One point in particular struck me while reading this book. While no one is perfect, and Alexander admits this, she is not afraid to acknowledge the good that has also been done by NGOs and the UN around the world. In a way, her simple story pulls back a veil of romantic idealism from the life of a humanitarian aid worker and the industry itself. She does not shield the reader from the inconsistencies and frustrations she has encountered throughout her career. She has learned over the years to laugh at herself, and she, through her raw and poignant writing, allows the reader to laugh with her. Over the next decade, she worked in Rwanda, Darfur, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, and Haiti doing everything from refugee status determination interviews, managing a refugee camp, running children’s programs, and assessing aid responses post-disaster.Īlexander weaves into her memoir a good dose of humor. That trip inspired her to pursue graduate school and a career in humanitarian aid. It was several years before, when her mother died of cancer that Alexander decided to quit her marketing job and took a trip to Central America to decide what to do next. Her first experience working in humanitarian aid was during a brief internship in Rwanda while working on her master’s degree. Surprisingly, Alexander was not born with a desire to be a humanitarian.
For anyone who sees pictures on the web of blue vest clad UNHCR workers, or reads about another one of Angelina Jolie’s trips to the Syrian refugee camps, this book explains an ordinary person’s journey into such a career.
The result is a compelling story of risk, discovery, culture shock, and the journey to finding one’s passion and purpose. Though Jessica Alexander’s book Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid is primarily a memoir of the first ten years of her humanitarian career, it is sprinkled with critique of the aid industry and history of the conflicts she worked in.
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