Clowns
Sri Lanka (2005)
Médicos Sin Fronteras (MSF) offered prior-to-departure training to anyone joining as an expatriate, and I arrived at the seminar, which took place in the outskirts of Barcelona, with my heart beating loudly. Although the place wasn't exactly luxurious (it was an old school premises) it represented the beginning of a new life. I dreamt of becoming a humanitarian, and MSF seemed like an amazing NGO working in disasters and war torn countries. So, I had trouble believing that I had passed the job interview —especially as I had spent the previous six months blindly sending unsuccessful applications.
On the immersion course, I met other participants who seemed like minded and who looked alike —we were all white Spanish speakers in our late twenties. During the training, we heard about MSF and its commitment not only to provide medical aid, but also to speak out: “We are not sure that words can always save lives, but we know that silence can certainly kill” (James Orbinski’s words). The talks we received gave me goosebumps —I fell in love with MSF. In particular, its origines in the Biafran War —regarded as a turning point in humanitarian assistance— where a group of doctors stood up to what they perceived as complicit behaviour from the Nigerian government and the Red Cross. I also learnt new vocabulary. The Field, “a particular professional zone where life is supposedly harsh, yet rewarding, (...) is where noble humanitarians carry out the real work” (Secret Aid Worker). A Mission indicated a particular project, and First Mission indicated a person with rookie status in an institution.
During the two week training, we went out for drinks, flirted, laughed and felt excited about the upcoming experiences. At the end of the fortnight, we exchanged phone numbers —this was pre emails or the Facebook era— and hoped to meet again “on the field”. Hence, I had new friends and a new lexicon depicting my future —one I had dreamt of for a long time.
I returned to my normal life, whatever it was supposed to be. I had to wait for an open position and it could take weeks or months, so I had the brilliant idea to take a language course abroad, more specifically in Germany. After two weeks in the country, I went to visit Berlin and that’s when I received a phone call on my Spanish mobile: it was from MSF. I was informed that a position had opened up in Sri Lanka, I had to be in Barcelona on Monday for briefings. A swearword crossed my mind as I thought: “But, today is Thursday!” The tone of my interlocutor implied an urgency that didn’t allow negotiating a few more days to pack and get ready. “Sure thing. See you Monday!” I replied with a fake cheerful tone. I felt overwhelmed trying to book flights from internet cafés —yep, no smartphones yet. With no time to go back to the city where my language course took place, I decided to book a flight Berlin-Barcelona for Sunday —it would take me a few years to recover the clothes that I left behind.
I found myself on an aeroplane heading for South Asia, rattled but happy and hardly believing it. Ladies and gentlemen, ready or not, there I was, eager and ready to perform! I was now about to start my long sought-after career.
I landed in Colombo in April 2005 knowing hardly anything —neither about the country, nor the work MSF did— except that the Boxing Day Tsunami had hit the country the previous 26th of December. At least 35,000 people had died in Sri Lanka alone. Upon my arrival, I didn’t see any damage in the city related to the disaster. In fact, to see the destruction you had to drive to sites hit by the waves. To my astonishment I found out tours were offered luring disaster tourists to the worst hit places, but in the areas that were not affected you couldn’t tell anything unusual had happened recently. The acute emergency phase, in which a fast response can save lives in imminent danger, was long past. Now started early or even medium to long-term recovery, a more stable period of transition after a disaster.
Together with Elsa, another First Mission, I arrived at Trincomalee, a focal point for relief efforts on the eastern coast of Sri Lanka. We both felt eager to get down to the job and came from the same Spanish area, but other than that, we didn’t have any common interests. We were both clearly labelled as first missions, a concept that as I soon understood carried a harsh shade of meaning. We were perceived as being a first mission —not as being on our first mission— this newbie tag implied we lacked expertise and, I dare to say, that we had to prove what we were made of. Reflecting back, my memory seems blurry and full of gaps. I recall the Head of Mission (HoM), a blond young woman, small and with a high pitched voice, who, although hyperactive, looked tired and overwhelmed. The Admin, HoM’s boyfriend, was a kind man of about thirty with dishevelled hair and a messy beard, and also looked exhausted, but at least he had a calmer pace that provided a counterpoint to his girlfriend’s hyperactivity. I was assigned, according to my profile, to his station as an Admin assistant. Two logisticians worked building the semi-permanent housing sites, and Elsa, who was an Engineer, would work with them. Although we didn’t have medical activities, a doctor completed our team. She attended coordination meetings with other organisations, but I don’t know what else she did.
It is hard to describe the scenario we faced upon arrival, because it is hard to describe absence —the absence of guidance and the absence of a basic welcome induction. We had quick introductions, but no proper briefings. I expected that any time the Admin would assign me tasks, that soon the HoM would explain the ongoing projects, that before long the logisticians would drive me to the housing sites. But days passed and none of this took place. I went daily to the office and saw people coming and going —feeling like an audience but not part of the show. The Admin seemed worn down, but preferred doing things himself rather than waste time assigning me jobs. He always had some urgent task at hand, and he would leave the office without including me. I would get impatient looks and sighs when I asked what I could do.
In our team everyone ran around like headless chickens, and I perceived the whole situation as a charade. For it didn’t look like stress due to work excess, it seemed like the lack of focus and direction had wreaked havoc in the team’s morale creating a humanitarian deceit.
Menial tasks and random errands partially filled up my time. I recall doing paperwork, but only very basic things. I had a pile of bills, a baby-bottle-shaped glue stick and white sheets. I glued dirty invoices on paper to attach them to the accounting reports. I found myself feeling lost and insecure. Either I had nothing to do, or I was expected to know what to do without any instructions, and was consequently perceived as a slow learner. I felt like a piece of furniture —a useless one that stood in the way.
I got really excited when I found out I would finally see one of the projects. A housing site was finished, and families would move in. The houses consisted of wooden pillars with walls made of strong plastic sheets that had a tin roof. Each house had a concrete floor and the result was a high quality camping site. Someone handed me a list and paired me up with a translator, someone I had not met before, and who could have done the work on his own. I felt lost, playing the role of expat supervisor, but being clueless. I walked to the first tent —to call it a house meant stretching that concept— and checked the name and number of people in the family assigned to it. The number of family members matched the size of the tent —which differed depending how many people would live there— and thus I put a check mark on the name registry and proceeded to the next one.
I moved along the row of housing ticking boxes next to names and numbers until I reached an elderly woman. I greeted her and asked,
“Hi! How many people compose your family?” The translator shifted his gaze from me to her as he spoke.
“Five,” she replied.
“Oh, no!” Something is amiss, I thought in distress —On my list, this was a two-member family.
I got anxious and, with the nightfall, I couldn’t see the list very well.
“The house is meant for two people,” I explained to the translator.
The lady looked quite old and I didn’t see anyone else around. “Maybe she has older children, with families of their own, who will get their own house?” I enquired hesitantly.
The translator talked to the woman as he translated along the way, “She has two daughters and…” when he was halfway through explaining who else comprised the family, he stopped abruptly. “The size is right. It’s just the lady and her husband.” He gestured towards a sad looking man standing a bit apart.
“I don’t understand,” I turned back to the translator irritated with the contradictory information. “Where are her children then?”
“They died in the tsunami.” he finished. The words of the translator sank as I stared at the old couple blankly, swallowing and trying to keep my composure as a sudden feeling of void aroused in me.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, feeling inadequate and out of words.
At that moment, I felt even more out of place than usual, but I didn’t want to come across as unprofessional to my colleagues —whose attitude seemed to be “Chop-chop, move on!” So I went on to the next family like an automaton. I continued with that stupid check list, while the magnitude of the loss of this couple stayed with me. Certainly, participating in this activity did not give any more meaning to my presence in Sri Lanka as I had hoped, and my days went on in their sad routine.
The whole team lived in the same house. In the evenings, we ate greasy fried chicken with our hands. We grabbed brown bottled crystal beers from a plastic case. Both the bottles —brand Tiger or something of the sort— and the case looked dirty. We opened the beers with a fork —a scout trick. I circled the neck of the bottle with my left hand, while with my right hand I leveraged a fork under the beer cap to pop open the bottle. Owning the gesture gave me a certain sense of belonging, it made me feel cool to be part of a group of tough people used to not having a bottle opener handy.
One particularly humid and hot night, while drinking beer after dinner as usual, a sudden thunderstorm bursted. The rainstorm engulfed us as we stood covered under the roofed terrace without walls. A cathartic atmosphere emerged and three or four people walked into the tropical shower. They raised their heads to the sky to feel the massive drops on their faces. Their worn NGO branded t-shirts got soaked, becoming transparent as the white garment glued to their bodies. Soon they danced and shouted into the rainfall, as puddles formed on the dirt floor. They laughed while performing a dance of ecstasy for an invisible crowd. “Let the world think what they may, we don’t care!” —their faces and mad laughter expressed. They showed their butts to each other and to the moon while I felt like an intruding audience. I wanted badly to feel included, but I didn’t. I had tried hard for the three eternal weeks since I had arrived, but in the midst of their fun I gave up. I did not get their jokes and found the whole situation rather pathetic, tragicomic if you push me. I saw fed up people laughing and drinking their frustration away —and I hated it. I had nowhere to go, except back inside the house. I left the dying party and went to sleep with my uneasiness, knowing no one liked me, and wondering how on Earth I had ended up as the good-for-nothing member of this troupe.
A bit after the storm, disappointment hit —not just on me, but on everyone. I saw us all feeling useless and treading water in the deep end. The first sign I witnessed was Elsa —who seemed strong and self-sufficient— cracking up.
“This is not what I signed up for,” she blurted out. We didn’t talk much, so the abruptness caught me by surprise.
“I’m miserable,'' she then confided to me,
“I left my friends and family behind to do meaningful work,” her tone turned hopeless, “and I have nothing to do!” We had not shared much with each other and, in fact, I thought she didn’t especially like me.
“No one tells me what to do. I feel worthless,” she continued, “I have a job back home, I am an Engineer,” she emphasised.
As she sat on the concrete step of the back door of the house furthering her sad recital, I saw her in a different light. It turned out she had received the same cold welcome as me. She had been juggling to keep herself together and not to fall into despair,
“I hate it here. I’m so lonely.” She ended.
This conversation, in which I basically listened and nodded, is the last memory I have of her, and I have the vague memory that she quit for good soon after – no more walking the tightrope for her.
Then on a hot day, I visited this big semi-permanent housing site in the outskirts of the city. The site, with capacity for hundreds of families, didn't have toilets, electricity or running water or trees. It had latrines and water points built on barren wasteland. A Spanish logistician who looked drained and exhausted led the construction. I don’t know for how long he had been in Sri Lanka, maximum two or three months probably, but whatever the stretch, it had been way too long. Clearly burnt out, he worked relentlessly and appeared to have lost considerable weight recently. He would have looked handsome if not for the exhaustion. He always wore a cap covering a white shaved head, and a pink line appeared where his cap ended and sunburnt skin started.
The Spanish logistician, whose name evades my memory, stood in the middle of a tent. It had a table and two chairs made of cheap white plastic, and served as the construction site office. He was wearing a worn out t-shirt with the MSF logo —we all wore the same t-shirts oversized, stretched and brown; they were in such bad shape that, even though we changed them daily, we looked dirty. He stared at a big map of the site, his fists leaning on the table. The HoM came in and told him there were no families coming. At first, a look of disbelief emerged in his face, like he didn't understand what his boss was talking about. Then it hit, too many organisations had built housing. Therefore, at this stage, months after the disaster, families had already settled in one place or another. Also, other NGOs offered better long term housing. In consequence, the second and third phases of the site were actually to be dismantled. The disappointment in his face showed something had broken inside. He just walked out of the tent and left the site. He went back to the house, packed his things and left that same day.
As images of the tsunami had flooded households during Christmas holidays, the most generous and immediately funded humanitarian response in history emerged thanks to public donations. The post-disaster excess of INGOs turned into organisations competing for beneficiaries and getting in the way of each other, and we were at the heart of this humanitarian circus.
The mood lightened as we closed the project and received unexpected visitors. A theatre group, four professional clowns, came from Spain in collaboration with the NGO Payasos Sin Fronteras (Clowns Without Borders). They came to perform clown and acrobatic shows. The camp, a sad place lacking life, welcomed them. Kids and grown ups alike laughed with a certain awkwardness, delighted with the jumps and tricks of the crew, but not knowing what to expect of the foreigners. It felt refreshing to see joy —especially in our house, where we shared our meals with the clowns. Regardless of actually enjoying the show myself, and seeing happy faces, it felt a bit out of place. I found the whole thing a bit random.
Flying white people all the way from Spain to Sri Lanka for two weeks, to perform a few shows pushes the limits of what a clown show can achieve. Imagine some Sri Lankan dancers popping up a show in Europe, at a municipal hall where families were sheltering after their houses were destroyed by an Earthquake —not likely to be considered psychosocial support. Anyhow, they arrived, they performed a few acrobatics and they went back the same way they came. I must say at least they did lift up my mood.
We dismantled the office and donated materials to other MSF sections and continued with our frantic rhythm, now in a rush to close the project. Then, I was told I had to go to my next mission. But I still had time to quickly visit a holy site famous for its elephants. It was an area where wild elephants drank water from a river bank near some temples. I went with some of my colleagues but we got way too close to the animals, and they ended up charging in our direction. I remember a big pissed off elephant lifting its trunk while making an angry and rumbling sound. I remember panicking, running and measuring my odds… Would it kill first my colleagues, who were between myself and the lunging animal? Would it skip them and head straight to me? Or would it trample randomly whoever got in its path?
Time must have stopped in my brain because it felt like a long time, but it was probably only a few seconds spent fleeing, when a group of teenage boys appeared running in our direction. They screamed, waving sticks and throwing stones, and managed to chase the elephants away to help us. We had been reckless jackasses and put ourselves in real danger. To my dismay, one of my colleagues continued getting way too close to another animal, taking photos and disturbing its peace. I tried to talk him out of it, but he ignored me holding some sort of jester’s privilege. Around a hundred people get killed by elephants every year in Sri Lanka.
Then in the blink of an eye, I found myself on my own in Colombo, dealing with buying plane tickets on a weekend that happened to be the Sri Lankan New Year’s Eve. We were so disconnected from Sri Lankan culture that we didn't even know about this huge national holiday. All flights were fully booked, and headquarters was pressuring me to get ASAP to a destination which really needed me. I remember the travel agent's triumphant look while saying “I got you a flight” and the feeling that a Sri Lankan Deity had taken pity on me. What I didn’t see at the time was that the unjustified rushed movement of people from one mission to another, which left hardly any time for briefings or debriefings, was not due to the emergency nature of our work, but to the terrible human resources management.
After six weeks, I left Sri Lanka and I only knew by name two Sri Lankans, our two drivers. I left feeling my presence had been useless, knowing nothing of the country and having basically interacted only with expatriates of my own organisation and with elephants. I looked forward to my next destination thinking “it can only get better”.
