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           A HUMANITARIAN LIFE         

November 20th, 2018

11/20/2018

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Most of us think it takes a great effort to have an impact on someone’s life. 
 
The truth is, we each have the power to bring about the best in people we meet each day. Everyone has a story. Sometimes all we need to do is provide someone with the space to share theirs.
 
I was traveling alone, again, but it was only for one night. Friends were coming in from the airport the next day.
 
The inn where I was staying looked like an old country manor. It reminded me of so many buildings I’d seen while studying in Oxford, England, with its stone towers, stained-glass windows and rustic shingles.
 
When it began to rain, I was tempted to stay in and order room service, but there were several restaurants downstairs. The pub was full of people watching a game. I wasn’t looking for company, but a little bit of conversation would have been nice. That seemed unlikely at this hour. Was I destined to eat alone?
 
I looked into the formal dining room, which was beautiful, but hardly a place for dining alone. I decided to go in anyway, although they were just about to close. A large family party was breaking up nearby, the last table of the night until I walked in.

​A young woman came over to assure me they would be happy to serve one more customer. I placed my order and exchanged smiles with the large family as they hugged each other goodbye.
 
A young man started bussing the table of the large party, quietly humming a melody to himself. He was impeccably dressed in a white suit, looking serious as he went about his work – but something about him didn’t match. 
 
His name plate read “William,” though having lived in Africa for many years, I could tell he was from Africa. I suspected that William was not his real name. Wanting to know his real story, I asked him, “What is your real name?”
 
“I am from Ghana,” he told me earnestly. My Ghanaian name is “Kwabena,” he said. 
“What does it mean?” I asked. “It means that I was born on a Tuesday,” he said. In many African cultures, children are given a name based on the time and circumstances of their birth. Sometimes a child is named for feelings or expressions of the mother’s experience giving birth, such as “painful labor” or proclaiming a destiny over the child, like “mighty warrior.”
 
“Why don’t you put Kwabena on the name plate,” I asked? He looked around at his co-workers, with the serious expression still on his face. “William allows me to blend in.” “Why do you want to blend in?” I asked. “Not everyone is born on a Tuesday.” He laughed. “No one will know that you’re from Africa if you don’t tell them,” I said. “Be proud of who you are.”
 
I told Kwabena, “I was also born in Africa, although no one would know from looking at me.” We both smiled about that. I continued to tell him some of my story. “I was born in a small village in Kenya. I have several African names, but my favorite one is ‘Aicha’ from Senegal, West Africa. My friends gave me the name Aicha, after the wife of prophet Mohammed because my American name, Sarah, is the wife of Abraham in the Bible. They called me ‘la femme des prophets,’ the wife of prophets.” “That is beautiful,” he said.
 
“I also noticed you were humming,” I mentioned. “You must like to sing.” “I sing to myself,” he said, “because no one knows my language.” I told him that I would like to hear him sing in his language. “Really?” he asked. “Really?” “Yes,” I said, “it would make my dinner so special, as I am here by myself and now I am not so alone.”
 
He was being shy. “Please wait until I come back. I need to practice first.” In only a few moments he returned, and began to sing the song, Meye, in a soft, slow voice.
 
The first day I met her, I shuddered
This woman is exquisite
The way she talked melted my heart.
 
His voice was so soft and beautiful that the other servers setting up tables for the next day came over and formed a small circle around him. Now he had an audience, and he kept singing, a smile now spreading across his once serious face.
 
When he finished, one of his colleagues exclaimed, “That was beautiful.”
He smiled more. They all began to ask him what language he was speaking and where he learned to sing. A wide grin spread across his face. “My mother used to sing me that song in Ghana.”
 
I finished eating and paid my bill, and the young woman serving me said, “You know, we didn’t even know he was from Africa.”
 
“People are more interesting than you think they are at first,” I remarked. “Sometimes you just have to ask the right questions.”
 
As I left, I told Kwabena to change his name plate and keep singing. “Remember,” I told him, “not everyone is born on a Tuesday.”
 
His broad smile in response remains in my mind to this day. I was reminded that evening of how little it takes to break down the walls that separate people from different cultures.

​We share a common humanity that transcends personal identity. When we recognize this humanity, we feel less isolated from one another. We can celebrate that humanity over a meal or a melody, or by learning someone’s true name.  

Listen to Meye by Ghanaian artist Kwabena, Kwabena

Is a "stranger" ever truly a stranger?
What if we looked deeper ­– what surprising connections might we find?
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Looking for a good read? Chasing Misery hits the mark

10/23/2018

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Photo ©Jenn Warren
If you haven’t heard about Chasing Misery, place an order for the book on Amazon now.

The first book of its kind, Chasing Misery is a compilation of stories from women in the humanitarian aid sector. Released in 2014, the book was self-published by an editorial team that should have captured the aid world’s attention with their stories. 
 
It starts off brilliantly, with a conversation between lead editor Kelsey Hoppe and a man who thinks he’s in love with her, but he isn’t. He’s in love with disaster.
 
Aid workers live with the harsh realities of everyday life in the toughest places. Yet, they indulge in fantasy by imagining how they will meet up again, in a place where everything is right with the world.
 
Claiming that aid workers are used to trying on their immortality by taking chances in different crisis, Hoppe explains; We are the type of people who were supposed to die young and didn’t.
 
Aid workers take on great personal risk to help people in crisis. The risk is a calculated one, as each new country demands a new coping strategy with different rules for how to stay alive and persevere through difficult conditions.
 
Chasing Misery begs the question, what motivates women to work in the humanitarian sector? Are they really chasing misery or are they chasing something else? Perhaps they are chasing the essence of life, what it means to be alive amidst calamity and chaos.
 
The book is comprised of nearly 50 stories organized by geographical region. Each story contains a set of challenges that women face on assignment; the everyday realities of being a foreigner and a female, the risk of living in a high-security area, and the moral dilemmas they face when they realize that some people are going to live, and others are going to die.
 
As a female aid worker who has worked in the humanitarian sector for more than 20 years, I cannot help but think that I too, am a part of the book. Every chapter reminds me of my own experience, every story encapsulates part of my own truth. It reminds me of my own questions; Can I go to the bathroom by the side of the road without setting off a landmine? When stopped at a checkpoint, should I follow the commands of the men with guns or my security briefing? Every day has a dilemma, and every professional choice is ultimately, a personal one.
 
For readers that are unfamiliar with relief work, each chapter offers a glimpse into the lifestyle. Helen Seeger captures the essence of what it means to be “in the field,” to be on location with the people who need the most help. Many aid workers are in duty stations where they sit in containerized offices and write reports to donors. Being in the field means being on location with the beneficiaries who receive aid. They are the essence of our why, why we do this work.
 
The hardest stories come from Darfur, where women and children are repeatedly mutilated despite the aid workers’ best efforts. Roberta Romero looks for answers by searching for the thread that holds together all her questions; Why were these women raped? Why did the government cover it up? Why can’t they do more to stop the violations?
 
Are there any answers to the brutality that man and nature have wrought upon the earth?
 
Then, amid the heartbreak of people who died, are the miracles for those who managed to stay alive. The twin who passed away after a difficult childbirth, and the baby who made it through the night. Recovering the body of a colleague killed in action, then rejoicing over the colleague who was falsely imprisoned and eventually set free.  
 
At the end of the day, each woman has her own personal experience; her experience interacting with people during their times of great suffering; her experience of vulnerability as she tries to establish order in a disordered world. 
 
There’s also the question of managing your personal life and relationships in the midst of all these other considerations. One woman told her story of managing a difficult relationship with a partner who didn’t want to be living overseas. Concluding that “home doesn’t have to be hard,” she made her way out of that situation and learned to enjoy her work again.
 
From story to story, we see the theme of solidarity emerge. When an Iraqi refugee comforts an aid worker because her grandmother died while she was overseas, we too are comforted. Humanity comes together in times like these, across different cultures and professional roles.
 
The only flaw in the book is its organization; each set of stories is compiled by region with a short introduction to a particular country or crisis. Each story is so powerful that once you finish one, you need to pause and put the book down to consider what you’ve heard, before you pick it up again to read another one.
 
Each section of the book demands its own conclusion. What’s the collective impact of all these stories, and what impact did the aid community have on the situation at large? I also hungered for a final conclusion of the book that would wrap up all the stories into a neat package.
 
Yet, aid workers know that the world doesn’t offer us a neat package of happy endings. It does however, present us with the conditions of humanity and allow us to respond. What is our response, our personal response to a world in crisis?
 
The final essay offers an answer. While Malka Older is on assignment for the tsunami response, a man thanks her for her service. She finds it hard to accept his gratitude. She is doing her job. The Japanese people are so organized, no one is fighting over scarce resources or limited aid distributions. But she is there with them, in the midst of their suffering. They are grateful for her presence. She too, is grateful to be there among them.
 
Each woman in the book is offering her greatest gift to the world. She is offering herself; her professional skills, her empathy, and her presence in service to humanity. While hundreds of books argue about the futility of aid as a band-aid to cover over a watershed of problems, these women offer us hope; hope that our individual contributions do make a difference. 
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    Author

    Sarah Petrin (Williamson) is the Founder of Protect the People (PTP). She has 20 years of experience managing humanitarian programs,  advocating for refugees, and advising clients on working with vulnerable populations. She is writing her first book,
    A Humanitarian Life.

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