It’s been very strange, as my friend Alanna pointed out in her recent blog post about her visit to Haiti, to leave Peace Corps and enter the world of international development, whose capital might as well be Port-au-Prince, judging from the number of expat aid workers and NGOs here.
Here’s a quick profile of the two types.
1. Peace Corps Volunteer
- travels in overcrowded public buses and on motorcycle taxis.
- Speaks the local language.
- Lives on (I’m guessing) US $200-400 a month, which covers housing, transportation, entertainment, and beer.
- Gets vacation time, but has to pay his/her own ticket home.
- Thinks best form of security is knowing the community, culture and language.
- Lives in the same kind of housing that the locals do, in rural areas, a simple wood house.
- May or may not have water and electricity 24/7.
2. International development worker
- travels in air-conditioned company-owned SUVs with a professional driver at all times
- probably doesn’t speak the local language, may speak French
- Receives a good salary by American standards, plus housing allowance and hardship or danger pay
- Gets R&R time in addition to vacation
- Has a security officer who sets rules for what they can and can’t do, which in Port-au-Prince, sometimes includes never walking on any street anywhere. Also has a curfew.
- Lives in company-provided housing, what I would call luxurious by US standards.
- Has maid who does laundry, cleans, and often, even grocery shops
There’s very obviously a huge difference between the two missions. Development workers need to be professional, and compensated as such. Volunteers work in two-year hiatuses from their careers. But lately I’ve been pondering over the fact that many Haitians believe that the NGOs are getting rich off of them, even to the point that they believe cholera was deliberately introduced so that the NGOs could make a buck from it. It really hit me when I was doing research on the cholera response and saw the budget that the NGO sector was proposing in order to respond to the cholera outbreak. Millions upon millions of dollars going to international NGOs. Haitians sometimes call this the “okipasyon blan” or white/foreigner occupation.
Not for profit does not mean not self-interested, as I’ve thought while looking for a job with one of these organizations. I’d like to be paid as a professional, too. But it’s uncomfortable to me to be working for a country and a people whose lifestyles are so vastly different from your own. Not only that, but there is a relationship between the two segments. Take “hardship” or “danger” pay, or the R&R aid workers get. The worse off the people in the country where you live are – be it from political unrest, crime, extreme poverty, earthquake trauma, etc – the more you are compensated. There is a direct benefit for aid workers from the suffering of the people they work to help.
I’m sure this is a controversial topic. I’m sure there are very talented people doing innovative, effective work and who are worth their compensation. I’m sure there’s a good argument for adding these incentives to attract the best people to a very difficult job. But the vast inequality makes me uncomfortable. What do you think?
I completely understand where you are coming from after your 2 plus years in the DR living meagerly. I would also argue, not at a professional level. As the years go by, you establish a family and begin to think about having security for retirement. Like you said, qualified people are less likely to go to the developing world without the pay, benefits and standard of living. It does look and smell bad.
I always felt the Peace Corps DR (my only direct knowledge) has so much more capacity to take advantage the contact and trust we develop with communities as volunteers, and do some real development work. If you could some how merge the two.
My dos centavos
This reminds me of a conversation I once had with a homeless guy at a bus stop in Portland, Oregon, a city that arguably has one of the most comprehensive “safety nets” in the country. He was telling me his story of addiction and medical debt when at one point he said “They’re just not interested in me any more. Nobody can make a buck off me.”
At the time I was $20,000 in debt, living with my mom and eating off food stamps. The recession was in its third year. I couldn’t help but wonder how an economist would compare the two of us; me having just landed “in the system” and him having spent a considerable amount of his life in it. Whatever the case, it was evident to me that nobody was “making a buck” off of either of us.
I’ve been meaning to share something on this. I just visited my cousin in DC. She and her career air force husband are moving their 4 precious, blue eyed rubias for a 2 year stint in Ghana. It’s considered a hardship by the US Government so they are afforded lots of services. For example they move furniture over and send thousands of dollars worth of consumables (she sent her’s straight from Trader Joe’s!).
It’s certainly a different situation. He will be the attache for 3 west African countries and they will be living as a family, but it was interesting to think of the contrast with PC. PCV hopefuls willingly sign up for “hardship” and the US government gladly ships them out.
I think we got what we most needed – training and a project partner, practical things like a phone and a bank account.
Thanks for the comments, guys. Amanda, that’s a more justifiable case because there is family involved. But overall, I’m disturbed by the fact that there seems to be no conversation about the tradeoffs. Maybe in our overly litigious world some of these measures are necessary to the work. But shouldn’t we consider the impact it has on our work to be isolated from the culture and surrounded by privilege?