Back to Chad (#7 and climbing)
Last week was busy -- way too busy to be messing around with a blog. I was racing around work like a mad person trying to prepare for a last-minute trip to Chad. The request came in on the 18th of January, while I was in Geneva, a request for "rapid deployment" by the 20th of January. As you are no doubt aware, it is well past the 20th of January, and yet here I remain. Yes, when all was said and done it seemed nobody could get it together fast enough to deploy me sooner than the 9th of February. Sure puts the "rapid" in "rapid deployment", don't it?
It's fine with me, since obviously one would like a reasonable amount of time to prepare for travelling to a place like Chad. In fact, I'm not overly keen on the trip at all, for reasons that should perhaps be obvious. It's a terrible place, and the work environment is... stressful. Despite the security situation swirling steadily down the toilet, I shouldn't be in much danger, since I probably won't be going outside the capital this time around. And it's only a week, so I can manage. Still, it's a bit weird to be going back again so soon.
How bad is it in Chad, you wonder? As the desk officer for Chad (among many other countries), I get this question a lot, and so do the other emergency officers. But it's actually quite difficult to answer. "How bad" is in many ways a relative question. To address this, our emergency team decided to come up with a monthly "Top 15" list of emergencies. The purpose of this list is simple: an objective, criteria-based system of ranking worldwide crises according to their severity, so that when a big donor or someone in management says, "What are you worried about", we can tick off on our fingers, in order of importance, which crises occupy our time the most.
That's a simple and important objective, but even so the whole exercise makes me a bit uncomfortable. Aside from putting our team in the position of being the collective David Letterman of disaster, there is something pretty distasteful about trying to put a simple number beside the worst humanitarian tragedies of our time. How do you quantify human suffering? If the situation in Zimbabwe comes out at #16, does that mean any given Zimbabwean is less miserable than any given Haitian?
So are you interested in knowing what the ranking is for this month? Of course you are! Well here it is, folks, the Top 15 shittiest places on earth:
1. Sudan
2. Afghanistan
3. Democratic Republic of the Congo
4. Sri Lanka
5. Somalia
6. Central African Republic
7. Chad
8. Occupied Palestinian Territories
9. Uganda
10. Iraq*
11. Cote d'Ivoire
12. Horn of Africa (Kenya/Djibouti/Eritrea/Ethiopia/Somalia)
13. Democratic People's Republic of Korea (N. Korea)
14. Haiti
15. Guinea
*Should be way higher. Let's just call this "office politics"...
posted by E @ 12:30 PM
4 Comments:
It is really hard to get an accurate feeling for situations in the world. I get the feeling until you see it, you cannot truly understand it. And here in the western world we get bombarded with pleas for us to help and support people whose enormous weight is endangering their life, for they cannot help themselves. On a recent episode on the Discovery Channel, they documented a gentle man who, upon investigation, was discovered to be consumming (on average) a whopping 37,000 calories a day. His wife said she was actually rather conservative with the amounts she submitted and suspects the number may be short by as much a 5,000 calories. My point is that here in the land of plenty, this is what we are told to be concerned about. Think of how many people could be sustained,on that kind of calorie intake, elsewhere in the world.
Erin, I am envious of your chance to get an clear perspective (I hope) on worldly matters but I feel saddened by the weight this knowledge must bring to you. Stay strong and keep safe.
Wow, great to hear from you, Todd! Please stop by often!
The world can be a depressing place, to be sure. I'm more exposed to its cruelties than many people, but a lot less than some. For example, I live and work in New York -- not in Goma, Port-au-Prince, or Abeche. And even though I speak daily with people who do live and work in those places, they're not usually the ones out in the camps, or digging the wells, or vaccinating the kids; that's sub-contracted out to smaller organizations. And of course that doesn't even touch what the affected people themselves are going through.
Having tasted only a little of it myself, I have nothing but awe and respect for the people who are out there in the trenches at whatever level -- whether it's in the Country Office in N'djamena, the sub-office in Abeche, the field office in Iriba, or the Oure Cassoni refugee camp. It is tough sometimes to keep a smile on your face -- even for me, living here in the land of plenty. But I don't know anyone who would trade their job for something less depressing. Without getting too romantic about it, there's nothing more inspirational than witnessing the small triumphs of human beings in the midst of incomprehensible tragedy. In truly dark places, you recognize the shining miracles of life and love when you see them.
Besides, there are the little things that get you through the day. Aid workers are universally partial to the bittersweet tastes of dark humour and dark chocolate, both indispensible pick-me-ups on a tough afternoon.
On that note... off to raid the stash in the Situation Centre.
Hey, Erin. What exactly do you do for a living?
Douglas
Hi Douglas,
I work for a major humanitarian organization, which for various reasons I would prefer not to identify.
My specific job is pretty tough to explain. I'm an emergency officer in HQ, which means I am responsible for ensuring that my colleagues in emergency situations get whatever they need from New York. HQ, in turn, expects me to keep them up to date on what is happening in the field -- the humanitarian situation, the political situation, what our organization is up to. I'm expected to be the institutional expert on humanitarian emergencies in my Area of Responsibility.
Oh, and occasionally, I'm also expected to travel to these emergencies to lend a hand when it's needed -- which is what I'm doing on Friday.
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