90 Days is Too Long to Wait

Children in front of a tailor's shop in a refugee camp 

Four days after I returned home from the Chicago Marathon, I left for Chad. For

security reasons, I didn't post about my trip while I was there, and I won't be sharing specifics of where I visited. Anything I share in this post reflects my own views, and not that of any organization I have worked for or met with.

Chad ranks 190 of 191 countries in the Human Development Index, making it nearly the poorest and most under-developed country in the world. Outside of two, maybe three cities, there are no paved roads in the country. Outside these same cities, villages have no running water or electricity, and phone/internet connection is spotty at best. 

Flooding viewed from bush plane

At the time of my visit, Chad had experienced two rounds of historic flooding in a mostly desert nation, and 10% of the population of 18 million was impacted by the floods. Flying over the country in bush planes, I witnessed entire communities flooded out, homes destroyed and standing water drowning crops. In one location, we visited an internally displaced person (IDP) camp, where flood victims were living until the waters receded. The day after I left, water coming from rains upstream in Sudan further flooded the capitol of N'Djamena, including the homes of some of my colleagues. 

Despite the overwhelming underdevelopment of the country, Chad hosts nearly a million and a half refugees (again, citizen population of 18 million). These are people who fled various iterations of wars in Cameroon, Congo and Sudan. Some are arriving or have recently arrived, some have been in camps for 20 years. They are living in the camps because there is no where else to go.

In the three weeks I was there, I spent most of my time outside the capitol, in smaller communities and refugee camps. My job was to train staff, engage in discussions with refugees and visit the camps.

What I saw was organizations doing their best to help people survive. My first week, my recurring thought was "everything is screwed up and nothing really works." The scale of the camps, the poverty, the underfunding, the constant influx of people was overwhelming. 

At some point in the second week, I got back to the compound I was staying at and had a strong urge for a cigarette. It was an automatic thought, one I don't know I have ever had before. I don't smoke, and I've never smoked. 

The rest of my time, my recurring thought was "bear witness." Listen to stories, smile and wave at children who were waving at me, stop and shake every child's hand who approached me, squat and make myself small to talk to a child while following up on an in-the-moment concern. Sometimes, that's all you can do.

Girl drinking ground water while other
camp residents watch

I saw bore holes that broke and no one had the money to fix them, meaning thousands of people were walking five kilometers for clean water, or scooping dirty water out of puddles and bogs. I watched a girl lean a meter down into a hole in the sand, scoop out brown water with a bowl, and drink.

I talked to women who told me about their participation in economic inclusion programs and begged me to expand the programming. They asked on behalf of others, because they knew that this program was now bringing them in enough money so their children could eat. They wanted other families to have the same chance they did. I saw the pride in their faces and hear the dignity they felt in their voices when given a chance to earn an income. I also watched them tuck the sandwiches we had brought for snacks away, taking them home for their family to share instead of eating themselves. 

I listened to the frustrations of NGO workers from another organization screaming that the supply orders they put in came back half full because of budget constraints, meaning that they didn't have enough food to distribute to meet the demand. On top of that, the road conditions were so bad their truck overturned and they were unable to deliver what they did have. 

Tent homes in a refugee camp

No one's shoes fit, refugee or community member. The image of multitudes of heels hanging off the back of sandals is tattooed into my memory. 

One of our drivers, a local community member likely making a subsistence wage, picked me up one morning. He handed me a plastic water bottle filled with groundnuts. He had gone out of his way to stop at a roadside stand before work so I could try them, not because I asked, but because he wanted to share.

These are the faces I see when I hear that the US government has not only questioned future foreign aid funding, but has issued stop-work orders on current contracts, effective immediately and for at least 90 days. These places were already in need of more money to meet basic needs of people who literally have no other option. Now, effectively immediately, there is to be no work done, no money spent. 

The US spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign aid. The same president who courted evangelical Christians and promised a return of God to American life not only won't tithe America's wealth to support the poor and oppressed, but believes that less than 1% is a ripoff. 

Hundreds of thousands of national staff around the world who work in the humanitarian sector, serving the millions of forcibly displaced people in the world, aren't going to get paid. At some point, they will run out of money to feed their own children, let alone the people they serve. Jobs are not easily replaced in these areas of the world.

This decision will only make poor nations poorer, reverse progress and increase instability. Humanitarian assistance is not perfect, but it provides careers for many and lifelines for many more. 

Some of the children I met are going to die.

Some of the women I met are going to starve because they are going to feed their children before themselves. 

There's a good chance that I'm going to lose my job in the aftermath of all of this, and given the administration's desire to decimate the aid sector, that may mean I have to make a career change. There might not be another job for me, but that is a minor, tiny tragedy compared to the lives that not just "maybe," but "absolutely will be" lost because of the cruelty, heartlessness and evil of the current administration. 

The fever pitch of executive orders issued this week was designed to inflict maximum damage to those the administration considers undesirable, and to overwhelm so completely that no one knows where to look first. Its a tactic right out of the Project 2025 playbook (and used by white supremacists, authoritarians and nationalists throughout history): hit everywhere and everyone so that all individual groups are looking out for their own and can't unify. Let the affected (the environmentalists, the refugee rights advocates, the diplomacy experts, the humanitarians, the LGBTQIA groups, the career civil servants, the military, FEMA, WHO, individual US states... the choices are endless) cry for attention for their own cause and "what about us?" When chaos reigns, the chances of fighting back are minimized.

We have to unify around compassion and mercy. We have to save our people and our planet. And we have to do so right now, all of it, all at once. Call your congressperson, demand action. Pick your favorite cause and donate. Volunteer somewhere. Spread the word. We can't do it all, but we can do something. What you choose will not be more or less important than anything else. There's so much at risk right now, you can't pick wrong.

No one has 90 days to wait.