Over but not out!

Many years ago – almost 20 years ago – I made my debut in what would become a career in the development and humanitarian sector ever since. I have no claim to being a people expat with experience outside of this sector. That is not for lack of opportunities but an outcome of very deliberate career planning and decisions to work with the most at risk population in various aspects of their lives.?

I have not been alone and have since worked with thousands of amazing human beings from literally all over the world. I have had a chance to be at the very frontlines of humanitarian work and seen how our actions impacted the most vulnerable in the society who had found themselves in the situations because of various elements including war, famine, drought and any other strife.??

What I learnt is that life can turn around in a flash even for the most prepared of us. Children have died, have suffered acute malnutrition to levels that will break even the strongest willed humans. Families have been displaced and uprooted from their homes by natural calamities and even man-made ones like wars and never been the same again.?

All these communities have been able to come out of their struggles through interventions that have been done by hundreds of agencies and hundreds of thousands of aid workers; some of whom have paid the ultimate price with their lives in some of the worst living and working conditions on earth. I have in the course of my career lost colleagues who have been caught up in crossfires, abducted and even contracted the very diseases they went out to help contain. The acts of selflessness have never been in vain and have been the unforeseen catalyst for hundreds of thousands of us who continue engaging in this humanitarian and development space.?

The success stories that outline the impact of the interventions by humanitarian and development agencies over the decades are uncountable. The lives changed and saved can be documented and shown on our television sets non stop for the rest of our existence as a human race.?

The last many weeks however, have turned us all into subjects of ridicule. We are being branded as joy riders, high fliers, soft life specialists, promiscuous sans frontiers, beneficiaries without cause, unjustified employees among other horrible titles and references. The pain does not come from the fact that these insinuations are coming from the very highest levels but also being swallowed hook, line and sinker by a good number of the human population.?

There is so much emphasis on the bad that a few people may have done using their positions and influence in the donor spaces at the expense of the great life changing interventions majority of us have been engaged in – some for their entire working life. Granted, there can be bad apples in any system and that includes the very donor landscape. However, they can and may have been identified and need to be dealt with as the exception and not the norm.

There may be people in the donor funding system that may have designed activities that benefited them directly or their cronies directly; those ones have been and are being identified and should be dealt with using the country's justice system if they are established to have committed crimes. But, they do not represent the work and commitment of the majority of us who are proud of the work that we have done with all humility and integrity.

In my professional life in the aid sector, I have no recollection of any event where donor funds were misappropriated by an implementing organization or staff and they got away with it. There have always been swift interventions and consequences. Currently, we have almost horror stories making round the globe to show how many millions of dollars were stolen or misappropriated or invested in programs that were not for a just cause. ?

While those stories are being given wings and boosted by rocket fuel; the people running the launch sequence do not even for a minute pause to read the program description to fully comprehend how the interventions impacted lives, how and why they were set up in the first place and if any of the funds that were sent or committed were ever misappropriated.?

This week, these interventions are being shut down. Not because they are all bad but because of what a journalist friend of mine used to tell me, ”Do not piss me off or I will show you the power of my ballpoint pen”. The holders of the pens and purses have in their wisdom declared that the work we have done, the communities we have impacted, the transformation we have done for decades are no longer necessary.?

I, as many other career aid workers will never for a second believe that our work amounted to nothing. No. We will never for a second imagine that we were stealing anyone’s resources. No. We gave the best part of our lives to serving humanity and that will not end with a dark footnote on all our efforts and sacrifices included the lives of those before us; it will end with our heads held high.?

High and proud of our cause and that of the resources that we utilized to bring that impact in our communities.?Millions of lives have been changed for the better through activities of our programs in thousands of organizations.

Just about 9 years ago, my father who was in his deathbed from prostrate cancer asked to see me and a couple of my brothers. He said,’I will be dead soon. When I die, it is me who will have died and not you. Please bury me and head back to living your lives”?

Today, our programs will die but not us. Our spirits and that of the communities we have impacted shall remain alive to see another day as humanity wins.?

Arody, Over but not out!?