#4: This Is How You Burnout

Or: The Devil Wears Ankara

Act I: Foot in the Door

The first battle is getting your foot in the door.

From the moment in elementary school you decide you want to live in New York City and work at the United Nations, you are assiduous. You win Model UN competitions in Midwest America and in Munich. You get a B.A. in International Relations. You study French at the Sorbonne. You focus your Juris Doctor degree on International Human Rights Law. You earn a spot on an International Law Journal. You secure an internship at the UN.

Accessing the world of global development requires privilege—your privilege is created by a mix of your mother’s sacrifice, your community’s support, and your hard work. Your church supports your tuition. Your good grades earn scholarships. A mentor from the Black Law Students Association shows you how to avoid getting your résumé stuck in a black hole for a prestigious D.C. internship. A family friend lets you stay at her house during another unpaid internship. Your mother sells her gold to help you study in Europe, and to help you move to NYC.

But when you enter the job market looking for work that will actually pay you, you hit a brick wall. Real life isn’t like the ivory tower. In school, if you work hard, you pass the exams—not so in real life. You realize you need the kinds of connections your peers with parents who work at the World Bank/UN/IMF/Some International NGO/Some Embassy have. You probably need a little luck, too. You have neither.

And thus begins your first cycle of hustling. You pound pavement. You apply for hundreds of jobs. You go to networking events and follow up with contacts made on LinkedIn—including one man who invites you to the UN HQ lounge… He says he can help—then places his hand on your thigh.

Your mother prays and fasts and hounds every possible connection, no matter the degrees of separation. You take low-paying contract work. While your peers make six figures in prestigious D.C. government jobs and fancy Manhattan law firms, you sleep on the couch in your friend’s basement apartment in Queens. It is a humbling experience.

But amidst the shame you feel, you are sustained by a spark—the glimmers you’ve experienced of the global development world. Like the time you facilitated on-the-ground humanitarian work in South Sudan with the country’s first lady; and the other time you represented Nigeria at the UN in Geneva. It is that spark that sustains you, until a small door cracks open.

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Act II: Crabs in the Barrel

The farther back you pull a slingshot, the farther your rock will go—leaving NYC feels like several steps back, but you tell yourself this after several prospects tell you that you need more “local” experience. It is not lost on you that, admin and operational roles aside, most of the NGOs you interview at have mostly white teams in their New York and D.C. offices—their “diversity” is on “the continent.” So, the continent is where you go.

Whether in the stifling heat of a refugee camp or in the air-conditioned national office of a multinational NGO, you are a crab in a barrel where the fights always revolve around the same three questions:

1. Who will get to attend the international conference?

2. Who will get the contract/grant?

3. Who will get the platform?

You meet all sorts of crabs in the barrel. Under the white gaze of the global development system, stories of suffering move dollars—so there are people who have learned to trade on their trauma and commodify their identities. For many of these people, the bulk of the work becomes crafting glossy websites and perfecting panel-ready soundbites. It’s a pyramid scheme of sorts: one fellowship begets another, one stage leads to the next—and suddenly one questionable community project becomes a grand tale of local impact, and titles like “activist” become appendages to the names of people who started out just wanting per diems.

While expertise and professional experience are the price of admission in the West, “lived experience” is valuable currency in the barrel—as is youth. Youth is as valuable in the barrel as it is in the entertainment industry—there’s always one Young Global Leader/Voice opportunity on the horizon. The problem is, while there may be enough space for all birds to fly in the sky in proverbial worlds, there are often only a few spots for local bodies in the pragmatic, global development world.

All of this is invaluable learning for you. But you are not just an innocent bystander in the barrel—you are clawing your way out too. The only difference? Your foreign credentials and dual nationality make you a big fish in a small sea. You know how to shape-shift and code-switch. You know when to play up your Nigerian-ness and when to play up your American-ness… you know which accent to turn on and where. This fluency and fluidity allows you to move through the barrel differently. You’re a hustler, too. A hustler with pedigree and a CV—but a hustler, nonetheless.

Your most shocking revelation in the barrel, though, is not the scams and schemes of it all—it is this: the devil wears ankara. When an African woman you admire paves the way for a big break, you don’t want to disappoint her. But in a bid to impress her, you anger her. You inadvertently violate Rule #1 of the 48 Laws of Power: never outshine the master. Her bullying breaks your heart. There will forever be a before and after her in your professional plot. But not all deaths are deserving of good grief.

Through her, you learn the arts of documentation and self-preservation. It is your first pet-to-threat cycle—a cycle you will navigate more than once. She may have killed your naiveté, but she doesn’t kill your spark. In fact, somewhere between marching on the streets for maternal health, writing reports about food security, and lobbying in government offices for education reform—that spark becomes a flame.

A flame that finally, finally, springboards you to the global office of an international NGO in a senior, full-time, paid position.

Finally, one day you are packing your bags to leave the developing world. Finally, you’ve attained the global part of global development…

To Be Continued…