Thursday, January 29, 2015

International Development Needs to Return to the People!


My dad opened the door of our house and there stood a disheveled man in his 40s, “Salam, sir, I am unemployed and looking for a job, for the love of God, can you help me?” My father, looked at him, and then after a pause replied, “do you know gardening?” he is said “yes”. Then my dad took this total stranger to the corner of our yard, and told him if he could make a small garden for our house. And from that day onwards, this man, whose name was Mash Morad, a Lor from southwest Iran, became our gardener. The fact was that our family did not need a garden or a gardener, but my dad understanding the desperate situation of this Mash Morad, hired him and created employment for him, so he could support his family. As time went on Mash Morad’s economic situation changed and things got better for him.
 

My dad’s selfless act of kindness was a great template for me to follow as I took the path into the field of international development. The lesson of listening to and understanding peoples’ needs, relationship building, empowering people, mentoring and sharing resources were part of my childhood lessons. Being an aid professional is an exciting career that gives me an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of people around the globe. But for me the field of international development has lost its way, shifting away from its original goal of helping people. Instead it has shifted towards carrying out the goals of governments and the big donors of the world!


Today’s International development and humanitarian aid is full of great brochures, power point presentations, conferences, experts, and lots of money, but of little impact and substance to the beneficiaries scattered around diverse communities. Development has become a business for some to fill their pockets on the back of poverty, misery and violence. Part of the problem are the thousands of implementing partners, formed as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who exist, function and are at the mercy of the big International donors. These are implementing partners that know that the project they are carrying out will not have any impact but will do it just because the donor will pay them to do it. They know that that projects they are doing in community A will not help anyone and that it is just a great media ad for the donors and the implementing partner. How else can you explain distributing seeds to farmers when they have no water, or setting up fish farms where no water flows or building a woman’s center knowing that after that photo op no woman will ever enter that building.  Development needs to return back  to its original mandate of empowering people, and come up with programs that make sense on the ground. Programming that has the interest of the community in mind and not how we can use the community to gain more funding for new vehicles for our staff, bigger bonuses or a bigger and nicer office space!!



There are still a few committed NGOs who struggle to make a difference against all odds, who are led by individuals who still understand the fundamental goals of development, but they are few and far in between.

Hopefully international aid and the humanitarian field can reconnect back with its beneficiaries and fall in line with their needs and not just the needs of the donor! Until that change comes, more scarce resources will be wasted and more people like Mash Morad will live and suffer in silence!!  

Monday, January 12, 2015

Lessons Learned at Elmina Castle in Ghana!


Elmina is a small, picturesque, fishing town on the coast of Ghana. It is the home to a couple of European-build castles, the most famous being the Elmina Castle. This beautiful structure was build in 1482 by the Portuguese for the purpose of facilitating trade! Trade included mainly gold but eventually it was human-beings that would be the prominent commodity to be sold and sent to the New World as slaves!

My first visit to Elmina Castle was in 1998, our group was made up of mainly Americans of all shades, and most seemed emotional by what they saw and heard. Our tour guide described the conditions of the slaves who were kept in the castle, waiting their turn to journey to the unknown.  Emotions were high, when we got to the ‘Door of no Return” where slaves would be taken to their ships and never returned! Elmina is a historical testimony to the worst of humanity such as greed, hate, prejudice, and racism. Many within our group that day, wondered how could a people that believed in God, and build a church within the castle, commit such horrible acts against God’s creation, which in this case were their own fellow human-beings. Did Jesus teach his followers to enslave people? Take people away from their families and communities and barter them for cheap goods like rum? Take children from their mothers and throw the sick into the sea? We all agreed they were not true Christians!!! Because someone who believed in Jesus would show love and compassion not hate and cruelty. We also wondered why the Christians of the time did not stop such horrific crimes being committed in and justified by their fellow Christians. Was the Christianity that allowed for slavery and exploitation of millions of human beings, the real Christianity? Or was there another Christianity that rejected these evil actions?!

In 2015, we are asking the same questions of another religious community, this time its Islam and the Muslims who have to answer the tough questions about the horrible terrorist attacks committed in the name of their religion. Unfortunately, (in this case), unlike the seventeenth century, the world is connected through technology and Muslims unlike their Christian counterparts of three centuries ago have to deal with “guilt through association”!

Today’s terrorism like yesterday’s slavery is justified in the name of religion, the perpetrators of these actions are a minority, using their religion to destroy anything they don’t agree with. The same way the slavery of the past used religion to justify why it was OK to take people and enslave them, and in fact in most cases the owners thought they were saving the souls of their slaves!

History can be a great teacher, if we allow it to be. The most important lesson that action in Elmina Castle and Slavery, and action in Paris and Terrorism can teach us is that one cannot and should not judge a large group by the actions of a few!

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Rwanda 1994: The George Washington University, an Old Radio and "Never Again!


I brought my hand out from under my blanket and turned on my radio as I struggled to wake up and start another day as a poor college student! My college campus was situated close to the White House, the World Bank and the IMF. During my time there, I ran into many famous people around campus, like PLO’s Hanan Ashrawi, former Foreign Minister of Israel Abba Eban, former tennis player Martina Navratilova, and CNN’s Wolfe Blitzer, he almost ran me over with his shiny black Lexus! I said hi to students who would become famous, such as Huma Abedin who became Hillary Clinton assistant and Kerry Washington who became an actress. I too wanted to become famous perhaps become the General Secretary of the United Nations, however the best I did at the time was to become the secretary at the George Washington University International Services Office making $8.00 an hour!  

One of my most prized possession was a broken down, radio/tape-player that I used to listen to music via the now almost obsolete cassettes and listen to the radio, usually set at 88.5FM WAMU, a National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate.  On April 7th, 1994, I woke up like most mornings, my room was pitch dark and remember turning my radio on, as the news broadcast was read, remembering there was a mention of the President of Rwanda being killed in a plane crash! I did not think much about it, it was not the first time that I had heard of a leader of a country being killed! I went on doing my daily work. The next morning I heard that there was some fighting which included the killing of civilians, and then for the next how many days, and weeks that passed, more news of death in Rwanda. And eventually after it was all said and done, an estimated 800,000 men, women and children were murdered. The population of Washington, DC in 1994 was less than 600,000! Can you imagine if the population of Washington, DC had been wiped off!




After the killing was done, the international community came out to say, “Never Again”! The “Never Again” slogan has been going on for years, starting in 1915 with the Armenian Genocide, until today we continue to say, “Never Again”!  Whether its genocide done with machete in Kigali or chemical weapons in Idlib, the fact is we have never been able to enforce our ideal of "Never Again"  Many religions, cultures, groups and individuals believe in the “Golden-Rule” of “treat people the way you want others to treat you” and “the sacredness of life” but that hasn't worked as of yet as many preach what they cannot practice.  

Though today technology connects us, most of us are yet to understand that the “Golden Rules” applies to all lives in Paris, Baga, Idlib, Shindand, Mumbai, Kigali, New York, Accra, Aleppo, Ahvaz, Rio, Mosul, Kingston, Lima and billions of other lives around the world!

Since 1994 lots have changed in my life, Huma, Kerry, I graduated! I no longer work as a secretary, and no longer own the broken down radio!! The only thing that remains constant in my life is listening to the radio, reminding me that we still have a long way to go before our last, “Never Again”!       

Monday, January 5, 2015

A Polish Journey: From Exile, Enslavement Camps to Camp Polo in Ahvaz!


The taxi driver pulled away from the airport going towards our hotel. We had just landed at the airport in Warsaw, Poland. I looked behind and told one of my colleagues, “I love Poland!” She laughed out loud, wondering how I could express love for a place which I had barely spent an hour in!!! That was my first of two trips to Poland, where I served as a trainer with the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). I wondered why I showed such a level of enthusiasm for Poland!

After I came back from Warsaw I decided to revisit all I knew about Poland, which was limited to my knowledge of the great Polish football teams of the 70s and 80s, and the players Lato and Boniek and Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and its bitter aftermath. But as I read more, I learnt about a part of Polish history that I had been part of and never realized it. For that I had to go back to the city of my birth, Ahvaz, located in southwest Iran…

When I was a kid growing up in Ahvaz, we used to frequently visit my dad’s cousin, Sultan Khanum, whose son, Mehrdad was one of my best friends. I enjoyed visiting them, mainly because I could play with Mehrdad and eat Sultan Khanum’s tah-dig (it’s a crunchy/burnt part of rice, found at the bottom of the pot, loved by most Iranians), which was unhealthy, oily and absolutely delicious!!! The neighborhood they lived in was called Camp Polo. Polo in farsi means Rice, so I always thought that the area was called Polo because Sultan Khanum lived there and made her delicious rice. No one seemed to know why the area was called Camp Polo.

The mystery of why the area was called Camp Polo was solved when I decided to learn about Polish history. Camp Polo was the short form for Camp Polonia!! It had nothing to do with Sultan Khanum’s rice making skills, or anything related to tahdig! Camp Polo, was an area where hundreds of Polish women and children were brought in and given refuge during World War II. They were part of the Polish population that had escaped Hitler’s invasion and then enslaved by Stalin. After Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union, these Polish prisoners were freed and made their way to Iran. They had escaped Hitler, lost their belongings and their nation, put in prison and enslaved by Stalin. Their condition was desperate, and miserable. Millions died, before and after being freed. They felt abandoned, lost and hopeless, and finally in the middle of this darkness, they found respite and hope in the most unlikely of places, Iran. The people of Iran, themselves, void of resources and caught in the upheaval of local and global conflict, embraced the Polish refugees, men, women and children and gave them something that they had not seen for years, Humanity!

In a time when camps were being set up all over Europe to exterminate humanity, in this ancient land of Iran, camps were set up to revive it. Camp Polonia in Ahvaz was one of them. Within months, those who survived the arduous journey, were once again allowed to be humans, their bodies and souls reborn.


To this day Camp Polo triggers within me wonderful memories of my hometown, great rice, tahdig and my childhood friend. But now, it also reminds me that, in one of the darkest time in human history, this simple neighborhood in Ahvaz became a place of hope for a people wronged by history.