Disaster Relief: Finding Resilience

On Christmas Night, I sat in my brother’s apartment in New York where my family had gathered, full of good food and wine and taking a break from roughhousing with my nephews. As the good wired world citizen I am, I got online to check on the day’s stories. One site I visit every day is Reliefweb.int, the portal of OCHA, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. I recently returned to the U.S. after eight years of humanitarian relief work in various locales, and Reliefweb is the best way for me to stay up-to-date. There was a headline about an earthquake near Indonesia, but it was under the sea and hadn’t caused much damage.

The next morning, of course, I learned along with everyone else what had happened, and like many others, wondered what I could do to help. My impulse at the time was to chuck my work here in the US, call up my old boss at Oxfam, and get on to a plane for South Asia. Reason prevailed and I stayed put, for professional reasons; other gay folk, though, might also want to do more during these crises than sending a check, but hesitate because of concerns over security and culture.

Any relief worker, gay or straight, headed off to South Asia would be faced first of all with a demanding workload under some pretty tough conditions. Amidst the chaos of getting established in new surroundings and trying to get a grip on who needs what where, there would be enormous pressure by the organization and donors to get out and do something: deliver food, set up water supply systems, dig latrines, and treat the wounded. Logistics becomes an overriding concern: how to get personnel, equipment, and relief goods from the U.S. and Europe to the field and then out to work sites, in a way that respects procedures, keep costs down, and prevents corruption.

Coordination is another major issue: in crises like this one where the media and timing provoke an outpouring of funds and public comment in the West, hundreds of agencies descend on the region, eager to show that they’re responding. Projects overlap on the ground, incoming flights clog up the airports, and workers trip over each other to identify sites and start distributing assistance. An important task in those first few days and weeks, therefore, is to work closely with OCHA, mentioned above, which is responsible for bringing some order to the chaos.

Finally, the most neglected aspect of any crisis is the community, where as former Peace Corps volunteers we have a distinct advantage. Crises can be obviously traumatic for communities, but they can also present opportunities to organize and develop. The best relief work is that which collaborates with community leaders, residents, and children, not just in gathering information about needs but in implementing projects and evaluating results. In the first few days of a crisis, there may be a push for outsiders to direct efforts to save lives and prevent disease, but it is usually possible to work with the community from the very beginning.

One common aspect of relief work that is not a major concern in South Asia is security. Conflict between rebel movements and governments in Sri Lanka and Indonesia mean that aid workers have to be on their guard, but in general it seems that relief efforts are proceeding unhampered by security problems. In crises that are heavily associated with armed conflict, however, as in the Great Lakes region of Africa, security is an overriding, daily concern. The goal is to operate without compromising the lives and wellbeing of staff, which requires staying informed of political and military developments, reliable communications technology, and good relationships with the community (obviously a common theme and one where, again, RPCVs have much to offer).

For gay staffers, however, security and personal safety have an additional dimension. My experience suggests that relief organizations have strong non-discrimination policies (although they may be working out the kinks in terms of partner issues) and would, if needed, take a strong line against any harassment of gay staff based on sexuality or any other issue. Being open about our sexuality in the field is another question, and requires the same strategy we deployed as volunteers: do what feels right.

There is concern that in some cultures, especially Muslim communities, it may never feel right; for my part, being gay was far more difficult when I was a relief worker in Central Africa than it was when I was a volunteer in Morocco. Luckily, we are truly everywhere: with patience, we find each other, and as we get to know people in the communities where we work, we find those with whom we can be ourselves.

The point about security, both in operational and personal terms, is that it is manageable. Relief agencies have developed considerable expertise in keeping staff safe, and there are almost always other gay people available to help us do the same for ourselves when we first arrive.

Beyond questions of security and sexuality and logistics, however, lies the reality of the disaster. Whether natural, as in South Asia, or man-made, as in the Great Lakes, relief workers are left humbled and shaken in the face of devastation. Sometimes it is overwhelming and staff quit or don’t renew their contracts. Mostly, however, they take their cue from the people. In South Asia now and over the next weeks and months, relief workers may feel useless confronted with men and women and children whose families have been swept away, but they’ll also glimpse a foundation of resilience.

In Cambodia, for me, it happened after months of hearing staff talk about their lives under the Khmer Rouge, then suddenly realizing that every single one of them had literally been enslaved for more than three years, and had come through it. In Azerbaijan, it was the teachers who ran schools out of boxcars that were ovens in the summer and freezers in the winter, to maintain their tradition of literacy during their exile from homes overrun by Armenians. In Burundi, it was the woman driven from her home who escaped a massacre by government soldiers that claimed her son, then testified before the government commission ostensibly charged with protecting displaced persons. As volunteers, we encountered that resilience as well, and as gay people, we may recognize it in ourselves.

After managing emergency public health projects in Asia and Africa for several years, Rick Neal is studying conflict prevention in Washington, D.C. Contact him at lgbrpcv@lgbrpcv.org.