The Kindness of Strangers

Working in South Sudan is hard for an organization of any kind. Operating in a country with no infrastructure to speak of, no power, no flowing water, bad roads, means that you or your colleagues will run into trouble regularly. Your car might lose a wheel on the roads, as mine recently did. You will have to stay in places with no access to water. On my most recent field trip we visited several county capitals, each of which had one well resourced NGO operating out of it. They were well resourced in comparison only to the huts and houses around them. But of these organisations, almost all were suffering from power failure. Their main generators needed fixing. Their back up generators needed spare parts. Their back-up back-up generators did not work. If they were lucky, they had a couple of solar panels which were only good enough to run a few computers while the sun was shining. 

Spare parts and engineers all have to come from Juba. This takes weeks, if not months. Each of the NGOs have difficulty operating in their respective environments. A task which would be made infinitely more difficult if it were not for the kindness and assistance of other NGOs around them.

When I began planning this trip, I was heading into unknown territory. Literally. The company had not been to any of the areas I was being sent to. The more I found out, the more I realized that OTHERs had not been their either. Jonglei state is one of the most underdeveloped states in the country. This should mean that they are getting the most help, but what it means in reality is that the NGOs do not have offices or staff there. Only a few adventurous organisations, mainly those giving food aid or working in emergency response and preparedness, have outposts in this NGO-less wilderness. I was incredibly fortunate that they did.

I contacted as many people as I could find, and chased down contact after contact. Eventually I found those that were living and working in the areas I needed to get to, and I discovered something brilliant. The NGOs help each other out. For free. This came as a revelation to me. Up to this point I had heard of and seen much of the politicking and arguing that happens at a management or coordination level. But the workers in the field face a different reality. If one needs assistance, or a place to stay, or advice, then it will be given happily. The only caveat is this: When someone comes asking you for advice and assistance, you should give it.

I could not have carried out my work without the help I received on this trip. When we arrived in Ayod, one contact had arranged a place to stay for us, facilitated meetings with the local authorities, and found a number of data collectors for me to employ on the project. All of this on top of organizing and managing the work that her own organization has to take care of. Indeed, she was unable to house us in their own compound as there was no shade for us to erect our tents, not water because the pump was broken and, you guessed it, no power as the generator needed a new spare part. She asked another NGO with a compound nearby to house us. They immediately said yes. As one of my new friends put it “We cannot work in the field without each others help”

We offered as much assistance as we could in response. We offered to ferry parts, people and anything else back to Juba on our return journey. Unfortunately the assistance was not needed. I feel guilty about this. I wanted to give a little something in reply for their kindness, but it was not needed.

NGOs work on a different set of ethics than the rest of us. I work for a consulting firm. We are a business. I wonder whether this matters to the NGOs and the people that help us. I know we are doing work for them. We assess their programmes, do the research they hire us to do, give them the knowledge they need to work. This means we are part of their world, so I guess we are deserving of their help and assistance. However, I have a sneaky suspicion that if they realize we are actually profit makers, they would not help so much. So please, keep this story quiet. I don’t want them to know…