Month: June 2013

Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit – An interview with the author

By Alanna Shaikh | | 1 Comments |

I have come to terms with the fact that I write terrible book reviews. Instead of a review, I present an interview with J, author of Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit. In case you haven’t heard of it, Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit is a novel about aid. Written by the most famous anonymous aid worker – J – about aid workers, it’s the follow up to his first novel, Disastrous Passion.

What made you write this book? Is it to blame for the end of your blog? 

The second part is easy: “No.” #MMMM is not to blame for the demise of Tales From the Hood. In fact, having stopped blogging is probably to blame more than anything else for my recent forays into what I like to call “humanitarian fiction” (#humfiction) As for what made me write the book… A confluence of things, really. For one, I’m kind of done with blogging. It was fun.  It provided me with a space to try out a few things writing-wise, as well as work on some of my own issues with the aid world.

But now I’m in a different space, and rather than rant into the blogosphere on topic du jour, I’m trying to make some larger, more substantial points about aid, relief, and development. I know fans and haters of Tales From the Hood will be either dismayed or gloating when I say that most of the issues I ranted about were and are very nuanced. There’s very little black & white when it comes to relief and development—it’s all shades of gray. It may be hard to believe, but I got tired of taking one position on [pick your issue]. And even more tired of being forever associated, as I very clearly came to be, with one and only one perspective on [pick your issue]. Fiction—telling a story with a plot and the ability to develop points of view and themes and subplots—seemed like a good way to get at and portray some of that contextuality and nuance. I also feel strongly that the story of humanitarian workers is not told very well, and further, that it needs to be told.

The aid industry itself focuses most of its formal narrative energy on “beneficiaries”, “the poor”, and of course they’re a very central part of the narrative. Sadly, though, humanitarian workers are left with Angelina Jolie, the sub-plot of a few bad episodes of “ER”, and books by amateurs to tell the story of what it takes and what it’s like to be a professional humanitarian. And so, Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit is very much a story about humanitarian workers. Yes, of course, this should all be about “the poor”, but humanitarian workers are part of the formula, too. We have to understand them, too. I wrote the book as one small step in the direction of hopefully advancing that understanding.

Which character is secretly you? My own pet theory is that they’re all you at different times of your life.

After I published Disastrous Passion, I got deluged with accusations from people who thought that I was writing about them, or that I’d lampooned their real lives. Comments on the old blog, and even reviews of this book, in some cases, have included the (I assume) facetious insinuations that I’d somehow taken a peek at someone’s diary. Even as recently as last week I heard of someone, probably in Haiti during the early months, who’s convinced I’m making fun of them. Whether it’s positive or negative, many seem to want to see themselves in Disastrous Passion! (Note to readers everywhere. Trust me: you’re not in Disastrous Passion.)

By contrast, the most common insinuation about Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit, is that I have written myself in as one of the characters! You’re closer to the truth than anyone, Alanna. The old adage that “we write what we know” surely applies in this case. I couldn’t have written any of the characters the way I did without having experienced the world of humanitarian aid the way I have. And so, in that sense, yes: they’re all a bit of me. And like Disastrous Passion, caveats about the overall story being fiction, etc., very little in Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit is total fabrication. The story of the little refugee girl, for example, has happened in real life (it’s a composite of two real events in my own career). That said, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’m not in the story. Nope. Honest. Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit is neither autobiographical nor confessional. Readers who think they know me in real life should not make the mistake of believing that this story is about me.

I was a little thrown off by the tone of the book. Is it meant to be satire, or not? 

Good question. No. Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit is dead serious. (Sorry, fans of the snarky, dark humor in Disastrous Passion. My next novel will be funnier!)

If people like MMMM, what other books should they read?

Well, how about this – the books I was channeling as I wrote Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit: 

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins

True At First Light by Ernest Hemingway

Can you cite a scene or two that was based on your real life?

Sure. I mentioned the encounter (it’s more than one scene) with the little refugee girl. That one mainly comes from an experience in Cambodia where I walked away from an obviously dying child (blogged about for real, here). That scene haunts me to this day. The other half of that particular sub-plot comes from an experience in Sudan when I attended the 45-day celebration of a colleague’s new baby. If the child lives to 45 days, the family has a party, gives her/ him a name.  A week after the celebration the baby was dead. Not quite as stark for me as that day in Cambodia, but those things do tend to stick with you (or at least they do with me).

And then, the final conversation between Mary-Anne and Tekflu is also based on a real life experience. I once found myself the supervisor of a local person, who years before had been my boss. I had to make a series of escalating decisions that she didn’t like. Although I never fired her (she left on own), in the end there was a pretty harsh confrontation during which she pointed out in quite scathing terms my limitations and biases as a foreigner, even though they weren’t particularly material to the issues that I had with her as a staff member. It was definitely another one of those formative moments in my life career.

Paula Deen, Sexual Harassment, and International Development

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

American celebrity chef Paula Deen is getting sued in a big way by a former employer of Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House, a restaurant that’s part of the Paula Deen empire. The Uncle Bubba in question is her brother, Bubba Hiers, and he’s been accused of sexual harassment and racial discrimination in a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Deen and her company[i]. Tonight I read Ms. Deen’s deposition in the lawsuit. The entire thing.[ii] And it made me think about the important of process and regulatory structure.[iii]

Institution-building has been taking some hits lately from some very smart people. (And also from me) Lant Pritchett has a particular insightful take on it in Folk and the Formula, where he differentiates between institutional structure and institutional competence. It’s easy to abandon institution strengthening, and its cousin, supporting good policy, as pointless exercises in isomorphic mimicry. It is certainly true that regulations on their own have no value.

It’s also true, unfortunately, that you can’t build a health system – or a justice system – or even an enjoyable football tournament – without getting some processes in place. You need clearly defined roles for stakeholders. You need a way for errors to be identified and corrected. You need everyone to get paid on time. Even if every single person involved is doing their very best to produce something good, that doesn’t happen without regulations, job descriptions – institutions, in fact. And the bigger the task you’re trying to achieve, the stronger and more complex the institution needs to be.

Which brings us back to Paula Deen. Based on the deposition, her restaurants don’t appear to have professional managers, a coherent financial management system, or defined roles for staff. Now, let’s assume for the sake of this blog post that 1) Ms. Deen is a well-meaning person who doesn’t want her employees to be harassed or abused[iv] and 2) the charges being brought against her are true.

In a best case scenario, Paula Deen gave her brother a restaurant to run and assumed everything would be fine because he was a good guy. And he was a good guy, but the shambolic lack of structure in her restaurants led to many employees being subject to racial and sexual harassment in a hostile work environment with no way to report the harassment and get help from well-meaning managers before it hit million dollar lawsuit level. In a worst case scenario, Paula’s brother is a sexually abusive jerk and the lack of structure allowed him to deliberately abuse staff.[v]

If you take a look at Yelp, Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House produces a solid meal of fried seafood.  But according to the deposition, it’s also hemorrhaging money and being carried by the profit centers of the Paula Deen empire.[vi] It probably won’t get to provide seafood for much longer, and if it does it will drag down the quality of the other Paula Deen enterprises. Much like public university that graduates lots of students but doesn’t educate them, or a hospital with high patient satisfaction and terrible health outcomes.[vii]

Writing job descriptions and setting up a management structure won’t get the oysters fried or the tuberculosis treated. You need competent people. But competent people can’t do their jobs without a structure to do it in, whether that structure is a restaurant or the Ministry of Health. We’re not very good at building institutions that possess actual capacity. We’re still finding out what works. But we ignore the topic to our peril.

(photo credit: Bob E. Brown)


[i] The former employee is named Lisa Jackson and the deposition makes her sound like the sanest person in the whole mess.

[ii] Did you spend your evening alternating between nursing and rocking a cranky teething toddler? If not, you don’t get to judge my reading material.

[iii] It also made me think that Paula Deen is a sad, racist relic of a bygone era and she doesn’t sound like a happy person, but that’s not the point of this blog post. And reminded me of how much I dislike her from a public health standpoint. But that’s not the point of this blog post.

[iv] My personal theory is that she doesn’t recognize an abusive environment because of point #2 but that doesn’t contribute to the discussion.

[v] I suspect this one, sadly.

[vi] Mostly Ms. Deen herself. Apparently people buy tickets to hear her talk.

[vii] Yes, it happens. A shocking amount of patient satisfaction comes from quality of television programming in the hospital and whether the food is any good.