Tribute to Sarah Justine Packwood: The Intuitive Humanitarian

 Sarah Justine Packwood (1970 - 2024)

Sarah Justine Packwood was a British humanitarian aid worker and our friend. She died at sea in June 2024. We, her friends and former coworkers in the humanitarian world, grieve for her loss. This is our reflection on her and her work and how important it was to her identity and an invitation to join us at her memorial on 1 December 2024.

There have been stories written about Sarah that focused on her sense of adventure, her passion for the environment, and her love story with her husband, Brett. Many now know about her around the world because the story of lovers who disappeared at sea only to have their bodies found weeks later, captured many people’s imagination. Sarah’s career as an aid worker is briefly mentioned in these stories but a better understanding of it helps shed more light about this warm, wonderful woman.  Sarah was truly a humanitarian at heart and a pragmatic optimist. Sarah had great passion for life and connecting deeply with people. As one of her friends said on LinkedIn, Sarah cared about “the experience of life rather than the superficial needs for position or asset acquisition.” 

Like many of us multitaskers, as Sarah set off to cross the Atlantic, she was also working as a freelance consultant, typing up reports for the United Nations and doing her part for humanitarian work and then tragedy struck. We don’t know what happened to her boat, but Sarah did not survive.

As an aid worker, Sarah specialized in protection - ensuring that persons with disabilities, older people, children and women who were vulnerable to violence received proper support and care and were shielded from further harm. Her warm and caring heart informed all the work she did. How did Sarah decide to become an aid worker? In her own words, “I took a gap year to learn how to apply myself. I did voluntary conservation work, a spell in retail, a stint at a youth hostel and volunteered. Throughout I learned the importance of serving others and working hard whatever the task.” She went on to get her masters degree in Rural Resource Management and conducted her thesis research in Kenya where she was confronted by the poverty of rural farming families there. “I was confronted by the challenges they faced every day just to survive, I experienced an epiphany. Africa captured my heart and I knew I had to return one day.”

And so she did, returning to Tanzania to work with Rwandan refugees living there in 1994 and then again and again in South Sudan, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as to emergencies around the world in Kosovo, Haiti, Myanmar, and other places. In the early millennium, Sarah returned to the UK and did a stint of humanitarian work where she infused her international experiences with the spirituality that was such an important part of her identity, and grounding herself in UK for a season. During this time, she worked for both the Shaftesbury Society and HelpAge. While at the Shaftesbury Society, she was an important part of a steering group with other faith-based NGOs and individuals that shaped a UK-wide Christian faith focused Refugee and Asylum Seeker welcome network. Her involvement saw activists from communities across the UK effectively welcoming asylum seekers and refugees into their communities. In many ways, this early work created the foundations for small refugee charities being established that we now see across the UK. 

Sarah also worked with HelpAge International where she was a pivotal member of the disaster management unit, leading responses to support older people to live dignified lives after a disaster. Her work there responding to natural disasters like floods, cyclones, droughts and earthquakes lead to her lifelong desire to address climate change and live sustainably. Sarah spent time with the United Nations in Namibia and Papua New Guinea as a ProCap protection specialist incorporating persons with disabilities, older people, children, and women and girls in disaster preparedness initiatives. She returned to the UK to care for her mother in her final days, working with the British government at the Department for International Development again focusing on typhoon responses and supporting UN agencies alongside researching clean cookstoves for emergency relief distributions.  It was that stint in London that found her walking home from work in the rain and encountering her future husband on the way to the bus! Her last consultancies conducted remotely as she and her husband Brett developed a sustainable home in Canada and sailed on their beloved ship, Theros, were in preparing communities for disasters and emergencies through work with UN agencies like OHCHR and UNHCR, The World Bank, ChildFund Australia and others. 

Like many of us post-covid and in this time of localization, she was playing a role in humanitarian and development assistance by sharing her knowledge and skills and providing technical assistance from afar while stepping back from a frontline role. Ultimately, Sarah always worked best within a team, always in solidarity with seeking ways to limit the suffering amongst our fellow humans that have endured so much. Colleagues at HelpAge said Sarah was a joyful colleague to have, providing mentoring to younger colleagues from the UK and across the world. Her wise and measured advice has gone on to shape how many people work – and thus furthering her impact across the globe.

Sarah was prolifically creative and always writing, making art and music and applying her heart to problems that she saw in the world. She interviewed many of us for a book she had hoped to produce called the Intuitive Humanitarian. It was based on her thoughts, reflections, observations and experiences in the humanitarian sector over the last 20 years. It was about using a particular lens to look at the broken humanitarian system and re-imagine it, signposting other aid workers and social activists towards modelling something different to cause a shift to happen. We often had conversations about the importance of treating each other in an empathetic, peaceful, and loving way, particularly in our humanitarian community which can sometimes be a traumatized and angry place. Her kindness and compassion were always present in her work, in her art, in her life. She had a ready laugh and smile and a keen intelligence. She was always on the side of the vulnerable and thinking of others.  

Our humanitarian world lost a kind and decent woman in that shipwreck and the world became a little less bright. But in her memory, we continue to try to provide comfort to the suffering in disasters and wars. We bear witness to their suffering and we aim to do our small part to help those less fortunate than ourselves. 

If you knew her or would like to join us in her memorial which is taking place 1 December 2024 in Long Itchington UK, you can find out more information on the service and other events at https://sarah-j-packwood.muchloved.com/ 

All are welcome, just as Sarah would have liked it. 

Inspiration to go on

 

Listen to Jeff Goldblum inspire you with George Bernard Shaw’s words

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It ia a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generations.”

COVID -19 and 2020 recollections

 

Sylvester and Pinky and I enjoy the sunset

I'm writing to you from lovely green Kefalonia, Greece. I came here in October for a writing retreat with a bunch of Berlin writers that had been postponed from May (due to the pandemic). Back in January 2020 when I first signed up for this retreat, I envisioned taking a month off and writing for a week then going on holiday and "island hopping" for a month before returning to Berlin and my work as a consultant.

Little did I know how much things would change for me.

This is probably the year I've done the least amount of travel since I got my passport in 1997 to go on a study tour/vacation to Jamaica! The year started off with a bang - new year's eve in the village in NYC with my friend Alec from my days in DC, visiting old friends in NYC and shopping and eating. I then went to DC on the 3rd of January for my first vacation trip there for a few years and caught a terrible flu around the 6th. I recovered but I remember the weeks of fatigue afterwards and the wheezing and difficulty breathing. I look back now and wonder if it was COVID although the virus had not yet arrived in the USA at the time. Magical thinking to hope that I'm immune is more probable.

I flew back to Berlin after recuperating with my friend Cat in Pennsylvania and my sister in South Carolina and almost immediately went to Bulgaria for a training of one of my favorite projects last year, developing a curricula for interpreters and cultural mediators on how to respond to GBV survivors and provide psychological support for them, as well as addressing vicarious traumatization and burnout for themselves. Interpreters and cultural mediators are the front line workers - particularly in Europe - and it was a very meaningful and lovely project. I met amazing people that really gave me a lot of energy to do this work.

And then I went on a quick holiday jaunt to Dubai to see a friend (thinking, well, I don't love Dubai but its just for a few days!) I had the idea that I would then go from there to a conference in Bangkok and visit friends there, visit my friends in Maldives, and then go to Fiji to see friends there - possibly spending some time getting to know the Pacific before returning to Europe for spring. Boy how those plans changed! As I traveled back on February 11 on the terrible Pegasus Airlines from the budget terminal in Dubai and had a 3 hour layover in the "third" airport of Istanbul from 2am to 5am, the stories of the virus in Asia had spread and one by one, all the events in Asia were being canceled. "Good," I thought, "I could use a rest. These last few flights have been horrible! I am tired of traveling." Little did I know what that meant!

So I stayed at home. February in Berlin is not a pretty month  - dark, grey, cold, and rainy. But i was happy to be in my apartment for a while. We had an amazing spring and I had a small balcony where I could sit in the sun and plant flowers. But it was not restful and the fear of contracting COVID, spreading COVID, or learning that my loved ones had COVID was ever present. At the same time, the humanitarian world was coming to terms that GBV was the shadow pandemic coming alongside the lockdowns and quarantines. Never have I wished more that I had a cat. Simon Le Bon, the Siamese would have reminded me to sit, nap, breathe, eat, and purr to stay calm.

Dancing with Lukas in Templehof

 Berlin was a strange place to be in - we seemed to have the most beautiful spring in a long time and the summer saw the sidewalks and outdoor cafes packed with people outside, not a mask to be seen. And the noise from my neighborhood became unbearable. I hated being in my apartment (although its lovely). I couldn't get away from the stomping neighbors upstairs, the chattering coked up people at the restaurant downstairs under my bedroom, or the drunken mobs coming home from dancing and partying in the park near my house at 4am. I felt miserable and angry all the time. We did have some bright spots, all social activities moved to the parks so we had a few birthday parties in the outdoors. So in October, I came to Kefalonia for the writing retreat... and just stayed.

And - its March and I'm still here! I wake up and look at the Ionian sea and a grove of olive trees. 5 cats (Pinky Tuscadero, Cutie Pie, Sylvester, Filos, and Jenny) come onto my balcony and stare at me until I feed them. We discuss the seasons. I check them for ticks. They fight with each other and sometimes they curl up in the sun with each other and clean each other. We've been on lockdown since November which means there's a 6pm curfew and you have to get permission from the police to go out. So I go out once a week to buy groceries. I go downstairs to talk to my Greek neighbors and cook with them. And I walk around in the olive groves to the sea and listen to Stephen Fry reading Greek mythology to me on an audio book. Thanks to zoom and the internet and a kindle, I can still talk to friends, work full-time, and read books and watch movies. Its a very different existence than February 2020! But a good one.

So forgive my tardiness in sending you holiday greets and instead accept this as Saint Patrick Day or Ides of March greetings! A few photos of Kefalonia, cats, and COVID outdoor party in Berlin

Much love,

Sarah

Proust

 

When he asked me to marry him, I knew that my dreams of a proper British academic life would come true. We had settled down immediately and his lecturer’s salary at the university was just enough to cover a small cottage in the back of an old church near a graveyard. I was 22 and had just graduated and my head was filled with dreams of musty 1930s books and vicars and rambles in the countryside. He was 48, already losing his hair and developing a bit of a stoop. But I loved him – or rather the idea of him- my dreamy academic. My childhood in India had left me plenty of time in old library of my girls’ school to read old books.

 

When we scrimped and saved for holidays, we found a cheap hotel in the Algarve where we went every year. His idea of fun was to read these Proust novels to each other. One day he told me that when we finished the books, he thought that we should start over from the beginning. And that’s when I saw the next 10 years of my life stretched out before me – the same as the last ten. I realized I had never seen the world. I had never figured out my own story. So I said to him – we’ll never finish these books. And then I packed my bag and left him.

Childhood Scenes

My mother straightened the collar of my blouse, tugging at it and licking her finger to wipe away a bit of chocolate smudged around my mouth from the candybar given to me as a bribe on the drive to the airport. "Now be a brave girl and don't embarrass us," she instructed. She stepped back and looked at me with a critical eye. 

"Why did you put her in that get up" my father asked, lifting a skeptical eyebrow and lighting a cigarette. I glanced down at my blue polka dotted suit - a bit tight and very shiny. The shorts showed my pink thighs, a bit chaffed from the vinyl car seat and goose bumped from the cool Irish rain. "They're French! We have to show them that we have some style!" she tutted at him, "we can't be sending her off to France in some dungarees!" "sure, but they aren't in Paris," he exhaled, "they live on a farm in the countryside." 

My mother ignored him and turned her attention back to me. "You won't understand a thing they say," she lectured. "You had better do us proud. You will make your bed every morning the minute you wake up. Don't eat fast, gobbling down your food like a starving piglet at the trough. And for god's sake, keep your hands and face clean." 

I didn't understand why I was off to the French cousins. Just last week I had been running around in the park, thrilled that school was over and now I was standing in the airport in this hot tight suit clutching a small bag with my belongings- told that I was on my way to France on an airplane. 

The stewardess came over and pinned a name tag to the jacket, pushing the floppy frills of the blouse out of the way. "Don't you look as a cute as a button," she smiled with a chipper cold voice. I frowned. My mother kissed me on the cheek and my father patted my head. 

"Don't forget!" my mother called after me as she waved, "Say Bahn Jar when you get there!"

Reflections on current allegations of racism at MSF

So recently, MSF has been in the news again - this time for their racist and colonial tendencies.  A sign-on letter circulated accusing MSF of failing to acknowledge the extent of racism perpetuated by its policies, hiring practices, workplace culture and “dehumanising” programmes, run by a “privileged white minority” workforce.

I often encountered racist attitudes there and in fact worked on a national staff perceptions study where many of the national staff I talked with decried the colonialist attitudes of the organization where a naive young inexperienced Westerner might be the supervisor of a much older and experienced person from the country where they were working. Many of the expats that I met had an inborn belief that only a "Expat" (i.e. a Westerner or European) could truly be neutral.  I was actually instructed when I worked for them to note what pieces of evidence I had from National Staff vs Expatriate Staff as I guess the Expat staff wee more "reliable" .

In the words of my friend Saleem Haddad who I met when I worked at MSF "...make no mistake, like I've said before, MSF is one of the most colonial and racist organisations I've ever worked for. [The linked article above] also notes: "The statement follows fierce internal debate about racism and the Black Lives Matter movement. Some staff were angry at a recent statement released by MSF Italy, suggesting it should not use the term “racism” and that “everyone, starting with MSF”, should talk about “all lives matter”.

This article doesn't mention that after this, the statement goes on to say "because discrimination exists against blacks, whites, yellows, women, men, gays, old, young, etc."

Yellows, ladies and gentlemen. Yellows.

I'm not harping on MSF for any other reason than I believe in its mission, and believe that, if the institutions of white supremacy and patriarchy within the movement are dismantled, the organisation could do some truly revolutionary work. Ultimately, I don't mind speaking honestly about this because I've got no skin in this game. I have no intention to work for MSF again so long as these sexist and colonial structures remain in place. Others have more to lose."

I feel the same way. I didn't sign that letter. I whole-heartedly support the authors of the letter for sure. But I saw some of the same men I complained about in my my blog post on Cassandra Complexity. White men who had power (and still do) signing on to complain about something that they could have done something about if they tried. But its easier to jump on the bandwagon than actually do something.

I originally wrote that blog as a letter to the Director General of MSF Holland and UK in support of a woman of color who had complained about discrimination there. When I heard nothing back from management, I decided to publish it as a blog post to raise the profile. Since racism often goes hand in hand with sexism, I thought I would just put this blog post from Cassandra Complexity here as a reminder that the women of color working at MSF are probably the ones getting it the worst.

Holier than Thou: Is it time for MSF's #Metoo moment?

This is my témoignage about the sexist culture of MSF Amsterdam where I worked from 2007-2011. Its the product of a lot of thinking and processing since the #metoo hashtag appeared, re-triggering lots of toxic memories and suppressed emotions. – Sarah Martin

A Poem for a Corona Quarantine in Berlin in the Spring

Hobbling along the cobblestones of New Cologne, I notice the small purple bluebells push past the döner wrappers and cigarette butts. Butter yellow daffodil petals compete with the screaming neon of some American's latest electro-swing band flyer to dance in the wind.

Blackbirds sing over the garbage bins.
Swans squabble in the canal.

The corona erases our physical presence and turns our attachments to our loved ones into electrons vibrating across the Atlantic Ocean.

My love language is Zoom.

Your love language is Instagram Chat.

Plague ships haunt my dreams while you act as if nothing has changed at all.

Quarantine suits you. I"m kidding a bit. Shelter in place makes my hair glow like candles on a Buddhist altar.

Which flower will bloom tomorrow?

Socially distancing Germans line up at the Edeka to buy their geraniums but I prefer the wild trees bursting forth in the void that was the Death Strip.

Alone but together. Calls form Fiji where I sing of bombs bursting in air. Colombia sends me minions. But nothing from Sweden.

There was never ever anything coming from Sweden. So normality, at last.

--inspired by a book of prompts from Chen Chen and the poem Night Falls like a Button.  Prompted by the fantastic Jane Flett of the Reader in Berlin

South Carolina, Summertime, and Tomatoes

In the summer time in South Carolina, the rich red Southern earth produced the sweetest tomatoes on god’s green earth, her father used to say. She loved the red beefeaters, the dark orange oblong tomatoes her mother used to make salsa, she loved the funky green smell of tomato plants – fresh after the rain – so beautiful she had once bought a perfume called “tomato” so she could smell like that plant. The feel of the warm prickly stems that cradled that delicious fruit when you were sent out in the morning to harvest the fresh ones. The best way to eat them, it was commonly agreed was to pick them fresh and hot out of the garden, or freshly purchased from the old man who sold them on the highway turnoff to John’s Island. You took some white bread, it didn’t matter what kind – even wonder bread was fine, and a lash of Miracle Whip (although fancy people sometimes used Duke’s mayonnaise), and then just slices of that luscious tomato with a little salt on top. It was best to eat these drippy delicious slices of sunshine over the kitchen sink, leaning forward so as not to ruin your shirt. The sweet warm taste of the tomato, slightly salted, summoned up long summer days lounging by the pool, or swimming at the beach, or just sitting with her mother and father in the air conditioned dining room when her mother just didn’t feel like cooking. Tomato sandwiches and sweet tea.

Ten Albums that changed my life

In no particular order, here are ten albums that really stayed with me and changed my life.

1. Heart of a Saturday Night, Tom Waits

Reminds me of driving all night with my perfidious boyfriend, Kevin Krieger to New Orleans. And late nights as a bartender and dreams of living in New York and my life long love of talking to taxi drivers. Based on Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours of the Night.

2. Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, The Pogues

Another great album that I listened to over and over and over. As a half Irish-American, I feel a connection to Ireland (even though I had never been there when I got this album). The songs that I love the most are Dirty Old Town, the Sickbed of Cuchaillan, and A Man You Don't Meet Everyday. I once sang Dirty Old Town with the Irish Quick Response Force in Liberia on Saint Patrick's Day.

3. Tupelo Honey, Van Morrison

In my hippie days, I dreamed of a man who would love me and play Tupelo Honey to me on his guitar. We'd get dance to Moonshine Whiskey and You're My Woman and I'd wear flowers in my hair. I still dream of this. :) I can't believe I agree with Bob Dylan but yes, "Tupelo Honey' has always existed and that Morrison was merely the vessel and the earthly vehicle for it"

4. Green, REM

Lying on the beach in Surfside, South Carolina with this in my walkman in 1988. Conjuring up memories of lying in the backseat of my parent's car and coming home late on a summer night and the sound of the crickets and cicadas. Drowsy hot southern nights. Best songs Orange Crush, You are the Everything, I remember California, The Wrong Child....

5. Outlandos d'Amour, The Police

My favorite band of all time. Buying this album and listening to it over and over. Stings voice, Stewarts propulsive drumming, and Andys guitar. Beautiful Blonde British boys. I'm SO LONELY. SO LONELY. Singing this into my college boyfriend Nick's answer machine. Still the best album ever. Can't Stand Losing You might be the only song I still know all the words to- next to you! Roxanne! 

6. Fear of a Black Planet, Public Enemy

Oh learning about how different the world is from the eyes of black people as a privileged young white girl in South Carolina. Listening to "911 is a joke" and watching Flava Flav dance blew my mind. There was not a party in 1990 where we didn't play this album and dance. Fight the Power and Rosie Perez dancing inspired so many lame dance moves of my predominantly white group of friends. Sigh. 

7. Unforgettable Fire, U2

1984 was when I discovered this album. My father bought it for me as a cassette and I listened to it on my little boom box in my bedroom in the dark over and over again. The hazy romantic guitar and the clear voice of Bono calling to my teenage life. Wire, A Sort of Homecoming, and Bad are my favorites. 

8. Paul's Boutique, Beastie Boys

I love this album so much, the clown princes of Hip Hop. I had a huge crush on Ad Rock. SHAKE YOUR RUMP! An electric blast of coolness and New York for a girl from South Carolina. I'm just a beatnik chick wearing my smock but I wanted so much to be a New Yorker.

9. American Beauty, The Grateful Dead

Ah my Deadhead days in the early 90s in South Carolina. But the music and the lyrics of Box of Rain, and Sugar Magnolia, and Brokedown Palace still make me feel optimistic and hopeful and like putting on my hippie skirt and doing some circle spinning. 

10. La Revancha del Tango, Gotan Project

I discovered this album at a Borders in the early 2000s, I think and it changed my life. I love tango, have desires to learn how to dance tango, and have been to see Gotan Project in concert which was amazing.. Tríptico, Santa María (del Buen Ayre), Una Música Brutal - so evocative and haunting and powerful. One day I'll tango. 

Honorable Mentions: 

The Police Regatta de Blanc

U2 Joshua Tree

Arcade Fire The Suburbs

Van Morrison Astral Week

The Beatles Rubber Soul

Neil Young Harvest 

So Peter Gabriel

Lauryn Hill “the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” 

Kate Bush Hounds of Love

REM Life’s Rich Pageant

Tom Waits Rain Dog

The Smiths Strangeways here we come

The Smiths The Queen is Dead

New Order Substance 1987

Marvin Gaye What’s Going on

Blur Park life

Belle and Sebastian The Boy with the Arab Strap

The B52s - The B52s

Bjork Debut

kd lang ingenue

Sinead o connor the lion and the cobra

Crowded House: Crowded House

Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine

Steely Dan: A Decade ofSteely Dan

Valentine

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

It promises light

like the careful undressing of love.

Here.

It will blind you with tears

like a lover.

It will make your reflection

a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,

possessive and faithful

as we are,

for as long as we are.

Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,

if you like.

Lethal.

Its scent will cling to your fingers,

cling to your knife.

- Carol Ann Duffy 

Welcome to Liberia: Creative fiction excerpt

When I was 24 years old, my mother died.  She was the strongest and toughest woman I knew and fear of her had kept me on the straight and narrow path – afraid to really live. In the past, I had rebelled against her by refusing to get an office job and becoming a bartender but her influence still controlled me. I was terrified to try the joints passed to me at parties because I was convinced that the moment I placed one to my lips, the police would burst through the door and arrest me.  I could vividly picture my mother’s disappointment and anger as she bailed me out of “Drugs Prison.” It was clear that this would lead to my bright future unraveling and a destiny as an “unwed mother” working in the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. However strong my fear, she was also the one who always fixed things.  Without her, I didn’t know how to navigate my life and I had lost my magnetic North. So in my haze of grief and untethered from her disapproval, I found myself adrift – and looking for an escape from responsibility and from suburban America.

So I followed a timeworn path followed by other mad white people from around Europe, North America, and Australia – I went to Africa to save the people. Classic White Savior trope. I was going to use my heartbreak and grief and powerful American passport to save Africa – even if I didn’t yet realize that Africa was not a country, white girls like me were a dime a dozen, and that all humanitarian aid workers fell into one of three “M”s: Mercenaries, missionaries, or misfits.

That’s how I found myself on a plane from Lagos to Monrovia in 2003 with a more experienced 27 year old aid worker named Michelle. She was showing  me the ropes and was an old hand. She casually tossed out facts to me that in retrospect were designed to terrorize me – “ there are about 5000 Nigerian and Ghanaian peacekeepers in Monrovia right now,” she told me as she casually sorted through her purse. “They are there to keep the rebels and the government forces from tearing each other’s throats out. But god knows what will happen if they are tested. They are completely outnumbered and can’t even control the airport.” I nodded and tried to pretend like I knew was happening and desperately tried to look cool.

The tiny plane bounced along over the rain clouds- rainy season in West Africa. The outline of the West African coast was our map. This was the “milk run” – we stopped and expelled passengers and picked up new ones in Conakry, Abidjan, and Freetown. The people getting on and off the plane could have been in a John Le Carre novel. Skinny bald French gangsters in plaid suits with fat gold chains, sweaty fat Nigerian business men, bored Lebanese men who smoked incessantly and tried to catch my eye. Aside from two flashy women in outrageous weaves with skin tight clothes – better suited for the disco than the dinky airport in Freetown – Michelle and I were the only two women on the plane.  I wore my aid worker uniform – khaki pants, a black tank top with a white no-iron shirt opened over it, and tevas.  But my tevas were new and my white shirt was unblemished. Michelle’s tank top was grey and stretched out and baggy- which proved she was a real aid worker who had “field clothes,” unlike me – who had purchased everything on a shopping trip to Old Navy with my sister two weeks before.

My father frets about me doing this work – do you have health insurance? Do you have a pension plan? I know he worries about the men I’ll meet – freaking out that I might show up with a Liberian child soldier turned business man and some illegitimate child. My father is proud of my daring, though. But he also worries. Mostly that I’m going to be killed in some sort of Hollywood shootout. I don’t know how to reassure him that I feel safer going into this war zone than I did in my cheap apartment in Washington DC where I heard gunshots on a daily basis and was once chased down O Street by a hooker for daring to poach her territory. I don’t know how she thought I was going to poach customers from her unless there is a group of DC men who have a secret yen to get it on with hippie girls in grateful dead skirts, ankle bells, and Birkenstocks. I wish there were – I never seemed to get dates in that uptight city of student body presidents and “the man behind the scene” types that populate that place.

Finally the plane begins its descent to Monrovia – I lean towards the window to get a glimpse of where I will be living for the next 8 months. To my disappointment, it looks just like where I left – South Carolina. Red clay, rambling green trees, and grey squat buildings. Except these buildings are mostly missing roofs, and the runway is not paved – just a slushy strip of that deep red mud. We land and the door opens up and the smell of Liberia washes in  - wood smoke, dark pungent earth, and something faintly sweet – something I can’t place.  We start to climb out down the stairs and onto the runway – not mud as I had assumed – gravely but covered in puddles of muddy red water.

My first impressions: A derelict old plane has been pushed over to the side in a field – rotting and covered with mildew. Giant white cargo planes with the black block letters of the UN are parked in front of the airport. Tanks line the runway and bored African men in uniform lean on top. Men in uniform are everywhere - and a contingent of Nigerian soldiers snap to attention and salute as the man behind us emerges. He’s in a magnificent peacock blue robe and wears extremely dark sunglasses even though it is overcast. A truck full of soldiers pulls up and the African soldiers jump out leisurely- laughing and joking and slapping each other the back, oversized helmets hanging over open handsome faces. They shout to each other and start throwing bags into the back of the truck. 

Michelle and I are insignificant specks of dust in this world of important men –swept away and overlooked as the Nigerian dignitary is greeted and fawned over. I hike my backpack over my shoulder as the thick humid Liberian air clogs my lungs and start trudging to the airport building. Just like in the movies, there are drums in the distance.

********

I accompanied the senior protection officer, John, to the stadium in Monrovia where thousands of displaced people live. I entered the warren of training rooms, locker rooms, and other hallways meant once for football teams and athletic demigods, and the smell was a mockery of the smell of good honest sweat and hero worship that should be there. It stunk of unwashed bodies pressed in together, of fires to cook unappetizing meals of bulgur wheat usually without even a bit of salt to enliven the taste. The building reeked of body odor, urine and shit. This is what it smells like when you press thousands of people together in one compound to help them live and protect each other just by the sheer mass of their bodies.

I walked in there, scared but also feeling rather fearless. I would not be repulsed. I would not flinch. I didn’t know what I was going to see on this, my first trip to a displacement camp, but these were human beings and they needed their human dignity restored. And I was going to do it.

Liberian society is dominated by extremely pushy men that have negotiated some power as “block leaders” or “chiefs” who you have to meet with and have long convoluted conversations with before you can get to the business at hand of trying to talk to the women and assess their needs. I was impatient but I knew I had to put on my best face, try not to be irritated, anxious, and pushy right back at them. Although I had only been in the country for a few weeks, I already knew that Liberians liked to “palaver” and formalities could take forever. As a cultural anthropologist, I knew the importance of the formalities but I hated them!

I sat smiling and writing in my notebook, listening to their grievances – there’s not enough food, you should pay us to ask us these questions… John had told me that these are common complaints. Ask any refugee or IDP anywhere in the world how things are going and they will tell you immediately – “they don’t give us enough food”. And it would be pathetic and sad if it weren’t for the old Catskills joke that immediately popped into my head. “the food – its so bad. Yes, and not enough of it.” Of course, I’m sympathetic – I struggle with my own food issues. I am not that picky about WHAT I eat but I am about how its prepared. I like spices. I like tasty foods. I wish I was a gourmet chef. But I’m not. I’m a Southerner so I travel with Tabasco sauce and instant grits so that I can always have SOMETHING I can eat if things get bad.

I look at the sacks of donated bulgur wheat with the irritating USAID logo printed on it – two white hands stretched out shaking with the phrase “a gift from the American people” printed alongside and idly watch the Liberian women cooking it over open fires inside the hallways, adding some small dried fish from the nearby market to flavor it. They are already complaining – why can’t we have rice? Don’t the Americans know that Liberians like rice? I do wonder about the bulgur wheat. Why are American farmers growing bulgur? For export to Lebanon to make innumerable tabouli salads? Has the bottom dropped out of the tabouli market?

I am sitting on a little plastic stool – the best seat in the house. The Africans really know how to treat their guests. The best food, the nicest seat, formal, treating you with importance. John is talking, explaining our mission, getting their permission. I sit smiling and nodding and waiting. I’m finally going to talk to some refugees and my real life is about to begin. I fidget and try to pay attention as the old men talk and talk. I doodle – anxious to get out of this smelly hot room and try to ignore the sweat running down my back and soaking through my underwear. I’m from the South but I can’t handle living without air conditioning. There is no air here in the inner offices of these men and it is stifling.

These Liberians have almost nothing but they hold themselves with dignity. The old men reminding you to shake hands properly, bringing out old ledger books, and carefully preserved papers that have been handed out to them by humanitarian agencies in the past. Listing their grievances carefully and formally and looking at me as if there was something I could do about it.

I’m ashamed at my impatience with them but I’m also excited.

….

The little kids gather around me. I’ve got a digital camera and am snapping photos and showing them their photos and they are laughing and laughing. The boys strike crazy macho poses- holding up stringy arms and popping out their nonexistent biceps. “White womaaa, White womaa – over here over here” they sing to me. The girls with their braided hair giggle and giggle and smile shyly and reach up to hold my hands. The boys fight and roll around and push against each other trying to get closer to me and my magic camera. Half-naked little babies stagger up to me, their faces smeared with snot and eyes round. They gape in horror at my ghastly pale skin and freakish red hair and begin screaming and crying. Their mothers laugh and scoop them up to reassure them. Most of the children have only one item of clothing – undies or a shirt but not both. The bloated stomachs and skinny legs of the girls make them seem like heavily pregnant women – they already act mature and maternal – scolding the little babies, bouncing them on their hips, and even carrying some of them around wrapped on their backs.

John and I walk slowly through the corridors - he’s talking on his mobile to our driver and I’m entertaining the children. Our bright blue t-shirts sort us into our tribe – we wear a uniform so the Liberians can tell us apart. Today, we’re not the only aid workers in the stadium – ICRC is unloading some supplies off a truck out front. They are incredibly organized and their Liberian staff wear small white tunics with the iconic red cross over their polo shirts. The boxes are sorted, the Liberian elders are overseeing the delivery and the only other white person in the stadium is solemnly shaking hands in the complicated handshakes that Liberians prefer.

The white man turns to watch us walk by. He’s young - a thin European man – I can tell by his haircut and by the way he wears his jeans – much thinner and tighter than an American man would ever be comfortable with. French, I think – looking at the stubble. He’s unrumpled and fresh in his blue button up shirt opened just a bit too low to be formal. He looks like he just stepped out of an air –conditioned office somehow even though the truck standing next to him is covered in dust and mud.  I feel sweaty and frizzy just looking at him. Self-consciously, I throw my chin up a bit and try to project confidence and authority. “He can tell I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, “ I think – “He thinks I’m a fraud.”

“Sebastian!” John waves towards him, tucking his phone between his shoulder and ear and pointing at me, “this is our newbie.” I smile. Sebastian nods and smiles politely. The smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. John keeps talking into his mobile and we keep walking with our retinue of Liberian children plucking at my shirt and begging for my attention. I am aware of Sebastian’s eyes following us and I feel silly and frivolous and young.  What an arrogant Frenchman – typical cheese-eating surrender monkey. Oh great- now I’m channeling Donald Rumsfeld. What has Liberia done to me?  I hear him laughing at something one of the Liberians said and my bravado crumbles - I have the sensation that I am a small child pretending to be an adult in high heels.