not a do-gooder

Two Huiku board meetings, several nights of drinking and reconnecting with friends, and three kittens later... I'm feeling really happy to be back, and back in the swing of things.

The villages seem so much more friendly and comprehensible now. The weather doesn't seem hot, even though it's almost 40 degrees (still, could be much worse). And the work, though frustrating, makes sense.


I was talking about work to a close friend last night, as we sat at Thakadu drinking beer and eating ostrich stew, among the grizzled old farmers and the small-town Ghanzi youth. My friend was saying he admires me for the work I do. I immediately started making as many excuses as I could for why the choices I've made are not actually admirable, and I just happened to stumble into it as the result of a bunch of coincidences and mostly-selfishly-motivated choices, and really I'm not "self-sacrificing," I'm just sort of stupid when it comes to money, and honestly anyone would do it except they'd probably be doing a better job, and I'm actually impatient and lazy and un-compassionate and mercenary and honestly, I just happen to be doing it because I got stuck, you know... At some point, I stopped myself, and wondered aloud, "why am I so unwilling to admit I'm doing a 'good' thing?"

It was actually painful for me to just type that. I'm not sure why. I have never considered myself a moral, do-gooder sort of person... Yet on the other hand, the thought of choosing a career which doesn't have some element of helpfulness seems strange to me. Become an I-banker? But why? What's the point? I suppose so that you can collect all that money and then go off and start a school for orphans in Nepal or something like that. Which I admit is tempting. Make the money, then spend it judiciously and at your own behest, rather than struggling though the complicated jungle of NGOs and donor funding? Sweet, sweet relief.

I had one or two conversations of this nature while I was visiting home - "I think you're doing some really good work." "Oh no, I'm not, I mean, the work itself is good, but I'm really not, believe me..." I don't work as hard as I could. I live an embarrassingly affluent lifestyle. I'm not planning on staying for too much longer (ideally a year). I don't know the local languages, I don't do as much for the community in my spare time as I could. I haven't started any fancy initiatives, I haven't even followed up on all the stuff I SAID I would do, and I spend too much time on the internet. If you want to bestow praise on people for "good works," I can point you towards a hundred - a thousand! hundreds of thousands! - worthier recipients. And then there's the question of whether development work really works at all, and if I'm just perpetuating a highly problematic system by being here at all.

Furthermore, while I'm here it's just a job. If I have to work on a Saturday, I get very irritated, rather than benevolently delighted at the chance to Do More Good. Everyone else around me is doing the same job, presumably the same Good Works, and it just doesn't seem like anything remarkable. And people all around the world, in different jobs and different situations, in different ways, are doing good all the time - whether or not they do something like working in a small village in Africa.

I think that my choice to do this job says, more than anything else, that I have been supported and loved beyond all reason by my parents. It is their support which has given me the freedom to make flaky decisions like this, which are not particularly sound in terms of economics or career advancement. I've always felt that this is true, and it leads me to see my decisions as those of someone who is perhaps too privileged, rather than someone who Does Good Works. I don't think I will ever believe in, or be comfortable with, the notion of myself as a do-gooder.

But I do hope I manage to do a little good, while I'm here.