familiarity

It has been a while since my last blog. About 1 month...and it has taken that long to settle in; settle into Boston; settle into the job; settle into the apartment. I think for the first time today, I called my tiny apartment...home. What was suppose to, in my mind, take a week, in reality, took me a full 1.5 months. ALL of the boxes are finally unpacked, the apartment is decently decorated, pictures of family and old friends are up...and in this new space, filled with new things, there are subtle hints of nostalgic familiarity: a candid picture of mom & dad, objects picked up from previous trips abroad, old favorite books on the new book-shelf, and two dimensional smiling faces of friends--old objects lingering among the new ones, finally creating a sense that this apartment is indeed my own.

I am also settling into the job. It has only been one month, but it already feels like I have been there for more than that. There is a daily routine, the same desk, and the co-workers, that are new, but yet familiar at the same time. Sometimes, I ask myself if we go through life, meeting different people with the same persona over and over again. Is that it, or is it my innate need to find a certain familiarity to give me a sense of comfort and security? This segways well into my next point of conversation...what I am learning about international development.

From day 1, numbers have been merely figures to be shocked, amazed at, astounded by...and then just treated as numbers. Numbers in terms of people...lives affected, lives saved...numbers in terms of money...and the vast amount of money poured into international development...1000s, 10,000, 100,000s and 1,000,000s...they all blend together, and it is hard not to get lost in the figures...and humanize the figures, to see faces behind the figures. I have to admit, a lot of money is spent on salaries, personnel, over-head costs...to create familiar spaces for those personnel living in abroad to "bring their lifestyle up to par with that if they were living in the United States." This translates to allowances...hard-ship pays, home leave, Rest and Recuperation, Cost of Living Allowances, the costs to ship their favorite magazines to them in the field...the costs of air-conditioning, generators, moving furniture and personal vehicles from the US to the field. BUT, with that being said, can I blame them? Absolutely not. Their work-load is high, the objectives and goals they have to meet are nearly impossible, and the working environment/conditions are hard, to say the least.

What I do critically reflect on is the system of humanitarian development that those in the field, and those supporting the field, such as myself, are working in. A system where one can easily get lost in the numbers; a system where familiarity is a clutch. It is the paradigm that we work in that makes me wonder if any change is going to be made. To me, it is still an us versus them ideology/mindset that I feel the current system is still working in...and we (the West) have been working within it since the 1400s in Africa, then the colonization and imperialistic era, then the "spreading democracy" around the world post-colonist age...to be followed by the Save Darfur, RED, ONE, and countless other "movements" that are currently going on...is there really an underlying difference? (I ask to question, not to suggest an answer). Has the us versus them barrier made any progress, or has the wall gotten higher, even in the age of the internet, rapid transmission of knowledge, an "inter-culturally" competent college educated, traveled, back-packed, studied aboard generation... Has the wall between the boy that has to walk 10km to get to school, or the AIDS orphans, or those "masses" who still lack access to health care, clean water, education...has the wall between us and them gotten higher? Reflecting back on this past month, and my still short immersion to the world of international development with the big dogs...with the shakers and the movers...I come to the understanding that international development is so much bigger than clean water, electricity, to access to health....as I see it now, it comes down to human justice, equality and equity...it is us breaking from our need for familiarity to connect with them.