Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures) was a valuable complement to the speakers we have been having in class, to broaden my knowledge on the experiences of humanitarian aid workers. Particularly I enjoyed Heidi’s stories the most, and really felt a shift in her character from the beginning to the end of the book. Heidi as introduced is, a thirty year old woman living in New York, working for the UN and stuck in a dull marriage trying to revamp her cyclical lifestyle.
From the beginning we see that Heidi is misfit to her home, after evictions and late payments she is in need of turning her life around. Heidi’s abrupt decision to sign up for a peacekeeping mission would change her life more than her first intention, of monetary reason, and give her drive in a new lifestyle.
Erving Goffman talks about the evolution of self identity for the aid worker, “…any strand of any person’s course through life… the regular sequence of changes that career entails in the person’s self ad in his imagery for judging himself and others.” Heidi’s situation applies to this sequence of changes that her new career will entail, which is going to shape her character and morph her moral career. Arcaro extends on Goffman’s work, and says that an identity “depends on the social context in which we are in”. The social context of her career is unlike New York, and is going to strain more from her, and bring out sides of her that she has yet to see.
Jon Langstrom noted that there are four stages, missionary, mercenary, mystic, and misfit, that are states of being that point along a journey which will anticipate the utility for the moral career concept (J.). The sequence of the changes that Heidi has experienced do not flow exactly like Jon Langstrom laid them out to be, they are almost exactly in reverse.
Heidi’s urgency to turn her life around and make more money as a drive to applying to the peacekeeping mission in Cambodia, shines a light on her stage as a misfit and a bit of a mercenary. Despite her pure efforts in New York, being out in the field of Manhattan helping the homeless, she dove into the opportunity to go to Cambodia to listen to her boss and make money. Upon arrival Heidi’s thoughts rush her head, “This is the first time I am truly alone and dependent on my survival- in this country, hell, in Asia for that matter. It’s exhilarating. Before me is the opportunity to recreate myself”(Postlewait, 29). Here Heidi fully realizes, she is alone, she is misfit, no longer having New York as a home, and not feeling welcomed in Cambodia. Although, her acknowledgement of this as an opportunity of personal growth, automatically implanted a positive feeling in myself about the journey Heidi was about to take on.
For some time Heidi experienced a feeling of exclusion, and felt as she was at a “modeling party wearing the wrong clothes” (Postlewait, 38), similarly to how she felt in her past life in New York. Over some time, she got over this fear of the other people, and got into the work. Heidi now was going through the mystic stage, as she became immersed into her job as a humanitarian aid worker, and the thought of being less impactful off the field, in New York, diminished. Heidi criticized the work of her past life, “I can’t end up back at UN HQ in New York while those two overeducated, overzealous undersexed adolescents get to play save-the-world for God and the American way” (Postlewait), she was fully pledged to service and work on the field.
By the end of the novel, when it is time to leave, Heidi is fully absorbed into the culture of being on the field as a humanitarian aid worker and her mission to better the lives of people around her, she stays on the field even when she could be vulnerable to danger. At first, I recognized this stage in her journey as the missionary stage, where she is a “self styled warrior for truth and light” (Langstrom). Heidi is a warrior as she lets herself be in a dangerous spot, not listening to her commander, and remarks that “I don’t know whether he is concerned for my safety or angry that I doubt his judgement. But it’s too exciting to leave now. I want to stay and see what happens” (Postlewait, 193).
After thinking more into the journey, I begin to see crossovers with stages in the evolution of Heidi’s moral career as an aid worker. In her missionary stage, an indulgent and hardworking humanitarian aid worker, she is also prone to being in the position of a misfit. Because Heidi has become so involved in this one area of her life, it seems she has forgotten about the normalcy she once experienced. As her efforts and actions continue to be pointed more toward humanitarian aid, she is also becoming misfit as she cannot stay forever in the areas of danger, and would not choose to return home to a place where she cannot execute this lifestyle.
Sources:
- Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit. Evil Genius Publishing, 2013. Print.
Cain, Kenneth, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson. Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth. New York: Hyperion, 2004. Print.
Arcaro, Tom. The Moral Career of a Humanitarian Aid Worker. 25 Jan. 2016, blogs.elon.edu/aidworkervoices/?p=414.
4 Comments
I really enjoyed reading your post about Heidi as well as reading about her journey in the book. I definitely agree that her moral career doesn’t fit the stages J. discussed 100%, but that is what makes her story so interesting. I wrote about Ken in my post so it was interesting to see your take on Heidi and compare it to his moral journey. What I took away was that they didn’t really have the same start to their aid worker career–Ken set out to save the world while Heidi didn’t.
I also related Heidi to the four stages of an aid worker. Her story was the most interesting to me because there was an obvious change in her throughout the book. While I do not think she 100% fits all of the stages, she definitely feels like a misfit towards the end of the book when she returns to New York. She does not begin the journey thinking she will save the world.
I wrote about Ken in my blog post, but I also enjoyed Heidi’s story. I agree that her moral career path does not flow in the generic way, and I think you did a good job describing how her’s is different. You had a good use of quotes that also helped with understanding the points that you made.
While we both asserted that Heidi’s moral career went in the opposite direction that J had intended, I think you bring up some really unique points that I hadn’t though of. For instance, you often describe her as a mix of multiple stages which deviates from my own analysis of her, but I do think that you have a lot of good points and that in general it is hard to confine a person to only one category/stage at a time. I would definitely want to ask her about how she would identify herself at the various stages that we saw her at in the book and where she would place herself now.