Reminiscing on Five Years in Development Cooperation–Pakistan#0
Aktualisiert: 10. Sept.
A Tale of Community and the Question of Helping
My personal journey in the intersection of humanitarian aid and development cooperation led me to Niger, the Levant, Germany and Switzerland. From 2018 to 2023, I was greatly enriched by the opportunity to grow together inter-culturally. In this text, I focus on my learning from my life with the Muslim tribe “Abbadi” in the village of Iraq al Amir, Jordan.
"Look, Lukas! An airplane!" Fuddha (فضة) pointed to the dark night sky with her finger. I looked up and saw a light passing.
"Dumb old woman, of course, this is an airplane!" The thought popped up immediately, followed by shame about my judgment. Naturally, it was an airplane. Flying is what airplanes do.
I was about to let a feeling of superiority swell within me when it suddenly dissipated.
There it was, a light in the sky, flying. Wow.
Wow.
The old lady was still looking at me, her eyes sparkling with fascination. I think she knew very well what an airplane was. But her reaction went beyond my discursive thinking. It contained joy, a sense of novelty, a vibrant connection to the moment. Later, I wondered if her wisdom had been shaped by years of working in the fields around the village or her many visits to Mecca. She often reminded me that there's more to things than meets the eye and what our minds can perceive.
On Ramadan evenings, the air was alive, creating a space where everything received equal attention. It was a time for magic, for discovering small miracles, for gratitude and shared humanity. Iftar (افطار), the fast-breaking, was a time of gratitude.
In contrast, my days were very different. I was working in development cooperation at the time, and the conversations within our team often sounded like this: "We need to support communities... We're going to the field... The girls in the community were so lovely...". Our language contained many remnants of a disturbing past, of superiority, and cultural gaps.
In discussions with other international colleagues, salary and additional benefits were frequent topics of complaint. People were worried and felt the need to negotiate better compensation for their work abroad. Apart from what they called 'mindful breaks', expressions of gratitude or appreciation for the fact that we earned quite well and enjoyed a wealth of benefits were rare. The fear of not getting enough was pervasive. I couldn't help but think of the German tale of the insatiable monster "Nimmersatt". Colleagues went to great lengths to impress their superiors and increase their visibility. I couldn’t blame them, as I saw that what drove most of them was the Western model of careerism and an individualistic search for belonging, security and identity in a culture they did not understand. Also, consciously or unconsciously, we were all riding the waves of the lingering aftermath of colonialism. Even attempts to make the hierarchy more horizontal, such as my own initiative to propose salary parity to my national colleagues, were unsuccessful.
The life of an expatriate – was this the sum total of living abroad?
In German there's a saying: "more illusion than reality". I watched people my age being indoctrinated into a system that left them deeply confused. Yet, believing that this was the harsh reality they had to accept, many chose to conform. The system was hierarchical, bureaucratic and highly static. Older colleagues, many of them from the baby boomer generation, seemed only to be waiting for their pensions to arrive. I often recall a very influential colleague once saying that he felt like he was in a golden cage: too comfortable to leave, but too painful to stay in. I often felt like I was in a madhouse. Was this what I had studied International Relations for? Was this what I wanted to do for the rest of my life? To be constantly frustrated and confused? Or, even worse, to become numb and only caring for myself and my loved ones?
I had to stop this work or leave. What to do?
I chose both options. I started working part-time, took up another job in the private sector and for small NGOs. Also, I fled to the countryside. At some point during Covid, I couldn't stand living in the city anymore and moved to Iraq al Amir, a small village between Na’ur and the Jordan Valley, mostly inhabited by the Abbadi Tribe. Originally from Yemen, some of them migrated to Jordan. Living through the seasons in the small village, their way of life introduced me to the remnants of a culture that once lived in harmony with nature. Not only Fuddha, the wise woman, but the whole village taught me many valuable lessons. It wasn't all smooth sailing at first. My first encounters with some of the villagers felt somewhat staged. Thirty years ago, the old queen had set up a women's cooperative with the help of USAID. They had purchased overly expensive equipment and taught the women various skills such as weaving, pottery and paperwork. It was as if they'd been given a script for their lives, a phenomenon that's happening intensly in Saudi Arabia at the moment, where people are being put into specific roles that they'll carry on for years, sometimes without much success.
This in itself wasn't necessarily negative. However, what it was unintentionally doing was having individuals act out someone else's preconceived notion of what traditional village life should be - it was like staging a theatre performance. As a result, I initially found myself perceived solely as a 'visiting client'. It took many visits and several months of living in the village before people gradually began to see me as a fellow human being. The COVID-19 pandemic gave me the freedom to be more generous with my time, a luxury we Westerners are often reluctant to grant to ourselves. Why rush through a place when there are so many tourist attractions in the country? Luckily, I never bothered tourist sites much. My interest for people and simple life stories always prevailed.
Naturally, the defenses I had erected around my desire not to be perceived as a typical tourist, or the ubiquitous "white Ajnabi" as they would say, didn't make the process of breaking those boundaries any easier. Yet, as the months passed, and the local women and fellow villagers saw that Lukas (or Lok's - as the pronounced my name) could be quite handy when it came to picking olives from the treetops, and the children realized that they were still welcome to pluck mulberries from Lukas' garden, a transformation began to unfold. The customary behavioural patterns that often divide people from different cultures began to crumble. This transformation was also facilitated by Jordanian and Palestinian friends and colleagues, who acted as intermediaries, conveying my sincere intention to form genuine connections.
People gradually allowed me to be there without pretense, to simply be present for a cup of tea every now and then, without the need for any specific goals or achievements in our interactions. We often had no clear insight into each other's thoughts, but we genuinely appreciated each other's company.
At some point, I had to leave. Leaving was a challenge, but after 1.5 years in the village, my health began to decline, forcing me to reluctantly move to Germany. The personal stories of the villagers, the echoes of shared laughter accompanied by the soothing sounds of the oud, the memories of refreshing hikes, participating in work exchanges such as planting trees and offering agricultural advice - all interwoven with the unravelling of preconceived cultural notions - could easily fill the pages of numerous books. In retrospect, my time with the Abbadi was transformative, fostering a deep sense of family that my own culture had seemingly forgotten for far too long.
Now, you might ask, why all this discussion? Is this just a lone testimony from a random expatriate?
It could be seen that way. However, I've come across recurring patterns that lead me to believe that there are fundamental challenges in humanitarian and development cooperation - or even ways of communion - that remain largely unaddressed. In fact, I find it difficult to see any real development cooperation taking place in the contexts I know of. There seems to be a lack of organisations with a deep inquiry into what 'development' means in specific cultural contexts. During my extended stays in Arab and African countries and discussions with colleagues and other individuals, it became clear that there are overarching issues that need to be acknowledged. We need to really meet the human beings we work with, to listen and be curiously alert to any kind of irritation on our part. There is no need to glorify any culture or custom, but to understand everything as valid in its own right, as long as it is not harmful to others.
Consequentially, I rarely see deeply rooted cooperation that is truly attuned to human sensitivities and needs. It seems that comprehensive roadmaps for navigating the complexities of development cooperation are often lacking. The basis for the projects being implemented remains unclear, filled with biases. It's important to acknowledge that the field has its roots in colonialism and that history continues to influence the dysfunctional systems that have evolved, driven by bureaucracy, self-interest and underlying political motives. Questions arise such as…
“Is the dominant model of Western culture really a sustainable blueprint for other cultures and regions?”
“How to allow aspiring developing countries to pass through game-theoretic modes of life without destroying the rest of what conquerors and colonialists have taken?”
Obviously, all of those questions are dubbed with an inquiry into individuals’ personal development. The challenge we face is how to change systems when workers are discouraged from criticising the employers who provide their livelihoods. This predicament is particularly daunting for those who have chosen an intercultural career path, often facing job insecurity and isolation. Many people experience subtle or explicit forms of cultural shock that often go unnoticed by the organisation, or even coaches and psychologists.
In my humble opinion, investigating our incentives and biases is the first step to work in another cultural context. How can one support another culture in finding a healthy, harmonious sense of being, doing and becoming, if I haven’t found it in my own body, heart and mind?
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