52 reasons not to date an aid worker

1. They think everyone’s been to Africa enough times to discuss which are the best and worst airports.
   
2. They don’t consider you’ve been to a place unless you had to rent an apartment and pay utilities.
3. They think the 11pm news is talking about them.
4. They think they understand third-world problems better than the experts or the people actually living in those third-world countries.
5. They think five years is a long-term commitment.
6. They think malaria and dengue are perfectly acceptable diseases for children to be exposed to.
7. They’ve heard gun shots, and are not afraid to tell you or your parents the story.
8. They’ll try to cook you black and white pasta, with zebra meat instead of squid, and complain if they can’t find it in the market.
9. They’ve eaten snake or crocodile, or both.
10. They will celebrate strange holidays like chung beng and expect you to know what they are talking about.
11. They’ll constantly be comparing your home town with their last destination.
    
12. It doesn’t matter how hot it gets, they’ve had worse and are not afraid to tell you the story.
13. They think having parasites is normal and a perfectly acceptable topic of conversation at dinner.
14. They blog.
    
15. If you complain about your internet breaking down they’ll remind you that children in Africa have to walk for miles just to get water.
16. If you ever have relationship issues they will do a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).
17. They choose furniture by weight and how easy it is to dismantle.
18. They think being apart for weeks on a regular basis is normal.
19. They are strange, or at least like to think they are.
20. There are as many of them as the poor people that they are trying to help.
21. All conversations lead to a time when they were in ….
22. They drink and eat all kinds of weird shit just because.
23. They are always suspicious of how real or committed other aid workers are.
24. They come out last in the movies because they are trying to recover from the emotional shock.
25. They can’t change a light bulb without appointing a committee and a sub-committee.
26. Tableware is always ethnic and not always easily recognisable.
27. They will question the Fairtrade claims of your coffee.
28. You will have to hear the origin and story of every piece of original art work in their home.
29. They can’t give birth to more than one child in the same continent.
30. Will randomly thank you in Kiswahili or Khmer, and then attempt to apologise, in Kiswahili or Khmer.
31. They read books by other aid workers.
32. They do not know how to add and subtract, but can draft a 40-page document between the main and the dessert, which will make no sense to anyone other than another aid worker.
33. They have silver card memberships and points to airlines you or the airport authority have never heard of, and expect you to use these for your joint holidays.
34. They idolise people who nobody knows and speak of them as if they were colleagues.
35. They take pictures almost daily and expect you to be interested in them.
36. They ask your opinion about everything but they do whatever they want.
37. Everything can be justified, even if it contradicts a previous justification or logic.
38. They never heard of Excel, and are pretty convinced it does not actually exist.
39. When arguing, you will be nicknamed after some dictator you never heard of before, and won’t be able to complain without having to put up with a condescending “What do you mean you don’t know who he is?”They will avoid fancy shoes because their feet are accustomed to feeling free and dealing with the rough terrain.
40. They are writing a memoir and you are likely to be included, how is yet to be determined.
41. They keep an emergency bag in case they have to leave the country with 15 minutes’ notice.
42. They listen to music you have never heard of.
43. They can’t cook a normal dish, they always have to experiment with new ingredients they brought from their last trip.
44. They do yoga and meditate, but the real kind.
45. They will attempt to read rare books of traditional indigenous tales to your children or your nephews, in the original language.
46. They’ve experienced spiritual rebirth in Asia.
47. You will never understand their gifts.
48. They see ordinary objects and laugh.
49. You can’t watch a movie with them because they will inevitably compare the movie with the real thing.
50. They are always sleepy because they work 24/7 and are regularly jet lagged.
51. When together, instead of competing over who has the best car they’ll compete over who’s been to the worst place.

Angélica Arbulu has been a humanitarian for over 12 years. She blogs about juggling humanitarian work with family life (www.onmotherhoodandsanity.blogspot.com) and is currently writing a book about gender identity.

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