This is a firsthand account of what a job in international development entails and what makes it meaningful, from someone with an experience of 27 years and still counting.
A career in international development is neither easy nor glamorous; and staying on the job is as hard as getting it. Although substantially lower than the private sector, the pay and benefits are sufficient to lead a comfortable life, and one really should not ask for more. However, the working hours can be incredibly long and stressful, and frustrations and despair high, particularly when you find that results are not immediate, external determinants and risks are high, and very little is under your full control. For example, you may support the primary education department in building very good primary schools, training teachers, improving curriculum and providing teaching-learning methods, but you can do very little when children drop out of school during the planting or harvest season, or during a natural disaster, and do not return to school thereafter. You may want to strengthen the health system, but then there may not be enough trained doctors and health workers available in the country. You may implement a child protection program, but you may have a socio-economic context where child marriages or female genital mutilation is a cultural norm and child labor is a means of household survival. You might send relief supplies to a refugee camp but find that rebels have captured and diverted the supplies midway. A branded speedboat carrying relief workers and materials that you have organized and sent suddenly disappears and then resurfaces in a rebel camp two months later, with no trace of the relief materials or the workers. Or, you are trying to contain and end an unprecedented epidemic knowing well that you might be its next victim and die in the next three days.
Difficult work and stay conditions (often away from the family), long hours of travel to extremely remote and difficult areas, and lack of basic amenities are hardships that are easy to live with, compared to the exposure to human suffering that international development workers often face. It can easily lead one to utter despair, and take a severe toll one one’s body and mind. This was the case with me during my work while responding to the unprecedented Ebola public health challenge in Sierra Leone.
At the onset of the Ebola outbreak, being an expatriate, my organization (Marie Stopes International-MSI) evacuated me to London to ensure my safety. Since I did not have a work permit for UK, I had to move to Accra (Ghana) after a month. Soon enough I realized that it was very difficult to function effectively as a country director from a remote location, and that my presence in Sierra Leone was desirable not only to plan and organize our work better, but also to manage risks and keep the staff inspired. So, I requested my head office that I be sent back to Sierra Leone, which my head office conceded, with the condition that I first undergo a special Ebola intensive Infection Prevention training program in Brussels.
In Brussels, our lead trainer’s opening lines were: “You are going to work in an unknown and extremely dangerous public health emergency, and in case you die from Ebola, please know that your body will not be sent back home, it will be wrapped up and buried immediately. You have voluntarily chosen to work in this area and this kind of work is meant for people who are into public health as a calling; in case you want be an ‘adventurer’, a ‘hero’ or a ‘martyr’, you should be elsewhere”.
At that time, I took it as a hard reality check. But as I recall this now, I feel a chill down my spine.
I got back to Sierra Leone at a time when the infections had begun to pick up rapidly. After my return, we set up and operated 12 Ebola Community Care Centers, trained hundreds of public health professionals in the government, and did extensive work in communities to raise awareness on community based infection prevention and behavior change, and undertook case identification, case transfer (to the care center), contact tracing and contact isolation.
I was a part of the large international team of organizations that effectively worked to end the Ebola epidemic, and prevent it from becoming a global pandemic. I was but a mere cog in one of the many wheels that were set in motion by many organizations, but I know that every cog was critical, particularly when the machinery was under pressures that it had not been subjected to before.
While it needed sheer grit, and nerves of steel to get through to the end, at the end of it, I was so exhausted physically and mentally that I had to take two weeks off to attend a recovery program at an ayurvedic treatment and yoga center back in India. And, it took me quite some time thereafter to fully recover mentally, not to mention that I still have the occasional nightmare where I see that I have contracted Ebola during the course of my work in Sierra Leone, some guys are preparing my grave, and that I will not see my loved ones ever again.
However, international development is not all about hardships, for if I found myself back in time, I would not do anything differently. The benefits of working in the development sector greatly outweigh the hardships. A career in international development comes with immense fiduciary responsibility and authority, where you are entrusted with spending millions of dollars (generally taxpayer’s money from developed countries), managing hundreds of staff and delivering results at scale – as a result, you are provided with unprecedented opportunities to change people’s lives for the better.
And there are other benefits as well – for example you get opportunities to travel the world, meet fascinating people, work with some great colleagues from different countries, work with and learn from local communities, understand different cultures, and at the end of it – get a sense of fulfilment in the knowledge that you have done your bit to help make the world a much better a place. As for me, in addition to all this, I am fortunate that I am able to make a living through something that is in sync with my values, and aligned with what I truly believe in. On the balance of things, the work in this sector comes with immense joy, profound satisfaction and a unique sense of purpose.
source https://indiaoutbound.org/firsthand-account-of-an-indian-national-of-working-in-international-development/
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