A job like any other

This may come as a shock to you ripped-jeansed, faded-t-shirted, dreadlocked “alternative”, but development work is not a mission, it’s not a calling, nor a vocation; it’s just a job. A job you choose because you like it, because you are passionate about it, because you believe in it, or maybe because you can make good money in development careers, because you’re looking for adventure or want to see the world, because it’s varied and offers lots of opportunities for growth and change throughout your career.
As the daughter of two doctors who’ve explained to me and my brothers and to others, endless times, that being a doctor is no mission, it’s just a job, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised to find myself in the same situation: having to explain over and over, that development work is, also, a job like any other.
Here is the risk to fall in the typical attitude of many professionals: thinking that their own profession is the morally highest, most challenging, and most important in society. (Last year I had a flatmate who was an architect and firmly believed in the superiority of architecture over any other discipline or work. One evening I met a few of his colleagues and asked them if they shared this view, to which they answered: “Do you know how many architects it takes to change a light bulb?”—“I don’t know…”—“Just one, he stands holding the light bulb and waits for the world to turn under him”…please apply to the profession of your choice).
What I’m trying to say is: I like my job (most of the time, and I’m lucky), I believe in people (I can’t imagine doing any type of social work well if you don’t), I try to work as best I can and I am committed to what I do. And I see the exact SAME passion and commitment in my brother Stefano, studying and working in finance (investment banking the new “mission”?), and in my brother Lorenzo, the future Architect (but then we know architects…). We are all so into our “fields” that we spend endless afternoons with friends discussing development/finance/architecture, we read about anything related to our field, we find out about prominent people in the profession and how they work, we apply our interests and knowledge to the reality around us all the time. And there is a morality in this, which is not social work is moral while the private sector is immoral (imagine a world without businesses). Simply, everyone has the moral duty to do their job to the best of their abilities—and the more life hands you, the more you have the responsibility to give back, by developing and cultivating your talents and passions and applying them in society (in this respect my brothers and I have lots to give back).
But let me move away from talking about my brothers, you might think that my family sample is distorted by genetics of upbringing. I remember countless conversations in London in which my friend Fabiana, who studied development and worked in Benin and Burkina Faso (compared to Africa, work in Latin America is a joke), tried to convince people that development is a job like any other. Most of the time she failed. People often think they’re complimenting us development workers, telling us our job stands on a higher moral ground than the baker or the lawyer…but actually they’re making our life harder. When people tell me development work is a mission and a good development worker has a very different approach to work than a good business person or chef, they often imply a good development worker should sacrifice his/her life for their job. They also imply they should not care about money, make up, prestige, high-speed internet, wearing clean clothes/high heels/jewelry. I have lived in a house with no running water and showered out of a bucket, I have lived in a house with people with whom I had no common languages and tried to learn their language, I have lived in houses where we ate the same (deep-fried, over-sugared) staple foods every day, where we drank dirty water and washed our clothes in a stone sink with one cup of water and hung them on barbed wire to dry, houses where if it had been my life, as a woman, I would have been confined to the cooking-and-cleaning and attending-to-the-men. Now (in Cusco) I live in a gorgeous 3-floor house with hot showers, high-speed internet and a washing machine, I wear make-up and blow-dry my hair. Am I doing my job any worse than I was when my living conditions were more basic? Or would I do a better job if I didn’t have those comforts? Or am I in the wrong sector because I enjoy wearing skirts and talking to my family on skype every few days?
(Just in case you’re wondering, I’m not doubting myself, the answer to all these questions is: definitely not).
Most the people who really sacrifice their life to development work, living in absolute poverty and giving up all earthly possessions, are religious missionaries (hence the mission—calling—to live a certain type of life). I always think about the priest in City of Joy who goes to live with the poor in a slum in Calcutta, or Alex Zanotelli, an Italian missionary priest who lived and worked in slums in Nairobi for 12 years (and wrote a great book titled “Korogocho”). I admire and respect their work, but development workers are no missionary priests. At night they like to go out and invest $5 in a dinner and drink, thus contributing to the economy of the country where they are more than if they starved in a slum.