Author: Alanna Shaikh

The Child Catchers – A Book Review

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

Back when I traveled to Almaty for work, I used to see the adoptive parents. They accumulated in all the hotels that spoke English, looking haggard, holding hands with confused-looking little kids. Once, someone’s Kazakh adoption fell through and they ended up being referred to me through six-degrees-of-separation. I was in Uzbekistan at the time. I couldn’t help, and I felt bad about it. I got in the habit of reading the blogs, and adoption stories show up surprisingly often in my google alerts for “aid worker” and “international child health.” So international adoption’s been on my radar for a while.

I bought The Child Catchers by Kathryn Joyce on a whim. Amazon had an ad for it, and I like to make sure I read non-fiction that’s not about international development every once in a while. I was thinking it would be a useful view into a culture I don’t know much about.

The book turned out to be far more valuable than that.

I admit, it started out slow for me. Turns out I know a lot more than your average person about international adoption, from the blog-reading and the living overseas. That made the introduction kind of remedial for me.

As I went on, though, I realized that The Child Catchers is an impressive example of systems thinking. The author is able to pull apart the many inter-related pieces of a massive international system and find the links. Her chapter about the way international adoption has helped to prevent social change in South Korea is absolute brilliance. There are very few true villains in international adoption. Just about everyone involved has the best interest of children at heart – yet a tremendous amount of damage is done to children and families. Kathryn Joyce’s systems thinking helps us to understand why.

I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in international issues and children’s welfare – not just people who care about adoption. It’s well-written and a pretty quick read. And the way Ms. Joyce unpacks a complex topic, makes it engaging, and helps us understand is a model for anyone who has to explain complicated topics on a regular basis.

Predicting the Weather

By Alanna Shaikh | | 2 Comments |

A Russia DJ named Dima

 

Maybe ten years ago, the project I worked for had a driver named Dima. Dima was a rockstar. He was exceptional in every way. Sure, he could pilot you unscathed through bad traffic and worse roads, but that was the least of his talents. Dima could jumpstart a car without cables.[i] Dima could courteously repel local police harassing our office for bribes. Dima could get our visas in record time, find the best rate to change money legally, and in a pinch, put on a suit and represent the project in coordination meetings.[ii] Dima could put together a powerpoint presentation and unclog the drain in the office kitchen.

And Dima could predict the weather. He always knew what kind of clothes we’d need the next day, if rain or snow or sleet was coming. Approximate temperature, cloud cover, the works. It was uncanny. He was almost always right.

One day, after discovering we were due for snow, I asked Dima what his secret was. Had he grown up on a farm? Did he have rheumatism? He grinned and told me. Yahoo Weather. He checked it every night so he could help the office make plans; he considered it to be part of his job as a driver.

People are people. We exoticize them to our peril – and their harm.

Dima was our driver. Orientalizing him didn’t do much harm. But what if he’d been a mom in a community we worked with? A doctor we were training? What damage would we have done by underestimating his computer skills?

 (photo credit andy desyatov)

[i] He’d put his own functioning battery into the dead car, start the dead car, and then hot swap the flat battery back in while the car was still running.

[ii] His title was “driver and program assistant” just for that reason.

Gratitude in a Time of Climate Change

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

Climate change is going to affect life on earth in ways we can’t even begin to understand yet, but the first impact is the one we’re seeing: extreme weather events. Hurricane Sandy last year, Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda this year, the ice storm that just hit the east coast of the US, famine in Somalia – that’s what climate change looks like. Colder, hotter, wetter, drier, at unpredictable times and place we don’t expect.  A series of disasters, predictably unpredictable.

And it means we, in the wealthy world, are going to have to choose.

We can batten down our own personal hatches and ignore everyone else. If the world is less secure and the weather is terrifying, perhaps we need to save every penny for our own personal disaster response. Maybe we need to have, hold, and hoard just to protect ourselves. Maybe our governments will have to hoard too  – climate change hits economies hard, and foreign aid budgets are often victims.

Over time, if we do that, the poor countries being hit hardest by climate change will get poorer and poorer. People are brave and they’re resilient, and they can rebuild even without help – but how many times? We end up with an international system in which wealthy countries manage to maintain status quo and poor countries slide backwards in fits and starts.

Or we can choose generosity. We can give more than we did before. We can keep sharing our resources and help everyone maintain status quo. We can support resilience, and provide the helping hand that people need when their home has been washed away. We can give as individuals and as governments to prepare for and ameliorate the impacts of climate disasters.

Normally I’d segue here into a discussion of interconnection. Helping poor countries does, in fact, help everyone, and no rich country can isolate itself from the pain of others. Not to mention that surviving and slowing climate change is going to require government-level commitments, not just individual giving.

I’m American, though, so it’s Thanksgiving for me. I’m going to take another direction. I’m going to talk about gratitude.

Individual giving is important to climate change resilience – government approaches alone can’t do it. I am a middle class professional in a two-income family. I am profoundly blessed. I have the resources to give to others without putting myself at risk. I am thankful for this. I am thankful that I am rich enough to be able to help others in a meaningful way – I am thankful for every charitable donation I’m able to give.

Every time I support typhoon relief, or flood response, or earthquake rebuilding, I am investing in the world my children have to inhabit. And I am thankful I can do my part. Climate change is an ugly picture, but we decide how ugly. I am grateful I have the resources to help.

 

(photo credit: NASA Goddard)

MRSA, Typhoon, USAID

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

Typhoon Haiyan from space

Books – I have a review copy of Ben Ramalingan’s new book, Aid on the Edge of Chaos. I am very, very excited to read it. Earlier this summer, I read Reinventing Philanthropy: A Framework for More Effective Giving and was really impressed. It’s a drab looking book, but it’s a highly readable summary of a lot of good ideas on how to be a better donor. It won’t be new information for aid experts, but it would be an excellent resource for someone new to global philanthropy.

Global Health – My mother was diagnosed with MRSA, and is now struggling through her course of clindamycin. It’s like a tiny at-home lesson on the side-effects that people with TB face. If my science-educated mother has to steel herself to face all the miseries that go with it for the 40 doses she’s been prescribed, small wonder people with TB tend to abandon their drugs once their symptoms go away. Clindamycin’s not a TB drug, by the way, but its side effects area similar to those of some TB antibiotics. (My helpful commentary that clindamycin has survived as a useful drug because of the unpleasant side-effects and she should be grateful she’s not facing amputation leaves Mom unimpressed.)

Disaster Relief – The Center for High-Impact Philanthropy has a good set of basics up on how to give in response to Typhoon Haiyan. If you want my take on it, Nobody Wants Your Old Shoes still applies. The short version: give money (as much as you can), give it to the organization’s unrestricted fund instead of earmarked for the typhoon, don’t adopt an orphan, and don’t fly over to help. USAID has a useful page on the typhoon, too.

Me – Speaking of USAID, I work for them now. Those of you who’ve connected on LinkedIn already know, but I’ve taken a job as a USPSC health officer for Kyrgyzstan. I am really excited – USAID has been my donor agency for a lot of my career, and I think it’s going to be fascinating to work directly for them. That being said, here’s the important disclaimer:

NOTHING I SAY ON THIS BLOG REPRESENTS THE VIEWS OF USAID OR THE US GOVERNMENT. Everything written here is purely my personal opinion. The contents of this blog are the responsibility of me, Alanna Shaikh, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of USAID or the U.S. Government.

Photo credit: NASA Goddard

I would suck at being poor. And so would you.

By Alanna Shaikh | | 4 Comments |

I was thinking today how bad I would be at being poor. I’m great at being broke. I handle broke like a champion. But broke isn’t poor. Broke is temporary with better things as a possibility. Poor is generally permanent; at the very least it feels that way. Poor has no clear way out. You can’t just hang in there until things get better because probably they won’t.

Being poor wouldn’t make me smarter or a better person than I am now. It would give me a different skill set, yes, but less formal education. So if I were poor, I’d most likely make all the same dumb mistakes I make now but there would be much higher stakes. Every bad choice would drive me deeper into a hole instead of merely keeping my retirement account from growing properly.

I’d buy my kids toys when they opened their eyes all big and asked nicely, even when they don’t need them. Even if I knew the toys were junk and going to break soon. I’d pay extra for the backpack that will help make my son fit in at school instead of the practical one. I’d probably even get myself the occasional treat I didn’t need.

And I would hate being poor. I wouldn’t be poor but happy. I’d be poor and miserable. I’d know there were better things out that, that other people didn’t live day-to-day and got to drink Coca-Cola when they wanted it instead of always having tea. I’d look at my one-room-house and my hand pump in the yard and instead of being grateful that I had a well right in my yard I’d be bitter (as bitter as those tea dregs) that I didn’t have a life with a shower like I saw in the Mexican soap opera.

If I had one kid, I’d long for more and hate that I could only afford one. I’d think about it all the time, wanting another little baby to hold. Or I’d go ahead and have that second kid and hope I could make it work.

I’d hate wearing the same four dresses all the time. I’d think about buying more on credit just so I didn’t feel so poor and drab. I probably wouldn’t do it, but I’d think about it. I’d long for a new dress all the time.

And if my husband hit me, I’d leave him and take the kids and we’d get even poorer.

I would hate my terrible job, whatever it was. Selling cigarettes one by one, or recycling plastic bottles, or frying dumplings to sell at a profit.

I’d be afraid pretty much all the time. Of not being able to provide for my kids – the kids I probably shouldn’t have had but wanted so badly I did it anyway. Of losing my job or my ability to work. Of having one of my kids get sick and not being able to afford good medical care.

I would get tired and frustrated and lazy and impulsive, just like I am now. I’d spend money on dumb stuff to make myself feel better about the life that I hated.

This is all a really long way of saying that maybe the most important thing I have learned in my career is this: poor people are still people. It’s not surprising when they make bad choices, because we all make bad choices. Being poor teaches your some very specific skills for facing a hard life, but it doesn’t make you immune to mistakes and poor choices. It just makes the consequences of those bad choices worse.

 

Many thanks to Adrienne Joy for proofreading

photo credit: libertygrace0

Field Notes from the Development Industry 8/10/2013

By Alanna Shaikh | | 2 Comments |

Baku3

1. More and more, I am thinking that the power of social media and new tech in foreign aid (as opposed to development in general) is in the ability to decentralize decision-making. That could mean giving more power to aid agency staff on the ground, to governments of the countries that receive aid, or (this is the exciting one) giving more decision-making authority to the people affected by aid. This blog post on consensus decision-making has me thinking about what that might look like in practice.

2. So, there’s this poor dumb kid who stole an iPhone in Ibiza. Or bought a stolen iPhone. And now the phone’s owner is posting all the kid’s pictures on tumblr and mocking them. (Do a search; I don’t want to add to the site’s google juice by linking it.) I understand the poetic justice logic. But. This is clearly a young guy and a guest worker living in Dubai. His life is pretty bleak based on those pictures we’re mocking, and the mockery strikes me as racist. I find myself unconvinced that petty theft makes it okay to humiliate someone to that degree. The fact that he is clearly poor and in a place where he has few legal protections makes it worse. Am I just a bleeding heart?

3. I leave Azerbaijan for good on Saturday. It’s been a short and fascinating experience; less than a year. I’ve never lived in a middle-income country before, let alone done aid work in one. Baku reminds me a lot of Boston, I think. Urban, by the sea, somehow both European and not. I have learned a lot from my time here, although I am still figuring out what those lessons are.

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.