of Arnold, I will be back....

Thank you @Moondust001 very thought provoking. I do volunteer quite a lot in my local community especially with hard pressed families and donate what I can to a local organisation that does amazing work on a shoestring. I’ll apply that thinking to deciding which larger organisations to support.

@jay55

Did it put you off normal travel/holidays? Were you able to switch off properly when home or were you always waiting for the next disaster?

I didn't think there be this much interest and great questions! Not complaining, just surprising.

To the first question... when do the planes start flying again? So no, it didn't put me off travelling or holidays. My version of holidays isn't most people I guess - very few beaches involved. Before my arthritis got bad, I'd, amongst others things, climbed to Macchu Picchu; toured the Galapagos; walked the Great Wall... You get my drift? My idea of relaxation might be Lallibella - you can look it up! Now my arthritis prevents some of that, I still haven't hit the beach. I just adapted. Whale watching was my last big one before Covid. For my 60th I toured the revolutionary road of Cuba in a classic car. And when the planes start up again, I'll be off.

Yes you learn to switch off, even for breaks. You have to. But you don't lose the radar. I was watching the Caribbean early last week. I watch Brazil, and not just about Covid but the politics of it. I watch the UK too. We're quietly having our human rights removed, and I wonder why it doesn't seem to matter more. Or where it might lead.

@LonstantonSpiceMuseum

OP, firstly, thank you for doing this and what an interesting insight so far I would like to ask your opinion on refugees. I use to always think that they are here and they had no choice, they are ordinary people etc. I think that's quite a common view. However my mum, who experience war and upheaval in her own country (but came to the UK for economic reasons) had an extremely low, and surprising opinion on asylum seekers and refugees. Her reasoning was: the ones with sharp elbows, money and connections make it through, IE the ones who have the pocket or favours of the antagonising parties in the conflict are the ones that make it to safety. Or the ones that snitched on others perhaps. What do you think? She was a bit flamboyant so I have no idea if she was personally snubbed by a refugee or if this is from experience 🤣

What a great question.

I'd start by saying that I don't think there's really a huge difference between economic and political refugees. Does it really matter whether that dictator will kill you today, or your poverty will kill you next week? It is true yes - if you have money, resources or connections it can be easier. It was ever thus. But so what? Why would a skilled medical professional from Sudan (and yes, I'm talking about someone real here) come to the UK, where his skills are worthless, and drive a taxi barely making ends meet?

I think that people can be perverse. Logic doesn't always enter into it. In 2016 I spent many weeks arguing with people - mostly young adults - about why they shouldn't vote to leave the EU because they opposed immigration. There are too many immigrants. I had two counterpoints. The first was obvious - BREXIT was not a vote on immigration and would make no difference. The other one was stupid - where your dad/ mum from again? And oh yes, the answer was Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Uganda... Welcome to Priti Patel's world. Slam the door once you are on the right side of it. I'm not being horrible about that. People just don't think very much!

@Overdueanamechange

Wow, what a fascinating life. A woman I greatly admire goes out to the Gaza Strip to help build homes for families whose homes were bulldozed by soldiers. We live in such a lucky bubble here in the UK. This is a question I wouldn't dare ask in real life, but was the No More White Saviours movement a help or hindrance? We were told by Trisha that Ed Sheridan and Stacey Dooley etc were on vanity projects, and that gap year students helping to build wells just get in the way. Do you think that put people off helping, or does it make people think about what they are actually contributing?

I sit in the middle of this. I'm uncomfortable with the idea that this is sometimes a black and white issue - literally. I come from a family of Scottish small farmers and strong Irish roots. My mum was Irish, all but one grandparent, and all grandparents. And anyone who tries to tell me about my white privilege gets a very detailed explanation of what that means to the Irish or Scottish! BLM matters and is important. But if the person stopping that knee on your neck is white, are you going to object? I was bloody horrified at that murder - and I do call it murder - but not surprised. Had I been there i wouldn't have been able to stop myself. I do have anger! As I said, not a saint at all.

What am I saying? Nobody should be saving someone else. Everybody should be saving everyone else. If celebrities have genuinely engaged and asked what they can do to help, if that answer is using their status to raise awareness, I'm fine with that. I do think it's often more about them though. It's how they do it, not what they do.

Gap year students, well I feel differently about that. I hope that gap year students learn something that lasts them a lifetime. But I'm sure that someone who didn't have a well now has one. If any black person finds that objectionable, then perhaps they examine their own privilege. Only someone with clean running water cares to examine the colour of all the people digging a well.

I think I've answered everyone now. If I've missed anyone, or missed a question, please let me know and I'll go back to it. And thanks for the interest.

Ps. I think I've just proven my "not a saint" claim by totally losing it with the antivaxxers on the St Vincent's thread. Oops.

Thanks for answering mine, OP.

Can I ask two more -- you talked upthread about people in your field having to look after their MH and there being counsellors etc available both when you're in the field and afterwards. Do those MH professionals have experience in doing the kind of work you do, or at least the environment? Otherwise it must be difficult for them to offer appropriate MH support, surely? (Inspired by a policeman friend who is training as a psychotherapist with the idea that after he retired, he will specialise in first responder MH support, which is apparently in miserably short supply.)

The other question is more existential, I suppose. In your work you deal on a regular basis with people to whom you need to supply the bottom tier of Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- food, shelter. Does that make you impatient with 'first world problems' from the top of that hierarchy when you are back at home? I mean, do you find yourself snapping 'After what I saw in Myanmar, I can't weep over the fact that your sofa is the wrong colour!'?

@Phrenologist

Thanks for answering mine, OP.

Can I ask two more -- you talked upthread about people in your field having to look after their MH and there being counsellors etc available both when you're in the field and afterwards. Do those MH professionals have experience in doing the kind of work you do, or at least the environment? Otherwise it must be difficult for them to offer appropriate MH support, surely? (Inspired by a policeman friend who is training as a psychotherapist with the idea that after he retired, he will specialise in first responder MH support, which is apparently in miserably short supply.)

The other question is more existential, I suppose. In your work you deal on a regular basis with people to whom you need to supply the bottom tier of Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- food, shelter. Does that make you impatient with 'first world problems' from the top of that hierarchy when you are back at home? I mean, do you find yourself snapping 'After what I saw in Myanmar, I can't weep over the fact that your sofa is the wrong colour!'?

On mental health yes. They specialise, and most on on site or have been.

Oh shit yes!!! See previous post about antivaxxers. But honestly, I am less bothered about the whole "there are starving people in Africa" thing with the kids who won't eat greens. What really pisses me off is "I'm sending the kids to private school but resent paying Council Tax". If you can't care about the people down the street, then you can't begin to understand Myanmar. We are a wealthy nation. Children are hungry. They leave school unable to read or write. They are cold. How the hell do we not care about that?

I am 63. My family were poor. Honestly, it feels like it was better then! Maybe I'm too old. But I feel like everyone is in it for themselves. It's all "fight for me and mine". We have a selfish society. Not everyone. Not all the time. But more than it used to be. Scarily, those "third world problems" are on our doorstep. And we still think the matching sofa is the big issue.

Ps. I have three sofas. They are comfortable. They don't match. Anything!

Thank you for your reply @Moondust001, I feel exactly the same way. Disasters - man-made or natural - wherever they are are a world issue. We have one world and one people.

@Moondust001 you’re now firmly planted at the top of my list of ‘if you could invite any 6 guests to a dinner party who would you bring’.

Did you get paid an annual salary or was it more a contract basis so you only get paid for each stint away? Was there a standard decompression period after each stint away or did you ever have to jump from one crisis to another?

Being in west Africa for Ebola must have been horrifying.

waves at moondust I'm in a similar field although I moved to longer term development/stabilisation work in my early 30s, and then to (whisper) a DONOR in my late 30s. I still work on conflict but much less frontline (although am based regionally, not in the UK). So in answer to the question upthread on family life- almost all of my friends moved to something that didn't involve short notice deployments, usually longer term development or for a government or multilateral (e.g. the UN or the EU).

It's really hard to maintain proper relationships if you have constant deployments especially if your partner is not in the same type of work.

[quote Hexinthecity]@Moondust001 you’re now firmly planted at the top of my list of ‘if you could invite any 6 guests to a dinner party who would you bring’.

Did you get paid an annual salary or was it more a contract basis so you only get paid for each stint away? Was there a standard decompression period after each stint away or did you ever have to jump from one crisis to another?

Being in west Africa for Ebola must have been horrifying.[/quote]
Just let me know when and where.

Annual salary, mostly, as I was on a contract mostly. Think like teachers who are paid over a year for the terms (plus some) that they work.

On West Africa... medically Ebola is the scariest virus I can think of. Or it was. Still sort of is. But oddly, with the right protection, we were not at huge risk. Ebola is scary because once you have it, it's kill rate - especially without western treatments (and there is a vaccine now) is huge. But that high mortality rate makes it less serious than Covid in some ways. It kills so many so quickly there is often nowhere for it to spread to. That's the reason it has been so contained. In terms of a virus - it is ridiculously bad at being a virus. Clever viruses infect many and kill few. Stupid viruses kill many so they don't infect anyone else.

Here's an interesting fact. Much of what we learned about developing effective vaccines that underpinned the Covid research came from what we learned about developing an Ebola vaccine. That research shaved many years off what we needed to know. We could have developed the Ebola vaccine a full decade earlier than we did. We had the knowledge and technology to do it. But it was expensive and it only killed a small bunch of Africans so we didn't put any money into it. Until it threatened to move to the West. Suddenly we had a vaccine. And that led to us being able to develop our Covid vaccines faster.

@101spacehoppers

waves at moondust I'm in a similar field although I moved to longer term development/stabilisation work in my early 30s, and then to (whisper) a DONOR in my late 30s. I still work on conflict but much less frontline (although am based regionally, not in the UK). So in answer to the question upthread on family life- almost all of my friends moved to something that didn't involve short notice deployments, usually longer term development or for a government or multilateral (e.g. the UN or the EU).

It's really hard to maintain proper relationships if you have constant deployments especially if your partner is not in the same type of work.

Yes I totally agree. My husband was in the same work (before we met) and his children were in boarding school (mom died) - so we were able to make it work because we could. But you are right that what people often describe as "aid" - the longer term stuff - can be easier on family life. You'll probably have noticed as well that is is often the women who leave earlier, because parental responsibilities still fall on them more.

@Moondust001 true - I have met a few immigrants who don't want immigration 🤣

You’ll def be on my dinner list too @Moondust001!
And I second everything you said.

This is such an interesting thread. Thank you