What’s in a name?

The phrase that names this blog is a hackneyed one and one that seems to have popped simultaneously and spontaneously into a number of heads at the same time.  It is now a dull commonplace that elicits grunts of acknowledment rather than laughs of revelation which it was designed to do.

It’s been used as a descriptor of all those who toil in ‘Aidland’ the vast global financial, institutional and spiritual infrastructure of those involved in delivering ‘aid’ to people in the ‘developing world’ or ‘global South’. Those people in the blue vests and red or orange hats with their employer’s logo splashed across them whom we see on TV in the immediate wake of a flood, tsunami, war or earthquake.

There is a whole school of research and writing on these people (of whom I am one) and perhaps one day I’ll read some it.  But I am not interested in Aidland, or aid workers here in this piece.  Rather, I’m interested in understanding why, when it came to naming this blog, this phrase jumped instantaneously to mind.

I was born into an actual missionary family in India.  I am an MK, a missionary kid.  I have done some pretty mercenary things in my life and know the temptations of that character.  As for misfit? Aren’t we all?

What has inspired this blog is a frustration with how I make sense of my world. Of my experience as a mid-60s male who has had a privileged life. And there is an urge within me to, in some way, document my journey. Not because it is particularly unique or dramatic but because I have never had the time or space to reflect on it.  To see how and whether and why these three strains of my personality and identity come together. Or don’t. Perhaps they are just frayed loose ends.

I’ve thought of writing a memoir. Perhaps an autobiography. What about a fictionalized life of a former missionary kid turned aid worker called Nate? But all attempts have fizzled. I haven ‘t been able to summon the energy to finish such a project.

But I have been writing all my life.  Short pieces, novels, the first draft of a history book, text books, articles on music, politics, ‘Aidland’ and strange figures of history. I’ve written sitreps and reports on humanitarian disasters, and hundreds of funding proposals.  I’ve translated books from Urdu to English. I’ve edited newsletters. I’ve written thousands of letters (though none in the last 25 years). Writing things down is how I validate myself and express myself.  Some people like to chat.  I write.

I’ve been blogging a long time too. I began in 2010 and since then have launched many blogs mostly on music, but also about photography and memoir. It’s a medium I know and understand and enjoy.  After months of hemming and hawing about whether to join Substack, I’ve decided to remain a blogger.  And use this new blog as a sort of laboratory, factory and think-tank; a messy sangam of the various streams that make up each of our lives.

Rather than a single volume ‘memoir’ this blog fills in as my ‘autobiography’.  Read this and you should get a pretty good idea of who I am and how I got from a missionary hospital in south India to the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. 

Before I leave, let me riff on the triple-barreled phrase that fronts this blog.

How can you tell how long a missionary has been in India?  Notice how they react to fly in their tea.  1-2 years, they grimace and politely push the cup of tea away. 5 years, they delicately pick the fly out and flick it on the floor.  10 years or more, they squeeze the fly of all the tea juices that have entered his drowned body and continue to sip the tea.