Working overseas on foreign aid and development projects is a dream job for many people. Why not? The pay can be very good. Benefits often include free housing. Your household budget can easily provide for a maid or housekeeper, maybe a local security guard, perhaps a nanny. Household staff would be impossible on the same budget back in the U.S. The work, making life better in chronically poor countries, is difficult to impossible. You’ll be praised for whatever success you achieve, but you can’t be blamed too much if your project doesn’t quite meets its goals. Your business card and your citizenship will open lots of doors and gain you instant respect. Back home you’ll be regarded as something like a saint. And in addition to all those foreign-aid career positives, don’t forget: according to those who know, good food just tastes better in a country where lots of folks don’t have enough to eat.
The second sushi bar to open in ragged postwar Liberia did not settle for having its chefs wear simple T-shirts, or for serving $25 worth of sliced fish on plain white plates.
Instead, the Barracuda Bar — the new favorite hangout of ambassadors, U.N. officials and legions of aid workers whose shiny white SUVs jam the parking lot most nights — opted to dress its staff in Japanese-style robes and red bandannas. Bigger orders of salmon and yellowtail arrived not on flatware but on little wooden sushi boats. Lobsters languished sullenly in a tank near the door, waving their antennae as customers walked by.
As this impoverished country climbs its way back from 13 years of civil war with the tiniest of steps, a boom is underway in the industries that cater to the rarified tastes of thousands of mostly European and U.S. expatriates who have come to help since peace arrived in 2003. The increasingly visible splendors available to this relatively wealthy group have left some Liberians wondering whether the foreigners are here to serve the nation or themselves.
In Postwar Liberia, Paradise Amid the Poverty: Feelings Mixed as Aid Workers Live Well (The Washington Post; May 30, 2008)
