Putting me first: A perspective from a Black Humanitarian
By : Marsha Michel
I am a humanitarian and international development expert with over twenty years of experience overseas, working to diversify and create the next generation of women of color in the humanitarian field.
I was lucky I was able to combine my passion for traveling with helping others. Growing up, my escapism was traveling as a journalist to countries that I only heard of on television. As a first-generation American, I never dreamed that I would be a U.S. Government representative in charge of ensuring that humanitarian assistance went to those who needed it the most.
While I worked extremely hard to be in this stage of my career, there was always that feeling that I was lucky to get a job at USAID. There are countless incidents at various stages in my career that often reminded me that I did not belong in the spaces that I ended up in. For a long time, I accepted a lot of situations or relationships because I was afraid of losing my job or being seen as ungrateful; I kept my head down a lot. By the time that I started using my voice to push to be heard and to have a seat at the table, I was often perceived as being “too strong” or “not diplomatic enough”. I was always advocating for my perspective on a humanitarian response to be heard.
The reality is that I dedicated over a decade of my life to USAID but as a Personal Services Contractor or (PSC) which can be looked down upon by others within the agency and outsiders. I did not have full benefits and my years of service to the U.S. Government will not be recognized like that of a civil servant or a foreign service officer. When I started working for USAID, there was not a career track for doing humanitarian work; the majority of us doing this work are PSCs but this is changing. The reality is that most PSCs like me are dedicated humanitarians going above and beyond the call of duty.
For a long time, my vulnerability kept me from sharing my story because I had to be seen as “strong” and demonstrate “my worth” regardless of the situation. The COVID pandemic forced me into a space with myself that allowed me to take stock of my career, my impact, and my most intentional “self”. I was able to reflect on my incredible journey filled with hopeful beauty and the harsh reality of humanity. Today, I share my story to inspire women of color who did not think they could be in this space; to help make room for others like me, lift them up, and make sure that they are invited to the table.
The impact of COVID on my life, forced me to ponder some difficult questions, during which I finally admitted to myself that I was tired and no longer happy performing the work that I loved so deeply. I was losing my sense of purpose. COVID was devastating in so many different ways and there was no escaping it; it unleashed many additional meetings and, in my case, even longer work hours with the time difference between Washington, D.C. and Bangladesh.
Looking back during my first few days on the job, I knew from the beginning that this position, as Advisor to the Rohingya Refugee Response, would be one of the hardest I've held due to a significant lack of critical staffing on my team. While I’d raised the challenges of not having a full team, I was never taken seriously - leaving me to navigate the complexities of a demanding and politically sensitive humanitarian response that required a team with a wide range of humanitarian skill sets.
After my second rest and recuperation (R&R) from Bangladesh, I resigned from my position as the USAID Advisor for the Rohingya Refugee Response in January 2022. It was a difficult decision because I cared deeply about the needs of the Rohingyas. The reality is that I was sick, burned out and needed to take time off to take care of myself. I hardly took any vacation during my two and half year tenure because I was constantly working and kept pushing back my breaks because I thought I had time. Then, COVID happened; it reminded me of the preciousness of time and that I was human, deserving of rest.
I’ve worked in numerous conflict settings, but the Rohingya refugee response was the most political and high profile humanitarian response with a high number of US government official visits to the refugee camps. Pre-Covid, there was an endless flow of visitors from Washington or based at the Embassy in Dhaka who visited the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar and I was almost always on those trips. The travel requirements for US Government officials was always a difficult process due to internal security posture and restrictions, but the one in Bangladesh was strenuous.
Like most overseas posts, I was required to submit a trip approval weeks ahead that needed a litany of information such as the exact locations of everywhere I will be during the entire trip, which came from partners on the ground in Cox’s Bazar. The staff at the Embassy were required to travel in armored cars and there was a limited number of them. The cars are based in Dhaka and a driver would drive them to Cox’s Bazar - it takes 3 days to get there which included rest stops for the driver. It was a bureaucratic nightmare and I spent so much time doing administrative work and overseeing that it got done, which was so much harder without a full team, rather than working on policy and programmatic issues that were affecting the humanitarian response.
My career with USAID started as a Program Officer in Afghanistan but took me to many countries I never dreamt of: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Republic of Congo (RoC), Central African Republic (CAR), Niger, Guinea, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh. In all these countries, I served in so many different roles and capacities that were not always easy but mainly as the humanitarian and emergency expert who needed to know everything about the humanitarian context at all times. I was determined to do the job because I cared about the Mission and most of all, cared about the communities receiving humanitarian assistance. I traveled often as possible to the various camps to keep abreast of the situation on the ground, wrote reports, yearly strategies and budgets, and cables that informed a much wider audience from USAID including the Department of State of the situation on the ground. After spending a few years in DC after my two years in Afghanistan, I moved to the DRC in 2017 as a Regional Program Officer covering DRC, RoC and CAR. This was one of the best jobs I've ever had because of the complexity and responsibility that came with the job. I was managing the emergency response for three countries for both refugee and internally displaced populations. I spent so many hours reading and talking to people from different organizations learning about how best I could be effective. Not only was I able to converse in French, a native language besides English, I felt valued and contributed positively.
I still remember vividly the first time I traveled to Tanganyika, a province in eastern DRC, to visit areas with displaced populations who were receiving humanitarian assistance. Eastern Congo has been plagued by war and conflicts for decades that have killed and displaced millions. I was drawn by the apparent calmness and beauty of Lake Tanganyika which is the second-oldest freshwater lake in the world and the second-largest by volume and the second deepest. Yet outside of my hotel one evening, I watched countless Congoleses flee their villages with whatever small possessions they could carry on their head just running for safety. One colleague who spoke Swahili tried to speak to some of them to figure out what was happening, but they kept running.
As usual, my flight to Tanganyika was late and by the time I arrived on the site with the displaced Congolese, the sun was already coming down and there was a long queue of people waiting to be assisted. Upon my arrival, the women started dancing to express gratitude for the assistance they were about to receive.
I was uncomfortable with seeing the women dancing; it was unclear at the time, but they never received any humanitarian assistance while they waited for hours under the scorching sun in this open field, and it’s been months since they received anything. I was livid and angry. I clearly remember asking why they waited for our arrival before they could receive assistance. I vaguely recalled being told that as a donor, I was a VIP. I remember asking why they had to dance and was told that it was the tradition in Congo. While dancing is an important cultural aspect of everyday life in DRC, I often wondered how this colonial legacy started and why we expected hungry people especially women to dance for food to show their gratitude to foreigners giving humanitarian aid. If dancing was expected, what else could be expected to receive humanitarian food.
As a woman of color, I felt awful and ashamed at the sight of hungry and tired Congolese, especially children in dire need, women dancing just because we were providing them with access to food. When I met with our aid partner the next day, I told them that I was not a VIP and to never again make our beneficiaries wait for hours before receiving assistance. Though it took a few more conversations before people understood that I was not to be treated as a VIP but rather a technical U.S. Government representative tasked with ensuring that humanitarian assistance was provided to the most vulnerable Congolese who were displaced by conflict. It was this initial experience through the beauty and richness of the Congolese people, that I was able to clarify my partnership and purpose with this aid partner - visits were never about finding fault to blame, but to work jointly in making sure we were doing our best for the beneficiaries.
I spent the next few days talking to displaced men and women hearing heart wrenching stories about how they became displaced and what it meant to them to receive this humanitarian assistance. My colleague, and I would divide the camps in two, each one of us going in different sections and spending at least 45 minutes talking to as many people as we could before heading to the next camp. We read the reports but we wanted to hear directly from them, their stories and how this humanitarian assistance meant to them. Each visit to camps, we asked the same questions to as many displaced Congolese as we could. My visits were long and took several days, but they were so critical to ensuring that humanitarian assistance reached the most vulnerable. While some of the Congolese I spoke to received assistance twice weeks apart, half of the camps did not; it was not clear how that oversight happened but I made sure it never happened again. My field visits improved the lives of those most impacted by conflict, but could not change the ongoing conflict.
After traveling to so many sites where we provided humanitarian assistance, I was always excited to get back to Kinshasa which was bustling with life and music. Life there was different from the harsh realities that I witnessed while traveling throughout the Congo. In Kinshasa, I was always itching to go back to the field where I made a difference and to escape my working environment at USAID, which got harder over months due to management and security restrictions imposed by the conflict and U.S. Embassy security restrictions. While my male colleague’s travel was always approved, it became impossible for me to get approval for travel to visit humanitarian assistance sites that I would just ask him to just add me to his trip since he had no issues in getting his approval. It often felt that my travel requests went through the microscope. I often wonder why I was not asked to speak to our security office about travel while my older male colleague in country for a few weeks was chosen instead which resulted in a heavier scrutinized process for travel. Could my perspective as a woman of color who’s lived and worked in many different and similar contexts shape a different travel policy mindful of security but that wasn't onerous on anyone and that we could monitor humanitarian assistance as often as needed.
After my field visits, I often wrote U.S. Government cables focused on my findings as well as to raise awareness of critical humanitarian issues to get Washington’s attention. In DRC, I was one of the few among the Americans who spoke fluent French at the Mission. While all cables were vigorously edited, I was questioned about the veracity of certain statements. I recalled writing about the Congolese army asking for payments from aid partners leaving the city of Tanganyika to provide humanitarian assistance in areas with displaced congolese which was common knowledge in the humanitarian community. Higher ups at USAID and Embassy were shocked by the implied statements, and I was repeatedly asked for evidence. A male colleague reached out to give me the heads up that he was asked to corroborate this, but he had only been in the country for a week or so and did not speak french. Before getting into the humanitarian field, I knew that languages were important and thought it would be an important asset for my career, but this was not always the case. A supervisor once told you seemed smart but where are you getting all of these things? The double edged sword as a woman of color who understood the complexities of humanitarian responses, was an expert linguist and raising issues that did not need to be swept under the carpet.
In the DRC, the cars of the local staff were searched by the local guards before leaving the embassy grounds. No one I ever asked could explain why the Embassy did this. Each time I went to the management area, the local guards would always try to search my car. They tried to open the door several times, but they were always locked. The guard would look at me and I’d stare back at him. He tried to open another door, and I continued to stare straight ahead. He eventually realized that I had diplomatic plates and proceeded to open the gates. As a woman of color, this situation was upsetting everytime it happened, but I often wondered about my Congolese colleagues who lived in their own country and had their cars searched by security every day.
My most recent position in Bangladesh was one of the most difficult humanitarian responses that I worked on; the story of the Rohingyas is sad, especially knowing that there is no end to their misery and that they’ve been living as internally displaced Myanmar and refugees in Bangladesh for decades with no durable solutions.
In 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingyas fled genocide by Burmese military in Burma to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, one of the most disaster prone areas of that country. There, they live in makeshift camps in appalling conditions; shelters made of bamboo and plastic shitting that do not protect them from yearly flooding and fires because the Government of Bangladesh does not want permanent structure that would lead them to think that they were welcome to be permanent residents. They have no citizenship and are condemned to live in horrible conditions because no other country will take them.
On March 21, 2022 the U.S. Government finally declared Myanmar’s mass killing of the Rohingyas in 2017 a genocide. While this was much welcome news especially for the Rohingyas in Myanmar and those in exile, much more is owed to the Rohingyas who have been fleeing state sponsored violence since the 70s and those who remain in Myanmar are confined in concentration camps. Back in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) has often imposed severe restrictions on the Rohingyas. The refugees are now living behind barbed wire fencing and the GoB started the relocation of some of the refugees to Bashan Char, an island rife with safety concerns.The Rohingyas have no rights, no choice, and no opportunities; they are at the mercy of the GoB and donors' generosity to provide the most basic of humanitarian assistance.
Working on the Rohingya humanitarian response was one of the hardest jobs I ever had and worsened due to COVID. The long hours, the lack of rest and support from leadership. I started asking myself what was in this job for me because I was not happy, I was tired, and angry. I worked hard but it was never acknowledged and on top of it it was always a fight convincing some of my leadership to understand the humanitarian situation on the ground and the response needed. Once I was told: you think we are just gonna just do what you tell us to do. The irony was that I was the advisor for the humanitarian response. I followed up by writing a strategy to explain the humanitarian response and why it was important to continue with the type of funding, but never got a response. I was slowly forgetting why I loved my job so much.
While I faced many challenges, I made a difference through the work that I have done throughout my career. My work has provided insightful analyses on the situation on the ground by strategically identifying who, and how to elevate humanitarian concerns in dire need of advocacy. My perspective on humanitarian issues made a difference in helping shape thoughtfulness and empathy in the way we responded to humanitarian crises. I am grateful for all my opportunities and experiences. It's important to have diverse voices and lived experiences not only seen but also at the table: speaking, shaping, and leading.
Throughout my career, it’s been difficult to find mentors, especially women of color (WOC) mentors in this humanitarian field, those who have experienced similar obstacles throughout their career development. To this day, a career in disaster and humanitarian management is not a common choice for many POCs, so imagine the landscape when I started over twenty years ago. In both situations, my own personal and professional trajectory can serve as one example of what a WOC in this space can achieve, as well as offer solutions on how they can overcome some of the difficulties they are experiencing based on their gender, identity, or ethnic background.
I am grateful for the people who opened doors for me like my first female supervisor at USAID who saw the potential in me and hired me, and who has supported me throughout my career there; the supervisor who always asked during each meeting “what can I do for you;” and the female USAID Mission Director whom I never met before but who reviewed my fellowship application with substantial feedback and simply asked that I pay it forward. I want to open the doors to other women of color entering the field or struggling with the system. While diversity is one approach to changing the landscape, it is not enough until those committed to changing the structures are involved.
Leaving my position in Bangladesh was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It took me so long to admit that I needed rest and to understand what rest looked like. I am the happiest that I have been in a long time, and thanks to the Presidential Leadership Program that I am part of, I found new meaning to what it means to be a leader with compassion, empathy and vision. This is what I want my future work environment to be like with like-minded leaders with bold vision, demanding but remaining committed to human values while making a difference.
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Written by: Marsha Michel - Liaison Coordinator for the Climate Change Working Group for Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security and Conflict (WCAPS). Ms. Michel worked for USAID from 2009 - 2022 and most recently a Senior Humanitarian Advisor on the Rohingya Refugee Crisis in Bangladesh.