I do not consider myself a dinosaur within the humanitarian sector, yet I have been part of it long enough to have noticed some changes.
Recently, a colleague showed me a picture of his co-workers in the 1990s and said that during his first mission he had made friends for life. Jealousy flooded my body, as I realised that after 13 years in the industry, I can count on one hand the people I would truly refer to as genuine friends and with whom I stayed in contact even when our professional paths parted.
What has become of us, the humanitarian tribe? Maybe I am nostalgically idealising a time that, in fact, never existed. But didn’t there used to be a sense of togetherness, spending free time together cooking, playing, exploring, and – above all – talking to each other? Was it all just due to a lack of better alternatives? All this has changed with the arrival of modern technology.
Make no mistake: I adore the options that email, WhatsApp, Skype and other services offer to us when being in yet another God-forsaken duty station, far away from home and our usual social network. No doubt: the tools of modern communication can save lives.
Yet they cannot replace personal interaction on site. I have been on my new assignment just over a month now. I noticed that so far, neither my co-workers nor my managers have ever asked me a personal question, at least pretending some degree of interest in me as a person rather than someone filling a post. Points of interest were limited to the place of my last assignment, my nationality, and the unusual colour of my smartphone.
While we have long known that working in the humanitarian sector does not guarantee a good character (on the contrary, I sometimes feel as if the industry attracts an over-average number of people with issues – but that’s another topic), aid workers used to enjoy at least a certain minimum level of courtesy, comradeship and hospitality.
In my observation, however, this has faded drastically over the last years. You are taken care of (insurance, security, housing), but are not being cared for. I do not expect to be pampered – after all, I was attracted to my profession for the challenges around finding one’s way in a new, different and often difficult environment.
But would it really hurt if we asked each other “who are you?” just once? What happened to good old-fashioned kindness, solidarity and interest in one another? After all, we claim to devote a significant part of our lifetime to the betterment of other people – people affected by war and armed conflict, persecution, poverty, hunger, marginalisation, and climate change. How about taking care of the people we share an office or even an apartment with?
What has become of us, the humanitarian tribe? Are we becoming a kind of “professional” workforce where everyone claims to be so busy with their job that there is just no time to realise that our teammate is struggling? Is career-building more important than caring for our colleagues?
We should at least have the guts to stop looking down at the private sector which, in humanitarians’ self-righteous opinions, is just about profit. We should have the backbone to admit that we are not as different as we wish we were. Alternatively, we could remember why we chose this career and honour the basics of what used to make us the humanitarian tribe. Kindness to all those in need.
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