Another Day in Paradise edited by Carol Bergman, Earthscan, 拢17.99, ISBN 1844070344
鈥淧OWERFUL stories from international aid workers鈥� is how the press release promotes this anthology, and that鈥檚 indeed what these are: evocative, life-affirming accounts of trying to do good in the middle of humanitarian disaster. Some are written with lyrical flair, others are all the more graphic for their report-like tone. They show raw suffering, affecting both aid-provider and recipient, and the horrors of working in situations where energy must be conserved for the care of the living and not squandered on those who won鈥檛 survive.
These stories share a common perspective, for their authors are western expatriates trying to engage 鈥� with varying degrees of success 鈥� with the locales and people that are the backdrop to their work; 鈥渢hat great, wounded, unknowable, African Other鈥�, as one describes it. Additionally, the contributors to the book are somewhat self-selecting, in that most believe firmly in the value of humanitarian aid; it is the testament of the agnostics 鈥� common in the field 鈥� that I would like to have heard more of.
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Nevertheless, Another Day in Paradise contains a rich diversity of expression, from those who assert their passion and lack of fear, to the ones who will bear the trauma of their experiences for ever. Most find fulfilment; some, despair; and one, surprisingly, discovers emotional freedom in the midst of extreme social oppression. Some are struck by the ironies of their work. A Vietnamese woman tells how she was helicoptered out of Saigon with her family in 1975 because of her father鈥檚 association with the Americans. She grew up in Boston, returning to her birthplace as a member of a US agency distributing aid. A tent-camp of people displaced by floods recalls the refugee camp in which her family lived after their escape. Her story encapsulates the debate about aid and indebtedness and the actual benefits of much humanitarian intervention.
Few of the authors express their feelings about how the agencies they work for are sometimes directed by donors 鈥� governments, parastatals, corporations 鈥� towards projects with political or public relations or global economic goals. Most present themselves as relatively apolitical, though there are odd, awkward exceptions. A doctor employed by an American agency in a Khmer Rouge refugee camp admits the place is an operational stronghold from which camp occupants carry out raids into Cambodia, yet a counter-attack by Cambodian government forces is an 鈥渋nvasion鈥� by 鈥淗un Sen thugs鈥� who 鈥渁ssassinate鈥� camp members: an attitude exactly matching the US State Department position that the genocidal Pol Pot was preferable to the Vietnam-backed regime that deposed him.
Humanitarian aid issues are complicated, and relief intervention can seldom be demonstrated to be doing unalloyed good. Ultimately we are called upon to judge not the benefits of this work, nor the motivation of those performing it, but the simple humanity implicit 鈥� as John Le Carr茅 writes so movingly in his introduction 鈥� in doing 鈥渨hatever they can, again and again, knowing it can never be enough鈥�.