Relief-Work

I got the letter from MSF in New York today, and I have been entered into their pool of available volunteers! This is what I’ve been working towards for over a year, and I’m really happy! As well as the good kind of scared you get when ambitious tasks present themselves to you! The next step is an orientation in New York City, and the process of finding the right first posting for me. I’ll learn more about that process in the coming week, probably. Because the final decision on deploying me is out of their hands, the New York office can’t really guess when I’ll be deployed. However, the fact that I have very few limitations on the timeframe or location of my posting means I’ll be considered for more postings than some other first timers will be. ...

Today I had my interview with MSF. It went pretty well, I think. I was well prepared, both for the interview and for the multiple choice test they give logisticians. In the interview I got a number of chances to explain how I think my past experiences will help me do the job. Molly asked me how I’d deal with the inevitable problems of close team living, and I had an answer that I think pleased her. ...

Just in time for my upcoming MSF interview, I’ve finished my WFR (pronounced “woofer”) certification. I don’t know if my interviewer will ask about first aid skills, but I can guarantee you that I’ll find a way to tell her! I’m really proud of this certification, not just because of the skills it gives me in case I need to provide emergency care for a colleague someplace remote, but because it shows I have taken the initiative to continue preparing myself for my chosen career. You wouldn’t think, while working with doctors and nurses, that you’d need to know medicine, but Jon told me a story from his MSF days that made me decide to get the WFR training. He found himself in a situation where he was the best hope half a dozen meningitis patients had to survive the next 24 hours… as he said, “it’s not supposed to work that way, but sometimes it does”. ...

I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been hanging around the Bay Area. I did a contract for my old boss at his new employer, and some other random undirected hanging out I can’t really remember. Oh, I think it involved postponing writing code by taking the dog to the dog park. I’ve also been working on the unread books from my bibliography, including some new ones I found. One is really gripping; it is a memoir of a Canadian nurse who worked for MSF for four years. So much of what she says is familiar to me after all my reading. ...

Some great news on the relief work job hunt: I got a phone call from MSF USA the other day to set up an interview. It will be on April 12, here in San Francisco. The nice lady from MSF told me that what made the difference were recommendations I got from ex-MSF volunteers. Thanks Jon and Amy!

Here’s a list of the books I’ve been reading over the last year and a half as I figure out how the relief world works. Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures. A sometimes funny, sometimes scathing, sometimes touching story of three aid workers working in the UN system in the 90’s. Will not leave a good taste in your mouth for the UN, or in fact, for some of the characters. But they get points for honesty, I guess. Triage, a well written novella about a terrible story of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The dangerous life and mysterious disappearence of Fred Cuny. An profile of a legendary aid worker, and of his mysterious death in Chechnya. This book made me strike Chechnya from the places I would accept a job. (Well, the book and the fact I don’t even read Cyrillic, so I’d be useless there.) A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. A careful look at mistakes made and how to move forward. Pays special attention to the problem of the “humanitarian-military complex”. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. The best book to understand the genocide in Rwanda. Nothing good comes of reading this book, you just feel sad and empty. Perhaps the only good that can come from it is educating people so that it never happens again. But clearly that’s not happening, since it’s happening right now, again, in Sudan. Another Day in Paradise: International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories. Does a really good job of letting aid workers speak in their own words about their motivations. Understanding your own motivation is key to being effective, I’m told. Hint: “I just want to help” isn’t going to get you through the hard days. Engineering in Emergencies : A Practical Guide for Relief Workers. Volumes of information in a form even gung-ho IT guys can use when the real engineers aren’t around. Transitional Settlement: Displaced Populations. The overall philosophy of this book is deeply humane, and reflects a quarter century of aid agencies completely screwing up. In addition to making the case for reform in the understanding of migrating people’s needs, it also has really cool sample layouts for refugee camps and the various other types of camps you may be called on to set up. Condemned to Repeat?: The Paradox of Humanitarian Action. Haven’t started this one yet. The Humanitarian Companion. Nuts and bolts things to know, checklists, etc. I haven’t read too much of it yet, but the chapter on preparing to deploy was really interesting. Cause Celeb. From the author of Bridget Jones’s Diary. Essentially a trashy book for British women to read in the tube on the way to work, except the portrayal of aid worker life and frustrations seems to be very well researched and accurate. The earliest known reference to the MMM theory of aid worker motivations. Hope In Hell: Inside The World Of Doctors Without Borders. The latest book on MSF. Gives a very good overview of the organization, where it came from, and how it thinks. But if you really want to know the dirt, you have to talk to a returned volunteer. And let me tell you, do you hear dirt… :) The Selfish Altruist. A critique of non-self-aware decision-making by aid agencies, from an experienced and passionate aid worker. His point is we have built in biases, and not paying attention to them results in wrong decisions. A good New Yorker article on life in Chad. Books I’ve been meaning to get and study, but haven’t yet: ...

The highly respected journal of international development and humanitarian aid, The Onion, has a fascinating article on relief worker motivations. Wink, wink. Update: MSF’s own website backs up the Onion’s claims. Check out the contents of the life support kit for 8 staff members (KADMKLIF08). Yeah, there on the third page… CONDOM, lubricated + RESERVOIR (quantity 144!). Yeah baby… queue porn music (played on African instruments).

My talk on Monday went just fine. It was fun to see people that I’d met in Hancock County again, and the hard work I’d put in to the supporting documentation paid off. I saw several people reading my report. One interesting thing was that though everyone was dressed in suits to show proper respect for the proceedings, some people were “suits”, and some people were just “in suits”. There were a whole lot of vendors there with their hands out trying to sell something. Everyone could tell within the first few words our of their mouth. What kept it interesting was that both on the panel, and of the invited speakers, there was at least 30%, maybe more, who were just “in suits”. They were people like me who had real-world experience, didn’t care for meetings, or having their time wasted, or getting sales pitches. They were there to make things better, and they didn’t have a lot of patience with people who weren’t there for the same reason. Very inspiring. ...

I’m in Jackson, Mississippi today giving my talk on the work Radio Response did in Hancock County. I’ve been burning the midnight oil the last few days getting the following documents ready: The Little Talk (100 kilobyte PDF file) The Big Report (2.2 megabyte PDF file) If you find a typo, please don’t tell me until next week! I know about the repeated picture, which I’ll fix in the next version. ...

I have been invited to give a 10 minute talk about our team’s work in Hancock County, Mississippi in front of the FCC Independent Panel Reviewing the Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Communications Networks. My talk will be in the afternoon of March 6, in Jackson Mississippi. Feel free to drop by if you are in the neighborhood and give me some moral support!