Spaces of Aid, How Cars, Compounds and Hotels Shape Humanitarianism

When I was a consultant for the German Red Cross in former Yugoslavia we would pass our time between visits to donors and beneficiaries with a silly game: each of us three consultants would look out of our white jeep window and count the other jeeps on the road. Red Cross or UN jeeps counted five points, with any other logo three points and without logo, indicating temporary rentals or ad hoc buys by small and poor NGOs, one point. Whoever had the most points had to pay the first round (of usually several) at the hotel bar in the evening. On the well-paved roads of former Yugoslavia it was, in fact, not very easy to spot all white jeeps, for traffic could be hell in Sarajevo, Belgrade or Pristina and if it was not, cars went really fast. Yet it was for us first-time consultants a way of dealing with the absurdity of driving in four-wheel drive SUVs on streets that were in an excellent state just to fulfil some German security regulations and to be recognized as foreign aid workers.