Trigger Points

 We have mentioned before that security is a significant concern here.  In case that has caused you to wonder how we live in this kind of context, I thought I would write this short post. 

Security is often associated with feelings, when really, emotions can betray you from the actual facts on the ground.  A person’s general mood can affect how ‘secure’ they feel, and that affects the decisions they make.  For that reason it’s important that security is measured against more solid, measurable indicators.  Our organization’s leadership has called on us to write a list of “trigger points”.  Trigger points are the indicators that, if seen or known to occur, make the decision for us: it’s time to evacuate. 

Last year when a security incident caused the relocation of the Community Development work, our organization sent leadership and experts in to help our team write their first trigger points.  It’s a new year now, and the situation is different, and demands a review and revision of our trigger points.  It’s a good exercise really, to sort out fact from feeling, wise counsel from assumption. 

Some of our trigger points are:

-If the government no longer wants us working here.

-If communities are no longer requesting our work.

-If communities are not willing to guarantee the safety of our local staff.

-If our local staff refuse or are restricted by local leaders from travel more than 2 weeks.

-If us foreigners are unable (by judgment of security agencies) to make field visits for more than 1 month.

I would imagine that our friends and families have a wide range of ideas of what it looks like here and what it must be like to live in a county at war.  You’ll notice that none of our trigger points talk about actual violence or proximity of warfare, instead our points are more based on relationships.  This is because in this culture, in this type of conflict, most of the locals can see bad things coming in the distance, and they change the way they relate to outsiders because of that.  Our best forecast for security might be closely watching how our interactions are going..

I hope that this list will arrest some of the concerns that we might become boiled frogs here.  If the majority of these trigger points are happening, the decision is made and there’s no need to second-guess or linger, it’s time to get out.

Writing our own trigger points is a good way to keep our security on the forefront, but not let anxiety get the best of us.  Once our periodic trigger points are set, we watch the relationships around them, be smart with how we conduct ourselves in public, but beyond that, we can relax and enjoy the little things like a growing baby boy, a flourishing greenhouse, and roasted chicken– highlights of my day!