A year ago I had a brilliant idea. I acted with intention and excitement. I agonized over the perfect domain name. I researched how to self-host a blog on the cheap. I told a few trusted friends about my idea and they were supportive.
As soon as everything was in place and I was reach to launch my creativity into overdrive, the world changed.
I remember the last time I ate an entire meal inside a restaurant. I remember the last time I hugged someone who isn't a family member. I remember the last time I flew on an airplane. I refused the soda and peanuts, because I thought the virus was spread on surfaces. I remember coming home from that trip and washing every single clothing item that I brought with me. We didn't know. There was so much we didn't know.
My enthusiasm and creative energy waned, like a well that was drained and filled with anxiety and stress. My job at an international health nonprofit organization became even more intense than it was before. I would dream all night long about how my workload was unmanageable and then wake up with dread and a knot in my stomach. It wasn't because I hated my job. It was because I loved my job and I felt like I was failing at it.
There was so much to do and so little time. It was early in the pandemic and we had no way of knowing how fast the virus would spread from the international airports and bus terminals and ports of entry into the heartland of the countries where our beloved colleagues lived.
We watched in horror as the daily statistics climbed. Most days it felt like there was nothing we could do. But we had to try to do something. So we would work feverishly, each alone in our home offices, isolated from our routines, our stability, and each other.
We would meet regularly on video conference calls, but the face-to-video-face interaction only made us more exhausted. Our colleagues outside the US and Canada were abruptly instructed to start working from home. For many of them, it was the first time in their lives. This was a huge cultural shift that the technology infrastructure could not yet handle.
***
It has been nearly a year since everything fell apart. It is time for me to start writing again, not because things are stable now, but because they are still so unbelievably unstable. Not because we in the “international community” have learned our lessons, but because it appears that our leaders have not learned a damn thing.
There were a few things that almost drew me back to writing about deconstruction.
Early in the pandemic, I was experiencing so much anxiety and stress related to my job that I sought therapy from a mental health counselor. I had never met her before, but she accepted my insurance, she did telehealth visits via Skype, and she was willing to take me on. So we got into it. She encouraged me to ask myself if it was time to start looking for a new job, to apply for jobs like I was trying on new clothes. Just see how the job fits, and imagine yourself there. So I did just that.
By the time I met with my therapist 2 weeks later, I had reached out to a technology company, inquired about openings, and informed my manager that I was looking. A few weeks later I accepted the job offer and gave my three-week's notice. Choosing to change jobs and leave a steady job for a 12-month contract job during a pandemic is not something that normal people do. I thought about writing about that, but I couldn't find the “deconstructing” angle.
Later on in the pandemic, we had an all-staff meeting at work. A project that our company had invested millions of dollars and untold minutes, hours, and years of time was being killed. It wasn't being killed for lack of funding, as most international health projects typically die, but because of government in-fighting. We had done everything right, we had already begun the sustainability transition plan for the country officials to take ownership of the project and push it forward. Then one day, some one pulled strings and all our work was torpedoed. This was the largest project of its kind, anywhere in the world. Hundreds of thousands of users. Millions of “lives touched” by the software, and by the humans who used the software. A longitudinal dataset with years of history that researchers will never be able to replicate.
Torpedoed. Killed off. And for what?
Maybe because governments live and die by their accomplishments, and this accomplishment wasn't theirs. They wanted their own thing, not our thing.
Maybe because someone was blackmailing someone else.
Maybe because there was more money to be made elsewhere.
***
When you work for a non-profit organization, you can never be truly honest about what you need. You can never be honest about how you failed, and what you would do differently next time.
You must cater every public message and every report to carefully manage the expectations of your supporters and donors. Admitting mistakes might cause donors to think twice next time.
The same is true when you work for a technology company. If you criticize the failures of one government, even if they are truly self-inflicted mortal wounds, you will not gain the trust of the next government that you hope to work with.
It's a balancing act. Too much publicity and transparency sends chills through the system. Money will tighten up and be directed elsewhere, and this will risk the good progress that we are making. Not enough transparency promotes decay and corruption in the system. Money will tighten up and be directed elsewhere, and this will risk the good progress that we are making.
***
We have to tell the truth. There has to be a way for us to tell the truth about how things are not working, and who is to blame.
There is no reason that we should all be afraid of Bill and Melinda Gates ripping up the checks that they write if we say anything critical of the Foundation. When Bill Gates wrong, and he is often wrong, those of us who know the truth need to be able to say so.
There is no reason that one man, Bill Gates, should have veto power over the entire World Health Organization. There is no reason that one man, Chris Murray, should have veto power over the way that we calculate the “Global Burden of Disease”. There is no reason that the world has to be this way, except that we are all too scared of the consequences of speaking out.
So this is my brilliant idea. We need a way to safely speak the truth without risking retribution from these powerful people.
The consequences of their retribution are too severe for us to be cavalier about it. But the consequences of not speaking out are even greater.
If we do not deconstruct this self-serving system of international health, we will fail those who are harmed by it.