Unknown 'Soldiers'

Aid workers face death, disease and discomfort every day, armed only with their humanity - and some bug spray.

MALUAL KAN, South Sudan - He watched from the relative "safety" of the compound, his face painted by the glow of the red and orange flames. Liberian rebels, just 15- and 16-year-old boys really, were setting fire to the pumps at a gas station across the street.

For American Richard Haselwood and other staff of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) working in war-torn Liberia last year, this was a little more than just another day at the office, but not by much.

It was the same for Julie Steiger, who worked last year for the IRC in

In fact, in some circles, international aid workers are smugly derided as bleeding hearts or dismissed as misfits who can't get "real jobs."  Others see them as adventure-seekers suffering from attention deficit disorder, or as spiritual dilettantes with little to offer the world except kind thoughts and good intentions.

The reality is, international aid agencies are highly selective in who they hire as expatriate staff. It's too costly to bring on people who don't have the language abilities or skill sets to make aggressive contributions to overseas relief and development projects.

Many, including Haselwood and Steiger, have advanced degrees in international studies from top universities. Steiger received her master's in Eurasian and Eastern European studies from Georgetown University and is fluent in Russian and Spanish. Haselwood focused on human rights and security issues at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, speaks French and is learning Arabic.

Now, after Haselwood and Steiger completed a year in two of the toughest conflict zones on the planet -- Liberia and Chechnya, respectively -- they are both posted in south Sudan. The region is just emerging from Africa's longest and bloodiest civil war.

Embedded with these American IRC staffers in south Sudan, I get a chance to see what their lives are like on a daily basis.

"I'm fascinated by the manifestation of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa," says Haselwood, who worked his way through college and grad school tending bar and working as a video cameraman for a PBS affiliate. "That's why I'm in Sudan. This captures it all. It's where the Arab world meets Africa."

For Steiger, "Doing this job you get a chance to see people as they are. As a tourist traveling through a place you don't really see people the same way."

But that can be a challenge. Steiger, who grew up in New England, just began her job as field coordinator in south Sudan, a radically different environment from her former post on the Chechen border. Getting off the plane for the first time here, she felt a little cultural whiplash.

"When I first landed in Maulual Kan the IRC field manager gave me a big hug, and I was so happy," says Steiger tearing up slightly. "Because even though I had left my family and friends, I felt there would be people here who would be my family, too."

She is the only expatriate woman working in the compound and is primarily responsible for helping national staff -- IRC Sudanese workers -- set up and administer health care programs and clinics through a broad swath of territory.

Life has toughened her both mentally and physically. She was recruited by the U.S. Army and spent eight years (two active duty and six in the reserves) as a Russian language specialist.

She has also overcome life-threatening illness -- a tumor inside her cheek that required highly invasive surgery her final year of grad school. It was successfully removed, but required reconstructive procedures including attaching a titanium plate to her jaw.

Around the compound she is energetic, efficient and cheerful, never missing a detail. She gently but firmly reminds staff about things left undone and why it's important to complete them.

Despite the extremely primitive surroundings in which she lives -- sleeping in a grass hut called a thuckle, eating rice and goat almost every meal, taking cold outdoor showers from a bucket, having electricity from a small generator for only a couple of hours each day -- she has surprisingly few complaints.

"The biggest fear I have here is all the snakes, scorpions, spiders, all the creepy crawlies. I remind myself that it's their place to live; I'm just visiting." Steiger pauses for a moment, thinking. "And I also miss having a place of my own -- a little bit of privacy. I'd love to take a bath some time."

Haselwood, like Steiger, becomes more interesting as you unravel each layer. From Greenville, S.C., he exudes an easygoing manner that masks a well-honed and inquisitive intellect. He likes the discipline of academic pursuits, but also the lure of field work: being exposed to culture and languages different from his own.

Every year he goes back to the U.S. for three weeks as the director of the French Film Festival at Virginia Commonwealth University.

And Haselwood, too, has a piece of titanium melded onto his body: a shunt on his lower leg after a compound fracture he suffered during a college soccer match.

He turned 30 just a few days ago. It was a quiet celebration with other staffers and a single local beer apiece.

Today he wears a five-day growth of stubble and an IRC Liberia T-shirt with the slogan "Ah Mun Yah," or "Let's go forward together."

His job is monitoring and evaluation, traveling to field sites and applying a regimen of statistical analysis to measure the effectiveness of IRC programs.

"Data collection is used to examine our programs and make them more effective," says Haselwood. "That's how, with the IRC, 90 cents of every dollar goes to beneficiaries."

But Haselwood agrees there's a definite irony in applying computer technology in a place that has very little in terms of hardware and software, individuals with high tech skills, or even regular sources of electricity for that matter.

Regardless, at a new IRC medical center he works with a local nurse to create a better caseload work card, something that will be easy to use in the field but also help the IRC track what kind of procedures are being done and at what costs.

He knows it will take time to see the results of what he and others are doing here.

"We're not just in here for the short run. We're in here for the long haul, for the six, eight or 10 years it's going take to turn this place around," he says. "It's not just emergency care; it's health care [and] gender-based violence; it's child protection, social concerns, community building. People have been fighting for over 20 years, and now they have to cooperate. That's a lot of hard work."

Haselwood says some people have major misperceptions, not just about his specific work, but about the work of international aid agencies as a whole.

"The average person has no idea what we're doing out here," he says. "The biggest misperception is that it's all just a bunch of white people from America or western Europe handing out buckets to people. The reality is we work though local partners and help create a capacity in these communities, the capacity for them to deal with their own problems."

Steiger agrees. "No one [expatriate] can make things better here. All we can do is help the national staff to do their jobs. That's what it's all about," she says. "If we in Western society have advantages, why don't we share them? There are needs here, and people with great potential to meet those needs, and all we have to do is give them some advice, some options, some tools."

But in southern Sudan -- or in much of Africa -- it is difficult to forget you are a foreigner, or white. As I walk down the dirt paths that wind through the village of Malual Kan with Steiger and Haselwood, children follow after us, waving and shouting, "khawaja," or white person.

"In Liberia it was 'toobabu'," says Haselwood.  In Sierra Leone, it was "poumouy." 

"'Mzungu' in Kenya," adds Steiger.

They don't see them as insults or slurs, just words. But both also know that the words emphasize differences here, not just in color, but in location.

"I miss being a normal human being sometimes," says Haselwood. "I miss being anonymous like I am in the U.S."

Steiger nods in agreement.

I tell Haselwood and Steiger that since I've been reporting in Africa more than a few readers have commented that tribal and religious conflict is inherent in black Africa and that Western nations should just wash their hands of them.

"I hear a lot of talk about how race or tribe plays into these conflicts, but really when you examine it closely, it's economics," says Haselwood. "The people who are conducting these wars, whether they're governments, companies or armed groups, use tribes, race and religion as tools of those wars. They're not the causes. The diamonds in Sierra Leone are a perfect example. Same for [the Democratic Republic of the Congo]."

It's nighttime in the IRC compound and a few solar lights draw in swarms of every kind of insect imaginable, from gnats and mosquitoes to giant dragonflies and praying mantises.

Guided by the light, the mosquitoes find their way to us and begin their attack, despite the healthy glaze of repellant with which we have covered ourselves.

I have been humbled by what I've seen here, but will be glad to leave at the end of the week. As I look at Steiger and Haselwood I wonder how they will get through a full year.

But they seem completely relaxed, talking and joking with Solomon, the local medical director and a former SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army) soldier and with Joseph, a native of Kenya who has come to help the people of this neighboring country.

It is a long haul, but one in which they know they are not the only ones who are making sacrifices. They also know that eventually they will leave while others will not. But how will they leave it when they do go?

"Little by little the bird makes its nest -- one straw at a time," says Haselwood, quoting a Senegalese proverb.

Email Story IM Story

RECOMMEND THIS STORY

Recommend It:

Not at All Somewhat Moderately Highly Very Highly

Average (Not Rated)

ALSO ON YAHOO!