This week I've been thinking about waiting. So many of my friends and family are in seasons of waiting. Waiting for job security, waiting for babies, waiting for house moves, waiting for illnesses to be cured. Waiting will always be a part of our lives, and it can be incredibly hard to deal with. But for most of us, we know that there will be an end to the wait. The outcome may not be what we had hoped for, but there will be an outcome. We will get an answer of sorts. And we tend to have options that we can consider and make informed choices about.
For so many of the people that I am working with, and for others around the world this is not the case. There is no end in sight to their displacement. There is a whole generation of people who are being born in to displacement, and growing up with no experience of anything else. They live their lives in perpetual waiting. Waiting for someone to provide them with food. Waiting for water to be delivered. Waiting for an opportunity to earn a small income. Waiting for a school to open with a curriculum in their language. Waiting for their homes to be safe enough to return to, or for to receive asylum in a new country. They are powerless in their own struggle and that is one of the most hopeless parts of this. Their suffering is not of their own making, and there are no options for them. I can't tell you the number of conversations I have with displaced people which include an element of them asking for my help - help with day to day things yes, but also help on a much larger scale - can I manage to get their girls back who have been kidnapped? Can I request more international military intervention? Can I influence the UN?
When you have no voice, you are at the mercy of other's who do have a voice to speak for you. And in the meantime you get used to waiting. There is no other choice available to you. It's a struggle to bring any kind of hope in to those situations. Platitudes are pretty empty to families who have lost so, so much. All we can do is take our ability to have influence seriously in the way we live our lives. Don't squander your voice.
.
Sunday, 23 April 2017
Friday, 14 April 2017
My amazing WASH team!
So I'm back at work after a lovely week off. I really enjoyed my break, but I was also happy to come back to work. A week is a good amount of time as you don't completely forget everything that you were in the middle of when you left, and only so many crises can occur while you are away :-) Plus there's the added bonus of less emails and skype messages to catch up on when you return.
One of the activities that one of my Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) teams manage is the operation and maintenance of the WASH facilities in a couple of camps for internally displaced people. The biggest operation is the Qayyarah Airstrip camp which is housing 10,000 families - just over 50,000 people. The camp was built on an old, disused army airstrip, and the land alongside it. Therefore it has no access to any water network or other services. I thought I'd try and give you a flavour of what this team has to do in order to ensure that everyone living in the camp can access safe drinking water, toilets and showers; and that we don't end up with disease epidemics caused by dirty facilities and garbage piling up.
Water
In order to ensure that the residents have access to sufficient safe drinking water and sufficient clean water for washing and cooking etc; the team has had to split the provision in to two separate activities. To provide safe drinking water we have installed a huge water filter system in to our on-site compound. This machine filters around 6,000 litres of water an hour and we currently run it for 20 hours a day, which is it's maximum level. A water truck brings water from the nearest water pump out at the river and this water is then pumped in to a massive storage tank which looks like a very, very big paddling pool. The water is fed through the filter in to a different storage tank and then a different water truck loads up and delivers the safe water to designated drinking water points around the camp. As water provision is critical, we then have local staff positioned at the water points to ensure that families only take water from these points for drinking, and only use their 'drinking water' jerry cans so that there is no contamination of the water at household level. An average week sees the filter machine produce over 600,000 litres of drinking water used by both the residents and the workers in the camp.
The provision of clean water for washing and cooking (clean in this sense is not as safe to drink) is currently done through water trucking directly to large water storage tanks which are positioned in each section of the camp - every 20 tents shares 2 20,000 litre water tanks. On an average week we are trucking 12.5 million litres of water in to the camp. That's over 1,000 trips by water trucks. It's a fairly constant process as you can imagine! And not only do we have to receive and log every truck, but we also have to ensure the quality of the water by testing every truck load, as well as regularly testing water in our tanks. We have a team of 9 people working on water quality control and operation of the filter unit.
Separately we are also working on rehabilitating a large water treatment plant outside the city which ISIS destroyed when they retreated; and on upgrading the pipe network so that this will directly serve the camp with safe water.
Sanitation
Each 20 tents share two sets of sanitation facilities - each one has 2 toilets and 2 showers. There is of course no running water, so the toilets are squatties and the showers are jug style. In each tented community we provide cleaning materials and training on keeping the site clean. Most residents have come from areas where they had full sanitation like we would, and so it is an adjustment to living in this way and does require some training in order for things to stay clean and to therefore keep disease at bay. We have a team of 30 'hygiene promoters' who spend their days doing this training and spot checking facilities. They are also setting up 'sanitation committees' who will be responsible for sharing messages around hygiene in their designated areas. This becomes particularly important when the weather gets warmer and families struggle to keep food fresh leading to health issues.
We also have a smaller technical team who monitor and respond to any issues with the maintenance of facilities - replacing toilet locks, issuing new equipment, getting taps replaced etc, etc. We have a small warehouse on-site that is stocked with all the most common items they may need to use. On an average week the team will respond to over 250 issues.
Solid Waste Management
A camp the size of a town generates a lot of rubbish! And all of that has to be collected and disposed of. We have bins around the camp of course, but there is still a lot of litter. There is a weekly team of 37 people per day working on garbage collection as well as 7 trucks that do 14 trips per day each between the camp and the municipality disposal site.
Distributions
Periodically the team will distribute hygiene items such as soap to all camp residents, as well as cleaning item top ups to the nominated families in each community.
Most of the work we do in the camp on this project is done by camp residents who work on rotations - we hire them for a set number of days and then we select someone else so that everyone gets a fair chance to earn a small amount doing menial work. We then have our full DRC staff who are highly qualified and experienced technicians who oversee it all, including timesheets and payments for all those temporary camp staff. They are always looking at ways to improve the facilities such as putting in privacy screens, designating a single tap at each tap station as a hand-washing tap, providing hygiene education in the children's education centres etc.
So as you can see this is a very, very busy team! They work on a shift pattern 7 days a week and are led by a brilliant Project Manager who even if he isn't setting off for the camp at 7.30am as he's having an office day still turns up to send them off and encourage them. I couldn't be prouder of this team.
One of the activities that one of my Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) teams manage is the operation and maintenance of the WASH facilities in a couple of camps for internally displaced people. The biggest operation is the Qayyarah Airstrip camp which is housing 10,000 families - just over 50,000 people. The camp was built on an old, disused army airstrip, and the land alongside it. Therefore it has no access to any water network or other services. I thought I'd try and give you a flavour of what this team has to do in order to ensure that everyone living in the camp can access safe drinking water, toilets and showers; and that we don't end up with disease epidemics caused by dirty facilities and garbage piling up.
Water
In order to ensure that the residents have access to sufficient safe drinking water and sufficient clean water for washing and cooking etc; the team has had to split the provision in to two separate activities. To provide safe drinking water we have installed a huge water filter system in to our on-site compound. This machine filters around 6,000 litres of water an hour and we currently run it for 20 hours a day, which is it's maximum level. A water truck brings water from the nearest water pump out at the river and this water is then pumped in to a massive storage tank which looks like a very, very big paddling pool. The water is fed through the filter in to a different storage tank and then a different water truck loads up and delivers the safe water to designated drinking water points around the camp. As water provision is critical, we then have local staff positioned at the water points to ensure that families only take water from these points for drinking, and only use their 'drinking water' jerry cans so that there is no contamination of the water at household level. An average week sees the filter machine produce over 600,000 litres of drinking water used by both the residents and the workers in the camp.
The provision of clean water for washing and cooking (clean in this sense is not as safe to drink) is currently done through water trucking directly to large water storage tanks which are positioned in each section of the camp - every 20 tents shares 2 20,000 litre water tanks. On an average week we are trucking 12.5 million litres of water in to the camp. That's over 1,000 trips by water trucks. It's a fairly constant process as you can imagine! And not only do we have to receive and log every truck, but we also have to ensure the quality of the water by testing every truck load, as well as regularly testing water in our tanks. We have a team of 9 people working on water quality control and operation of the filter unit.
Separately we are also working on rehabilitating a large water treatment plant outside the city which ISIS destroyed when they retreated; and on upgrading the pipe network so that this will directly serve the camp with safe water.
Sanitation
Each 20 tents share two sets of sanitation facilities - each one has 2 toilets and 2 showers. There is of course no running water, so the toilets are squatties and the showers are jug style. In each tented community we provide cleaning materials and training on keeping the site clean. Most residents have come from areas where they had full sanitation like we would, and so it is an adjustment to living in this way and does require some training in order for things to stay clean and to therefore keep disease at bay. We have a team of 30 'hygiene promoters' who spend their days doing this training and spot checking facilities. They are also setting up 'sanitation committees' who will be responsible for sharing messages around hygiene in their designated areas. This becomes particularly important when the weather gets warmer and families struggle to keep food fresh leading to health issues.
We also have a smaller technical team who monitor and respond to any issues with the maintenance of facilities - replacing toilet locks, issuing new equipment, getting taps replaced etc, etc. We have a small warehouse on-site that is stocked with all the most common items they may need to use. On an average week the team will respond to over 250 issues.
Solid Waste Management
A camp the size of a town generates a lot of rubbish! And all of that has to be collected and disposed of. We have bins around the camp of course, but there is still a lot of litter. There is a weekly team of 37 people per day working on garbage collection as well as 7 trucks that do 14 trips per day each between the camp and the municipality disposal site.
Distributions
Periodically the team will distribute hygiene items such as soap to all camp residents, as well as cleaning item top ups to the nominated families in each community.
Most of the work we do in the camp on this project is done by camp residents who work on rotations - we hire them for a set number of days and then we select someone else so that everyone gets a fair chance to earn a small amount doing menial work. We then have our full DRC staff who are highly qualified and experienced technicians who oversee it all, including timesheets and payments for all those temporary camp staff. They are always looking at ways to improve the facilities such as putting in privacy screens, designating a single tap at each tap station as a hand-washing tap, providing hygiene education in the children's education centres etc.
So as you can see this is a very, very busy team! They work on a shift pattern 7 days a week and are led by a brilliant Project Manager who even if he isn't setting off for the camp at 7.30am as he's having an office day still turns up to send them off and encourage them. I couldn't be prouder of this team.
Tuesday, 4 April 2017
Self-care
Well I wasn't going to post from holiday but then Becca was keen for a cameo on the blog so here I am blogging from Croatia.
Self-care is a phrase we use a lot in this work and recently I've had a revelation. Bear with me as this will sound ridiculous. I have realised that I am the only person who can take responsibility for avoiding my own burn out. I hear you - 'yes Rachel, how has this taken you this many years to figure out?!'
This work is unrelenting in many ways, and because of the nature of it it's easy to feel guilty about needing breaks. But my boss won't moderate my working hours, my staff won't tell me to stop, there's always more that people need, there's always more I can do. So I have to make conscious decisions about my own lifestyle and I have to be disciplined in those choices otherwise I will reach burn out. I have to decide what is a reasonable number of office hours a week and only deviate from that when truly essential. I have to stick to the other plans I've made to stay healthy - taking exercise, eating proper food, getting enough sleep, making enough time for friends, carving out time to be creative, making sure I call family and friends at home regularly.
R&R is the one thing all agencies put in place to help staff avoid burn out. Depending on where you work in the world you will be sent out of the county on a regular break, paid for by your employer. For me at the moment I'm on a 12 week R&R cycle. Every 12 weeks in-country I do, I get sent out for a week. I get to choose where I go, and can claim certain costs back up to a budget limit. It's an excellent system :-)
So here I am on R&R in Croatia with the wonderful Becca. So many of my colleagues regularly take R&R breaks alone, but I would struggle to spend a whole week alone. It's a testament to how tired we get though that a lot of people literally stay in a hotel complex for a week simply sleeping and eating. Thankfully I have friends and family who seem ok with holidaying with a tired Rachel!
Invariably on R&R I look back over the last rotation and promise to look after myself better on the next rotation. I'll be more disciplined about limiting my overtime, I'll be better at exercise and cooking. I won't allow things to slide so that I get to week 12 and find that I'm back to eating cereal or crisps for dinner as I'm too tired to cook after 13 hour days. This is the benefit of leaving every 12 weeks - it's the purposeful opportunity to press the re-set button on the bad habits that have crept back in. And I'm grateful that as I look back I realise I am learning these lessons of self-care. I'm a slow learner but small changes have made big differences in the last rotation. I have started a Saturday Supper Club with a few friends as a way to do something fun and meet new people, I've kept up the Book Club, I've started running early in the morning as evenings weren't working for me anymore, I've managed to keep the freezer stocked with home made ready meals, I've done some knitting. The blog has helped me process events. The thing I have not done so well at is limiting working hours. I have still averaged 11 or 12 hours a day for 5 days a week plus a shorter 6th day. I don't have an answer to that, but the next break is only 10 weeks away (I'm claiming back 2 weeks from a long rotation before Christmas), so if all the other good habits stick, I'll survive the long hours.
Self-care is a phrase we use a lot in this work and recently I've had a revelation. Bear with me as this will sound ridiculous. I have realised that I am the only person who can take responsibility for avoiding my own burn out. I hear you - 'yes Rachel, how has this taken you this many years to figure out?!'
This work is unrelenting in many ways, and because of the nature of it it's easy to feel guilty about needing breaks. But my boss won't moderate my working hours, my staff won't tell me to stop, there's always more that people need, there's always more I can do. So I have to make conscious decisions about my own lifestyle and I have to be disciplined in those choices otherwise I will reach burn out. I have to decide what is a reasonable number of office hours a week and only deviate from that when truly essential. I have to stick to the other plans I've made to stay healthy - taking exercise, eating proper food, getting enough sleep, making enough time for friends, carving out time to be creative, making sure I call family and friends at home regularly.
R&R is the one thing all agencies put in place to help staff avoid burn out. Depending on where you work in the world you will be sent out of the county on a regular break, paid for by your employer. For me at the moment I'm on a 12 week R&R cycle. Every 12 weeks in-country I do, I get sent out for a week. I get to choose where I go, and can claim certain costs back up to a budget limit. It's an excellent system :-)
So here I am on R&R in Croatia with the wonderful Becca. So many of my colleagues regularly take R&R breaks alone, but I would struggle to spend a whole week alone. It's a testament to how tired we get though that a lot of people literally stay in a hotel complex for a week simply sleeping and eating. Thankfully I have friends and family who seem ok with holidaying with a tired Rachel!
Invariably on R&R I look back over the last rotation and promise to look after myself better on the next rotation. I'll be more disciplined about limiting my overtime, I'll be better at exercise and cooking. I won't allow things to slide so that I get to week 12 and find that I'm back to eating cereal or crisps for dinner as I'm too tired to cook after 13 hour days. This is the benefit of leaving every 12 weeks - it's the purposeful opportunity to press the re-set button on the bad habits that have crept back in. And I'm grateful that as I look back I realise I am learning these lessons of self-care. I'm a slow learner but small changes have made big differences in the last rotation. I have started a Saturday Supper Club with a few friends as a way to do something fun and meet new people, I've kept up the Book Club, I've started running early in the morning as evenings weren't working for me anymore, I've managed to keep the freezer stocked with home made ready meals, I've done some knitting. The blog has helped me process events. The thing I have not done so well at is limiting working hours. I have still averaged 11 or 12 hours a day for 5 days a week plus a shorter 6th day. I don't have an answer to that, but the next break is only 10 weeks away (I'm claiming back 2 weeks from a long rotation before Christmas), so if all the other good habits stick, I'll survive the long hours.
Friday, 24 March 2017
A Visit from an MP
Well this week has been one of typical unpredictability and variety. Too much has happened this week for a single blog post, so I'll split it out over two or three of the coming weeks.
Last weekend we got a call from ECHO (the EU's humanitarian arm) asking us if we could host a British MP in our camp on Sunday. He was coming in under the radar over his weekend just to try and inform himself about the reality on the ground. So thankfully, unlike the visit we'd had a couple of weeks before from some high level EU delegates, this one came with no press and much less security. Because he was choosing to be low-profile, I'll keep him anonymous.
On Sunday we were at around 9,000 tents occupied in our camp. As the MP arrived, so did buses of newly displaced people from western Mosul so he saw first hand the state people are arriving in. We gave him a briefing in our office on-site, including going through maps of the camp layout with him, and explaining how we were coping with the surge in displacement that has happened over the last month. He quite clearly just could not believe what we and the other partners on the ground are dealing with. Our camp, when full, is actually not that much smaller than his constituency in terms of numbers of households and people. There's another camp next to it that has been extended to cope with the current surge in displacement which will be almost the size of ours again. Then the actual town is about the same size again. This guy just kept comparing things to his constituency and it was a stark reminder of this emergency. Our camp shares it's maternity delivery room (a portacabin) with the camp next door - that's a population of over 100,000 people using a single room. Similarly the pharmacy is shared for the same number of people. There's a single 'temporary learning space' (very, very basic school) in our camp, where about 50% of the population is under 18. It's no where near enough for the number of children.
After showing him the maps and chatting through it all, we went out to show him the camp, and to meet with a newly arrived family. We were welcomed in to this family's tent. They had arrived 48 hours before. There was an older lady lying on a mat who didn't get up to greet us. We settled down and the man of the family, who looked about 16 began to tell us their story. They are from western Mosul city. Their area is still under IS control, but the fighting was getting close and they were afraid. They were also struggling to find food. He told me his uncles had already been taken by IS and hadn't been seen for several months. He has a blind sister, and the family had to make the agonising decision to leave her behind with his father to take care of her. They knew they wouldn't be able to escape with her - she would have slowed them down too much. 'If they survive, it will at least mean that IS won't boobytrap our house as they retreat'.
He said they left the house at night and slowly made their way out of their neighbourhood. They knew there were snipers around looking for people trying to escape. Sadly his mother was hit by a sniper as they fled. She was shot in her hip but after they did their best to bandage it they had to keep walking for another 3 hours. This was when the mother lying on the mat spoke up 'it was too late to turn back, they knew we were trying to leave, we would all have been shot if we tried to go back so I just had to keep going'.
They finally reached the mustering point which is where the Iraqi army receive those fleeing and the mother received some very basic medical treatment. It's a sign of the horrendous injuries people arrive at these points with, that a serious bullet wound to the hip on a fairly elderly lady was not considered critical enough for her to be sent to one of the field hospitals run by agencies like MSF. Instead they were moved to the screening site (where the family is checked against various terrorist databases) and then put on a bus to our camp. That process took a full day in which she received no treatment at all. Thankfully on arrival at the camp, my team responded to the medical need immediately and got her to the clinic for treatment.
This is one family. My team have been receiving between 300 and 400 families every 24 hours for the last couple of weeks, often in the middle of the night. People are arriving traumatised, with special needs like this, and the team have done an incredible job at responding to this.
Suffice to say, this MP honestly couldn't believe the magnitude of the situation. I think no matter what you hear on the news, nothing can prepare you for what you see on the ground. The construction of this camp started in November, it opened in December and on Wednesday this week we declared it full. That's 10,000 families taking refuge inside our fence. There have been so many obstacles along the way, and there's still construction going on, but it is a feat of logistics. The MP was so encouraging to my team - they are so used to seeing life like this, that I think his utter disbelief at what they have achieved was a real compliment to them - their heads were definitely being held a bit higher after his visit. So, no matter what I think of politics, I am grateful to this man for giving up his weekend to come and visit us; for taking the time to hear the real stories, to see the situation, for encouraging my teams and myself.
Last weekend we got a call from ECHO (the EU's humanitarian arm) asking us if we could host a British MP in our camp on Sunday. He was coming in under the radar over his weekend just to try and inform himself about the reality on the ground. So thankfully, unlike the visit we'd had a couple of weeks before from some high level EU delegates, this one came with no press and much less security. Because he was choosing to be low-profile, I'll keep him anonymous.
On Sunday we were at around 9,000 tents occupied in our camp. As the MP arrived, so did buses of newly displaced people from western Mosul so he saw first hand the state people are arriving in. We gave him a briefing in our office on-site, including going through maps of the camp layout with him, and explaining how we were coping with the surge in displacement that has happened over the last month. He quite clearly just could not believe what we and the other partners on the ground are dealing with. Our camp, when full, is actually not that much smaller than his constituency in terms of numbers of households and people. There's another camp next to it that has been extended to cope with the current surge in displacement which will be almost the size of ours again. Then the actual town is about the same size again. This guy just kept comparing things to his constituency and it was a stark reminder of this emergency. Our camp shares it's maternity delivery room (a portacabin) with the camp next door - that's a population of over 100,000 people using a single room. Similarly the pharmacy is shared for the same number of people. There's a single 'temporary learning space' (very, very basic school) in our camp, where about 50% of the population is under 18. It's no where near enough for the number of children.
After showing him the maps and chatting through it all, we went out to show him the camp, and to meet with a newly arrived family. We were welcomed in to this family's tent. They had arrived 48 hours before. There was an older lady lying on a mat who didn't get up to greet us. We settled down and the man of the family, who looked about 16 began to tell us their story. They are from western Mosul city. Their area is still under IS control, but the fighting was getting close and they were afraid. They were also struggling to find food. He told me his uncles had already been taken by IS and hadn't been seen for several months. He has a blind sister, and the family had to make the agonising decision to leave her behind with his father to take care of her. They knew they wouldn't be able to escape with her - she would have slowed them down too much. 'If they survive, it will at least mean that IS won't boobytrap our house as they retreat'.
He said they left the house at night and slowly made their way out of their neighbourhood. They knew there were snipers around looking for people trying to escape. Sadly his mother was hit by a sniper as they fled. She was shot in her hip but after they did their best to bandage it they had to keep walking for another 3 hours. This was when the mother lying on the mat spoke up 'it was too late to turn back, they knew we were trying to leave, we would all have been shot if we tried to go back so I just had to keep going'.
They finally reached the mustering point which is where the Iraqi army receive those fleeing and the mother received some very basic medical treatment. It's a sign of the horrendous injuries people arrive at these points with, that a serious bullet wound to the hip on a fairly elderly lady was not considered critical enough for her to be sent to one of the field hospitals run by agencies like MSF. Instead they were moved to the screening site (where the family is checked against various terrorist databases) and then put on a bus to our camp. That process took a full day in which she received no treatment at all. Thankfully on arrival at the camp, my team responded to the medical need immediately and got her to the clinic for treatment.
This is one family. My team have been receiving between 300 and 400 families every 24 hours for the last couple of weeks, often in the middle of the night. People are arriving traumatised, with special needs like this, and the team have done an incredible job at responding to this.
Suffice to say, this MP honestly couldn't believe the magnitude of the situation. I think no matter what you hear on the news, nothing can prepare you for what you see on the ground. The construction of this camp started in November, it opened in December and on Wednesday this week we declared it full. That's 10,000 families taking refuge inside our fence. There have been so many obstacles along the way, and there's still construction going on, but it is a feat of logistics. The MP was so encouraging to my team - they are so used to seeing life like this, that I think his utter disbelief at what they have achieved was a real compliment to them - their heads were definitely being held a bit higher after his visit. So, no matter what I think of politics, I am grateful to this man for giving up his weekend to come and visit us; for taking the time to hear the real stories, to see the situation, for encouraging my teams and myself.
Saturday, 18 March 2017
Blessed
This week has, to be frank, been fairly horrid. In my position, there are weeks when I feel like I am constantly having to face up to issues, problem solve for my teams in difficult circumstances. I am regularly having difficult conversations with senior members of other agencies, donors and local government staff. I have frequent internal issues to deal with, staff to challenge or defend. Difficult decisions to make. This week has felt like a treadmill of this kind of thing. For obvious reasons I can't list things here but I have had multiple internal and external conflicts to mediate. Believe it or not, I used to be someone who would avoid conflict to quite an extreme level. I think I still tend to be the peace-maker in my personal life, but I have had to learn to be assertive as a professional. I have had to learn that it's possible to be a woman of faith who is strong and feminine and a leader. And by the end of this week, I was being a complete girl and crying over the latest HR issue that crossed my desk and wondering if this was really the right job for me (don't worry - I'm over it already!)
But this weekend as I've been thinking about these issues of gender in the workplace, I have been thinking back to interviews I conducted in our Kirkuk office recently. One of the candidates was a lady who looked to be in her early 40s. During the course of the discussion, she talked about how she could apply for this role as she had chosen to stay single. Her siblings had married, her friends had married, but she had decided that should would prefer to remain single in order to be able to work and travel. To her this was a simple statement of fact. She knew that in her culture she had to make a choice, she couldn't have both a job and a family. She couldn't have a family and be free to travel. And that choice is not really an acceptable one to many people here. In our livelihoods interventions, including women requires real innovative thinking in order to find roles that are culturally acceptable.
I know that gender imbalance is still an issue in the UK. I know that I am in the minority being female working at this level; out of my agency's most senior managers in Iraq there are currently only 2 women out of 7, and as of about a month's time we'll be down to just me. I have had to bite my tongue when told I'm being over-sensitive - not something that I think many men are accused of when they are challenging decisions. However, the very reason that I have been able to pursue my career, with the blessing of my family, is that I was born and raised in a culture where it is acceptable and encouraged. Yet again, I am reaping the benefits of where I was born. When I have a tough week like this, I need to remember women like the one I interviewed; who have had to sacrifice so much to simply be able to choose to work. And the many others around the world who don't even have that freedom. I am in the incredibly privileged position of having an education, doing a job that for the most part I love, and being able to be financially independent. All with family and friends cheering me on. I am blessed indeed.
But this weekend as I've been thinking about these issues of gender in the workplace, I have been thinking back to interviews I conducted in our Kirkuk office recently. One of the candidates was a lady who looked to be in her early 40s. During the course of the discussion, she talked about how she could apply for this role as she had chosen to stay single. Her siblings had married, her friends had married, but she had decided that should would prefer to remain single in order to be able to work and travel. To her this was a simple statement of fact. She knew that in her culture she had to make a choice, she couldn't have both a job and a family. She couldn't have a family and be free to travel. And that choice is not really an acceptable one to many people here. In our livelihoods interventions, including women requires real innovative thinking in order to find roles that are culturally acceptable.
I know that gender imbalance is still an issue in the UK. I know that I am in the minority being female working at this level; out of my agency's most senior managers in Iraq there are currently only 2 women out of 7, and as of about a month's time we'll be down to just me. I have had to bite my tongue when told I'm being over-sensitive - not something that I think many men are accused of when they are challenging decisions. However, the very reason that I have been able to pursue my career, with the blessing of my family, is that I was born and raised in a culture where it is acceptable and encouraged. Yet again, I am reaping the benefits of where I was born. When I have a tough week like this, I need to remember women like the one I interviewed; who have had to sacrifice so much to simply be able to choose to work. And the many others around the world who don't even have that freedom. I am in the incredibly privileged position of having an education, doing a job that for the most part I love, and being able to be financially independent. All with family and friends cheering me on. I am blessed indeed.
Friday, 10 March 2017
Perspective
Disclaimer: I am well aware that there are people living in real
poverty in the UK, including in Surbiton. This post is not me being blind to
that, or suggesting that a few pounds do not make a real difference to those
people.
I had one of those
times this week where my separate worlds collided with a great big emotional jolt.
I spent the early part of the week doing assessments of new areas
for my teams to work in. In one town, the river runs through the middle. One
side is ISIS, the other side has been re-taken from them. On the re-taken side
every single family is hosting people displaced from the other bank. Every
family is sharing the very little they have with another family, often with
multiple families. And they are not complaining. They know what it is like to
live under ISIS rule, and so when their neighbours risk their lives crossing
the river under the cover of darkness to escape them, they open their homes to
them without question. I sat on the floor in a house bare of furniture and
listened to stories of ISIS torture, of escape, of return to the remains of
property that had been looted by ISIS. It’s been 2 and a half years and yet I’m
still shocked by the brutality of ISIS. I asked what conditions were believed
to be like on the other side of the river. As we heard the bullets in the
distance, they talked of how the people who had been smuggling food across to
try and ease the suffering of those caught on the wrong side have been stopped
by the military and so they are no longer able to provide that small assistance.
Later in the week, back in the office, I was reading a report on
the conditions in Western Mosul. The army is making good progress to re-capture
the city, but as they do so, the poorest neighbourhoods are facing siege-like
conditions. Food is scarce, prices are rising daily, safe water is unavailable,
and ISIS are going house to house carrying out 'inspections' where they take
what little food people still have stored. It's a bleak picture, hard to read
about; imagine how much harder to actually live in those conditions. Not only
are you in fear for your life, but you also can't feed your children.
About an hour later I was on facebook and came across a video from
Tescos in Surbiton (my old neck of the woods). They had done the daily price reductions
and there was the most horrifying scrum for the bargains. Watching it, I just
felt so sick. There's nothing wrong with a bargain. There's nothing wrong with
avoiding food waste by reducing prices. But when people in Surbiton (one of the
wealthiest parts of England, and therefore the world) are physically fighting
over saving a few pounds, there is something very, very wrong with our
perspectives.
I don't know what
the answer to this is. This kind of sense of entitlement seems to be the poison
of my generation. Where is the tipping point between enjoying the good things
in life but not at the cost of other's? We can't, and shouldn't, live our lives
in continual guilt about what we have because of where we were born. But we can
live our lives intentionally informing ourselves about the circumstances others
are facing because of where they were born. We can make decisions which go some
way to re-balancing the world. We can choose to give our time, money, skills to
make a difference to someone else. We each have to find that sweet spot where
we live life to the full; but where part of that fullness of life is brought
about by serving the needs of others, standing up against injustice, looking
after this amazing planet, showing kindness and generosity.
Saturday, 4 March 2017
Fasting from indifference, feasting on love
One of the things I have realised about working in the humanitarian sector is that I can quite easily drift in to ungenerosity. When you spend your days working to alleviate suffering, it's easy to end up feeling that this ticks off the generosity box in your life without even realising it. The reality is that personal generosity and kindness is a choice, it has to be intentional. And if I allow myself to think that my job covers it, then I am gravely mistaken.
This week, entering lent, I read this article summarizing Pope Francis' Lenten Address from 2015, it was so helpful for me; I clicked through and read the full address. So often people discuss what they will 'give up' for lent. I understand how this is helpful, and I don't want to disparage it at all, but it is quite an individualistic way of thinking. Instead Pope Francis encourages us to fast from indifference. As the article states 'whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God's voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades...we end up becoming incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people's pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else's responsibility and not our own.'
Ouch.
How easy it is, to tick that 'compassion' box through my work and allow myself to think that there is no need for more kindness, more generosity. Or even, to go further, and allow myself to feel entitled to other people's kindness towards me because of the hard job I do. How easy it is to see our direct debits to charities or churches exiting our accounts each month and think we have it covered.
So this lent, I am following Pope Francis' advice and trying to fast from indifference beyond my job and my direct debits. The '40 Acts' movement is another wonderful way to do this - using lent to actively demonstrate kindness to those around us.
'When we fast from this indifference, we can begin to feast on love.'
If you would like to read the articles I'm referring to, they can be found here:
http://time.com/3714056/pope-francis-lent-2015-fasting/
and here:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/lent/documents/papa-francesco_20141004_messaggio-quaresima2015.html
This week, entering lent, I read this article summarizing Pope Francis' Lenten Address from 2015, it was so helpful for me; I clicked through and read the full address. So often people discuss what they will 'give up' for lent. I understand how this is helpful, and I don't want to disparage it at all, but it is quite an individualistic way of thinking. Instead Pope Francis encourages us to fast from indifference. As the article states 'whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God's voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades...we end up becoming incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people's pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else's responsibility and not our own.'
Ouch.
How easy it is, to tick that 'compassion' box through my work and allow myself to think that there is no need for more kindness, more generosity. Or even, to go further, and allow myself to feel entitled to other people's kindness towards me because of the hard job I do. How easy it is to see our direct debits to charities or churches exiting our accounts each month and think we have it covered.
So this lent, I am following Pope Francis' advice and trying to fast from indifference beyond my job and my direct debits. The '40 Acts' movement is another wonderful way to do this - using lent to actively demonstrate kindness to those around us.
'When we fast from this indifference, we can begin to feast on love.'
If you would like to read the articles I'm referring to, they can be found here:
http://time.com/3714056/pope-francis-lent-2015-fasting/
and here:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/lent/documents/papa-francesco_20141004_messaggio-quaresima2015.html
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