MOVING MOUNTAINS
by Claire Bertschinger
Doubleday £14.99 pp320

In the wake of Live8 and the G8 summit at Gleneagles, John Burnett’s engrossing account of his time as a United Nations worker in Africa is perfectly timed. In 1998, he was a freewheeling American with a colourful life (career seems too grand a title) who had worked as a journalist and political speech writer. He also knew about ships and that year had sailed across the Mediterranean, down the Red Sea and along the East African coast. He was in Kenya when he heard that the World Food Program (WFP) needed experienced sailors to distribute aid in neighbouring Somalia.

The WFP is a UN agency charged with combating starvation around the world. In 2003 (according to Burnett), it fed 104m in 81 countries at a cost of $3.3 billion. Despite that, one person was still dying of starvation every four seconds. Somalia found itself needing help after heavy rains caused vast flooding and left hundreds of thousands homeless, stranded and in need of food. Burnett signed a temporary contract to help get it to them.

He could hardly be regarded as an innocent, yet he was stunningly ill-prepared for what lay ahead. He was partly blinded by his own romantic streak: “It appeared that I had found my own modern-day Foreign Legion,” he writes. In Nairobi he was given a minimal briefing. In a policy that dates back to the good old days when everyone respected the UN’s blue berets, the WFP makes host countries responsible for staff security. As Somalia had no central government, security was provided by rival warlords in a constant state of stand-off. The new recruit soon discovered the reality of his situation when he was fired at as he stepped off the plane. During the first few days, he lived through a siege and faced the prospect of being shot by a child with a Kalashnikov. He had to sit by idly, unable to get to the river where people were dying for lack of food and cover.

Burnett is particularly good at evoking the strain this created. Some of his characterisations seem stereotyped, but his assessments are sure-handed. He understands the mix of altruism, adrenaline, financial reward and companionship that drives many aid workers. He observes how Somali warlords, who are paid to help safeguard the aid workers, extract the maximum amount of cash. He sees the way that the various aid agencies (even competing UN agencies) work against each other to gain credit and press exposure. And he learns, through bitter experience, how savage people can be when they are desperate. Dealing with the post-mission comedown is the hardest part because, as another UN worker puts it, “If you are one in a million who is not affected by this shite, then you’ve got something missing.”

This sentiment is echoed in Claire Bertschinger’s Moving Mountains, in which the author describes the heartbreak of being a Red Cross nurse during the Ethiopian famine of 1984. Without enough food or medicine, she was forced to choose who would receive assistance, and who would die. Her appeal on British television helped launch the international relief operation and stirred Bob Geldof into setting up Live Aid.

Bertschinger also writes about her experiences with the Red Cross in Afghanistan, Kenya, Lebanon and other crisis points in the world. Her book, like Burnett’s, is a harrowing, emotionally charged account; it focuses attention on how aid is delivered, an issue that has become more pressing, given the promises made at Gleneagles. While both books dwell on the huge burden placed on aid workers, Burnett’s also looks into the wider issue of how aid agencies are perceived by the people they seek to help. “Despite our good intentions,” he writes, they were seen as “no better than foreign intruders”. The legacy of colonialism and current American foreign policy hang over that sentence — and the entire aid issue — like an asphyxiating cloud.

Available at Books First prices of £16.19 (Burnett) and £13.49 on 0870 165 8585

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