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The experience of being on mission started with deploying there. This was described as exciting, scary, intimidating and challenging but also gradually moving towards being more familiar and at ease. This easing familiarity was usually linked to peers welcoming, including and informing the participant. Familiarity was also assisted by DevAid’s policy of week-long familiarization visits before the actual real deployment. Once there, some participants connected strongly with their host country whilst others showed little in the way of relating to the country. There was practically no mention of significant personal connections to the people of the country. The work was exciting, empowering, absorbing, stressful and fulfilling. At the same time, there was not much stress connected to one’s personal life since everything was catered for. Finally, coming home was often seen as the difficult part. The difficulty was seldom connected to specific events or security

situations from the duty station (rather a sense of increased stress levels as a result of work, security and other issues from the mission). Instead, a sense of alienation from home, a sense of having changed, of not fitting in back home anymore, of no-one understanding, was seen as the most difficult issue to deal with when coming home. The participants described it as missing the sense of purpose, power, excitement and also intense social cohesion of mission life.

With reference to the comparative lack of engagement with the plight of the mission country as described by half the participants, and also a lack of engagement with the local populace as

indicated by all participants, the increasing bureaucratization of the development world is reported by Thomas: “The general institutional requirements often have little to do with humanitarian action

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that is grounded in solidarity with those affected by conflict” (Thomas, 2008, p237), and also linked to a reduced sense of solidarity with the people one is sent out to assist. This coupled with the rigorous security measures that surrounded the staff during their mission would partially serve to explain this lack of connection between many participants and the mission country. The

international development world has been critiqued (Minion, 2006, Harrel-Bond, 1986) for having little connection to the ones they are supposed to serve, a critique that may be in part supported by this study. It may here be useful to highlight that the results chapter ended with an idiographic exploration of the personalities and motivations of the seven participants, noting commonalities such as the separation between more professionally focused participants as opposed to the more idealistically motivated – there were definitely accounts of care and concern for the mission country from half of the participants. Indeed, Hunt’s (2009) description of humanitarian health care workers resonates with descriptions of participants in this study who spent more time in the field, or had a stronger pathos. The pathos of some participants acted as a supporting factor in that it motivated them. The corresponding lack of pathos, or indeed lack of contact with the local populace, can be seen as unsupportive, as something that stands in the way of motivation and care.

As already touched on above with reference to participants’ views on their families being potentially paradoxically both supportive and not supportive, there is a central theme of difficulty in returning home. This two-sided theme (consisting both of a sense of reduced excitement or intensity, and also a sense of alienation from self and others at home) finds support in some of the literature on international aid workers, again with the qualitative literature being more strongly represented. Thomas (2008, p260) writes:

Similar to the work by Fahey MacDonald et al. (2003), many humanitarians found the challenges of return to be greater than those of departure, especially if field mission communication had been intermittent. The ‘reunion’ appeared to be threatened by unrealistic expectations on transitioning from a field-based culture.

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She also refers to McCreesh’s re-entry syndrome (McCreesh, 2003), a concept that seems to resonate strongly with the experience of the participants of this study. McCreesh identifies similar areas of complaints, such as the initial honeymoon period or euphoria turning into boredom (less exciting life) or alienation (firstly no one understands you at home, secondly you have yourself changed, and the re-exposure to home makes you realize this, hence creating a sort of alienation from yourself). She also offers recommendations that centre on trying to be aware of the situation, as you deploy, during and after the mission. This recommendation also emerged from the interviews of this study in that awareness of potential difficulty in many ways protected against the stress and suffering.

Bjerneld et al (2006) relate the description of coming home as being a ‘large black hole’ (p52) and being connected to a sense of alienation from those that they had left at home. They also mention the flip side – the fear of never coming home, of continually going from mission to mission. This concern of the potential failure of reintegrating the returning humanitarians leading to them returning to their peers in the field is also shared by McCormack, Joseph and Hagger (2009, p113). McFarlane consequently speaks of “positive signs that the importance of psychosocial care programs is gaining recognition and they are being tailored to the specific needs of returned staff” (McFarlane, 2004, p4).

Difficulties in returning home are also well described by existential migrant literature and seem to centre on the ‘us-and-them’ theme as well as the complex notion of ‘home’. The ‘us-and-them’ theme has been detailed above with reference to peer support, whilst the notion of home will be detailed here. Amit-Talai offers an interesting viewpoint on home, seeing it from an expat’s eyes in the Caymans looking to go back to Montreal – “It’s [the return to Montreal] going back to reality” (Amit-Talai, 1998, p41), seeing this reality as something one yearns for yet seemingly impossible to arrive at – reality cannot be found in reality. Madison identifies that “The ubiquitous primordial motif of the ‘hero’s return’ is evoked in many of the accounts given by participants.” (Madison,

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2010, p44) The lack of such a welcome is echoed by the participants of my research. On what seems to me to be on a more profound level, Paul tries to make sense of normality and belonging,

something that is also echoed in Madison’s account “A feeling of not-belonging where everything and everyone says one should belong can result in a lack of confidence that one will belong anywhere.” (Madison, 2010, p53) and “When it comes to returning home, contrary to expatriates’ expectations, the return ‘home’ can be as challenging as another migration to a foreign country. Though this ‘foreign’ country is deeply familiar as well as unexpectedly strange.” (Madison, 2010, p188). Equally, the notion that awareness of impending difficulties upon homecoming would assail these difficulties is supported: “Having an opportunity to explore the deeper existential aspects of experiences abroad might actually result in increased self-understanding for these returnees.” (Madison, 2010, p188). Finally, McCormack, Joseph and Hagger’s (2009) concern that a failure to reintegrate humanitarians would make them forever continue on mission is evocatively captured by Aciman:

“exiles can be supremely mobile, and they can be totally dislodged from their original orbit, but in this jittery state of transience, they are thoroughly stationary – no less stationary than those displaced Europeans perpetually awaiting letters of transit in Casablanca. They are never really in Casablanca, but they are not going either. They are in permanent transience.” (Aciman, 1999, p13).