Author: Alanna Shaikh

Half a blog post on finding the middle

By Alanna Shaikh | | 5 Comments |

 

 

 

 

 

 

This piece of a post was inspired by a post on the Humanosphere blog and some insightful comments on twitter from Brett Keller. The first time I started the draft, I tried to recap everything and it was boring. So follow the links if you like, but they’re not strictly necessary.  

One of the hardest things about development work is that it exists permanently in a shade of grey. All projects do harm. My own belief is that we address that by making sure the good we do outweighs it, but it’s not like that’s easy. And it means you start in the grey.

Every choice we make after that is grey, too. Economists, as Brett pointed out, expect that people will consistently make the best, most profitable choices. Public health professionals tend to roll the other way, assuming people will make destructive, short-sighted choices. Development people live in the mushy middle, with people who make good choices and bad choices for reasons you never quite understand.

Does aid work? Who knows. It’s the wrong question. Can aid work? Yes. That one I can answer. Aid can fail, too. At any given moment, do you know if your intervention is succeeding or failing? Maybe. Your monitoring and evaluation data helps a little. But it’s going to take years to see if your project has actual long-term impact. Last quarter’s M&E results won’t help with that.

It’s a frustrating slog, and you spend your career doing it.

…and that’s as far as I got, folks. Anyone have any idea what should come next?

Thanksgiving 2012

By Alanna Shaikh | | 2 Comments |

My family’s full of turkey and the kids are tucked into bed. This was my first Thanksgiving without my father, and I miss him terribly.  I have a lot to be grateful for, but I’m not quite ready to write about it. In memory of my dad, here is my blog post from Thanksgiving 2008.  – Alanna

Giving thanks


I am thankful for emigration.

My father was born in Calcutta in 1939. His family rode the death trains in 1946, after their apartment complex was firebombed. They ended up in Karachi, with the rest of the IDPs, who, of course, became refugees once the subcontinent split. In 1962 my dad went to Canada – to study at McGill – and never lived in Pakistan again.

I am a native speaker of the world’s language of privilege. I have never gone truly hungry, I have two degrees, and I didn’t give birth until the age of thirty. These things are true not because of any particular giftedness on my part. They are true solely because I was born in Syracuse, New York instead of Karachi, Pakistan.

This wouldn’t be true if my father had left school when his parents wanted him to. If he’d decided to study in Islamabad instead of Montreal. If he’d married the girl arranged for him instead of choosing my mom and breaking with his family. If he’d married a woman who could go back to Pakistan with him.

One path un-followed, just one, and I would not be the aid worker blogging here about the need to treat your local partners well. Instead, I’d be that local partner fighting for respect. I’d have less money, more health risks, fewer choices in my life and a shorter life in which to make those choices. I’d have to struggle to make a good life instead of having it handed to me.

And so, every year on Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the hard choices my father made, for the life he won for his children. I am thankful for the freedom of movement that let his family flee for their lives, and let my father make himself a new life.

And I remember: I did nothing to earn this.

****

(photo credit: my mom)
From left to right: My dad, myself, my brother. Many years ago.

Frequently Asked Questions, Part Two

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

FAQ #5: Why do you call yourself an aid worker?

I wrote about that here: http://bloodandmilk.org/2010/12/30/so-im-an-aid-worker/.

FAQ #6: Can I reprint your blog post / link to your blog / cite you in my paper?

Yes, absolutely. This blog is open license. Feel free to reprint entire blog posts anywhere you like. Just please provide a link to the original post, my full name, and the photo credit if you use the picture. (I get most of my pictures from Flickr and I want the original photographers to get credit.)

Link to the blog any time you want. And cite me in your papers if you wish. One note about citations – unless your paper is about social media, using blogs as sources is unlikely to impress your professors, so proceed with caution. Definitely don’t talk about blogs you’ve read in your graduate school personal statement – it will make them think you are an intellectual lightweight.

FAQ #7: How can I get a job in international development? Will you help me?

You can find basic advice in this post.

You can also join the international development careers list.

Finally, check out the great advice at WhyDev.org.

FAQ #8: How do you pronounce Shaikh?

Shake. My dad Americanized it and we’ve stuck with that. He always used to say “like a milkshake!”

FAQ #9: Can I guest post on your blog? 

No, I don’t use guest posts.

FAQ #10: Can you guest post on my blog?

Probably not. I can barely keep up with the writing I do now. Taking on new projects is really hard. Please go ahead and ask, though. If I can, I will.

…and that’s all of them! Leave a comment if I missed something you want to know.

Frequently Asked Questions

By Alanna Shaikh | | 2 Comments |

FAQ #1: Will you blog about/fundraise for my project/NGO/social enterprise?

Almost definitely not. I don’t feel comfortable writing about any project I haven’t studied in depth, and I just don’t have time to research everything I get email about. I might tweet a link and let my twitter followers decide for themselves, but that’s really all I feel comfortable doing without investigating.

Keep emailing me anyway, if you want to. It is possible someone will someday email me about a project that hits my current knowledge so precisely that I can research and endorse it with only a little time put in, or that you’ll hit me in a period when I have a lot of time to spare and I can investigate as much as I like.

FAQ #2: Why don’t you write about the places you live?

I do, but it’s very rare. There are a couple reasons. For one, I don’t like travel writing. I don’t like reading it and I don’t like writing it. So it’s pretty unusual for me to feel inspired to do a local texture post or tell you about a travel adventure. The second reason is that I’ve worked in a lot of places with very touchy governments. I don’t want to put my work – or the projects I work for – at risk by possibly offending someone and losing our humanitarian access. My primary job is global health, and this blog comes second. That is reflected in what I choose to write about.

FAQ #3: Can I send you a book to review?

Yes, but I can’t promise to review it. Out of the last six books I have been sent for review, I have managed to review two of them. Of the remaining four, one was Ed Carr’s Delivering Development, which made me think so much I am still struggling to get my thoughts down on paper. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s very valuable and I want to give it the review it deserves. And I’ve been trying since…oh, January 2012 or so. The other three books were one I hated, one I just couldn’t finish even though it was a solid book, and one that depressed me so much I gave it to my mom so she could be depressed instead of me. So, please send your book but I’m not making any promises here.

FAQ #4: Can you speak at my event?

Maybe. Keep in mind I don’t live in the US, so my travel cost isn’t cheap. It’s easier if we can schedule around times when I’ll be in the US anyway. So, email me if you’re interested and we can talk. (alanna.shaikhATgmail.com)

Things I’ve learned from my colleagues: cross cultural competencies

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

a Russian language stencil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I learned most of what I know about interacting across language and culture from the incredibly kind and thoughtful way my host country colleagues have dealt with me. With the exception of the occasional angry or inexperienced person, I’ve been gently managed by people all over the world. They’ve had different approaches to coping with the semi-literate outsider, some more successful than others. Some of their techniques really stand out.

If they’re speaking a language other than English, and they say my name when I’m in earshot, they stop and explain what they said about me. I can utterly ignore the Serbian/Spanish/Tatar discussion going on behind me but my neurons fire if my own name is spoken. I could easily make myself nuts wondering what I am doing in the conversation. It’s a gift to immediately know.

They believe me when I describe my language skills. If we’re at a meeting and I tell them I can follow the powerpoint slides in Russian, they don’t insist on whispering a translation anyway.

They walk a neat line between including me and excluding me. If I sit down at the lunch table, I feel bad if everyone immediately switches to English. I feel awful if nine Uzbek speakers converse with each other in English so I can understand. I’d rather track the conversation as best as I can. If everyone starts to laugh, though, it’s very nice when someone leans over and tells me why.

If they don’t know something about Americans, and they need to, they ask. They don’t guess or assume. They just ask me. And if I tell them all Americans aren’t the same and we have different habits in different parts of the country, they accept that.

So, I learn from that. I know what the culture gap looks like from my side, and I try to picture it from the opposite direction. I memorize other people’s kindnesses so I can copy and give back as best I can.

Photo credit: me. It’s a stencil on a wall near an office I used to work in.