The Road Less Traveled: A Filipina PT
Shines in the Field of International Humanitarian Work
Reiza Dejito originally intended to review for the NPTE and come to the United States to work as a physical therapist, but life had other plans for her. I never met her in person but I've heard about her from a fellow Zamboanguenia physical therapist who has worked with her in Handicap International's global network. This year, Reiza celebrates ten years as an international humanitarian worker and is currently the Country Director for Handicap International in Bangladesh. Her field work amazes me and I can only live vicariously in the daily adventures that is her story.
BEGINNINGS
I grew up in a mountain city in Negros Oriental, Canlaon City. It’s a small town that was declared a city because of its agricultural income, being the food basket of Negros. I was the eldest of six girls, but grew up with my grandparents. My grandmother was asthmatic, and as an eight-year-old kid, I have always wanted to be a doctor so I can find a cure for my grandmother’s ailment. At eight years of age, I was already reading medical and herbal books and would forage for herbs and weeds in our backyard and our elementary school garden for my experiments. I would boil weeds and let my grandma take them, hoping I would someday find a cure. This is the reason why I took up physical therapy in college. So I could become a doctor.
I came from a family of educators and high achievers, so I was expected to top in class all the time and was often scolded for coming in second sometimes. I finished elementary school in my hometown as valedictorian, and I went on to graduate from Silliman University High School in Dumaguete City with honors. In university, as a physical therapy student, I didn’t graduate with honors but it was the years of my life when I truly enjoyed school life without the pressure of coming in first.
After I graduated in Silliman, I enrolled in post-graduate studies and chose to study a masters degree in public health through distance learning, but due to the high demands of my work, I never got around to graduating. After managing programs in crisis and post-crisis settings, I realized the most appropriate post-graduate course for me would be Masters in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies, which I’m planning to enroll in late this year or early next year.
CHALLENGING WORK
I am currently country director for Handicap International (since renamed to Humanity and Inclusion) in Bangladesh. I recently took over stewardship of this mission in late March 2017. Before then, I was country director for Handicap International in South Sudan for 16 months. As a country director, I hold the highest management position for our organization in the mission country, and the most responsibilities. I provide strategic vision, leadership, oversee the implementation of the country strategy and the organization’s policies, develop projects and conduct fundraising to expand the country’s portfolio. I also represent the organization in meetings with government authorities, donors, partners, and stakeholders. At the same time, I am the overall in-charge of financial management of the program, ensuring that funds are expended properly and in a timely manner. I am also responsible for the organization’s security management, ensuring the safety and security of staff and assets. Overall, I make sure that the organization is running smoothly and efficiently, troubleshooting problems and motivating teams as I go along.
SEEDS TO A LIFE OF SERVING OTHERS
I started my international aid work as a volunteer for VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) in Ethiopia for 22 months. I was working then as a physical therapist trainer, developing the capacities of local physical therapists. At that time, I was invited by Handicap International (HI) to make a presentation about a technical topic at a workshop. After the session, one of the technical advisers of HI approached me and encouraged me to apply for a position in HI. I did apply for a position in Ethiopia, but they offered me a project management post in South Sudan. I have never been a project manager before that, so it was quite daunting for me but since the project has something to do with providing physical rehabilitation to survivors of landmines and explosive remnants of war, I took the challenge. I stayed in South Sudan for 18 months before accepting a job (still with HI) as field coordinator in, at that time, the biggest refugee complex in the world, Dadaab, in Kenya where I worked for 18 months before I was promoted to operational coordinator for refugee affairs for the regional programme covering Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and Somalia. After 14 months, I then went on to become the country director in South Sudan, and later in Bangladesh.
BEGINNINGS
I grew up in a mountain city in Negros Oriental, Canlaon City. It’s a small town that was declared a city because of its agricultural income, being the food basket of Negros. I was the eldest of six girls, but grew up with my grandparents. My grandmother was asthmatic, and as an eight-year-old kid, I have always wanted to be a doctor so I can find a cure for my grandmother’s ailment. At eight years of age, I was already reading medical and herbal books and would forage for herbs and weeds in our backyard and our elementary school garden for my experiments. I would boil weeds and let my grandma take them, hoping I would someday find a cure. This is the reason why I took up physical therapy in college. So I could become a doctor.
I came from a family of educators and high achievers, so I was expected to top in class all the time and was often scolded for coming in second sometimes. I finished elementary school in my hometown as valedictorian, and I went on to graduate from Silliman University High School in Dumaguete City with honors. In university, as a physical therapy student, I didn’t graduate with honors but it was the years of my life when I truly enjoyed school life without the pressure of coming in first.
After I graduated in Silliman, I enrolled in post-graduate studies and chose to study a masters degree in public health through distance learning, but due to the high demands of my work, I never got around to graduating. After managing programs in crisis and post-crisis settings, I realized the most appropriate post-graduate course for me would be Masters in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies, which I’m planning to enroll in late this year or early next year.
CHALLENGING WORK
I am currently country director for Handicap International (since renamed to Humanity and Inclusion) in Bangladesh. I recently took over stewardship of this mission in late March 2017. Before then, I was country director for Handicap International in South Sudan for 16 months. As a country director, I hold the highest management position for our organization in the mission country, and the most responsibilities. I provide strategic vision, leadership, oversee the implementation of the country strategy and the organization’s policies, develop projects and conduct fundraising to expand the country’s portfolio. I also represent the organization in meetings with government authorities, donors, partners, and stakeholders. At the same time, I am the overall in-charge of financial management of the program, ensuring that funds are expended properly and in a timely manner. I am also responsible for the organization’s security management, ensuring the safety and security of staff and assets. Overall, I make sure that the organization is running smoothly and efficiently, troubleshooting problems and motivating teams as I go along.
SEEDS TO A LIFE OF SERVING OTHERS
I started my international aid work as a volunteer for VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) in Ethiopia for 22 months. I was working then as a physical therapist trainer, developing the capacities of local physical therapists. At that time, I was invited by Handicap International (HI) to make a presentation about a technical topic at a workshop. After the session, one of the technical advisers of HI approached me and encouraged me to apply for a position in HI. I did apply for a position in Ethiopia, but they offered me a project management post in South Sudan. I have never been a project manager before that, so it was quite daunting for me but since the project has something to do with providing physical rehabilitation to survivors of landmines and explosive remnants of war, I took the challenge. I stayed in South Sudan for 18 months before accepting a job (still with HI) as field coordinator in, at that time, the biggest refugee complex in the world, Dadaab, in Kenya where I worked for 18 months before I was promoted to operational coordinator for refugee affairs for the regional programme covering Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and Somalia. After 14 months, I then went on to become the country director in South Sudan, and later in Bangladesh.
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Photo taken in Ethiopia in 2009 with Physical Therapy students during their practicum. Reiza's main role in this mission was to train the already-graduated PTs on clinical work. |
UNFORGETTABLE MEMORIES
Humanitarian work especially in crisis and post-crisis settings is not for the faint of heart. I have with me a repository of stories but the one experience that haunts me up to this day (and what I could say was also a turning point in my professional and personal life) was when violence broke out in Juba, the capital of war-torn South Sudan from July 9-12, 2016. I was based in Juba at that time, managing around 17 expatriate staff from different countries and around 40 national staff. When the fighting broke out, we had to hibernate for days in our guesthouse, stop our operations, as we monitored the situation. During these scary times, we heard nonstop shelling, gunships hovering above us and, on two occasions, mortars were fired within the vicinity of our guesthouse. We had to ration food and water as we didn’t know how long the siege would last or if there was a possibility of getting out of the country as the airport and all points of entry were controlled by the rebels. During that ordeal, in another compound, a different group of humanitarian workers were attacked by soldiers and many of the women were raped. We finally managed to be evacuated out of the country on the fifth day following a ceasefire, but not without physical, emotional, and psychological trauma. Some of us had to go through medical checks and all of us had to undergo psychosocial counselling. Looking back, I realized the sexual assault perpetrated against our fellow humanitarian workers could have happened to us as well, and if it did, we would not have survived the ordeal. Although I had been through a number of security trainings, we would have managed the crisis better if we had a security management specialist in the team. We are talking about lives here, and security management should be taken seriously.
FIELD SKILLS NEEDED
While technical skills (project management, financial management, logistics, physical therapy in my case) are important, the most critical thing to survive in this kind of work is people management. You have to know how to manage and constantly motivate inter-disciplinary and multi-cultural teams, so they can perform efficiently and effectively and work in a collaborative way in a highly stressful environment. Diplomacy is also key as we deal with government authorities all the time, sometimes armed groups, and mostly disgruntled beneficiaries. We often learn new things on the job. As an allied health professional, I also need to learn about other sectors like livelihoods, water and sanitation, child protection, gender-based violence, mental health and psychosocial support, emergency response, disaster risk management, among others, in order to manage programs well. So we have to stay on top of our game all the time.
MANAGING STRESS
There is no downtime in humanitarian work. We often work an average of 16 hours per day 7 days a week, so it takes a toll on our social life and our health. One of the biggest stress factors is falling sick on the field, where we don’t have access to proper medical facilities. In my years working in the field, I had been medically evacuated/airlifted to the nearest country with proper hospitals for treatment. I have had all sorts of tropical diseases such as malaria, typhoid, schistosomiasis, giardiasis, and other diseases I only read in books when I was a student. When one gets sick, the work piles up and we deal with a lot of backlog when we return to work so most of the time, most humanitarian workers wait until the last minute to get medically checked. I’ve never been big on diet and exercise but due to my work, I started to avoid red meat, ate more fruits and veggies, never skipped breakfast, and I also started to do yoga and regular aerobic exercise. It also helped that I undergo psychosocial counselling on a regular basis.
PASSION
Actually knowing that we are saving lives and having an impact on the lives and future of the people we help keeps me going. Being a humanitarian worker has made me not only stronger, but also more tolerant with people’s differences, peculiarities, and beliefs. Being in this line of work makes me a perpetual student. Every day, I am learning new things about myself, about the world, about the people around us. I would like to retire knowing that somebody’s life was made better because of me.
THE ROHINGYA CHALLENGE
While I was in Bangladesh, the Rohingya crisis hit world news headlines. It is the fastest developing crisis in the world, and combined resources of the Bangladesh government, the UN and international agencies are not enough to meet the lifesaving needs of the population. The work is huge and exhausting. I got sick and had to rest for a month as we were working nonstop in the first phase of the emergency, even on weekends. The hardest thing is hearing harrowing stories of beneficiaries who fled violence in Myanmar. These people report seeing their families killed and their houses burnt in front of their eyes. They trek for days clutching a few possessions, and with little food and water to reach the border. They have suffered so much trauma and pain, and you can't help it affecting you.
FUTURE PLANS
I am happy and satisfied with my professional life now. I am living my dream of travelling all over the world and contributing to improving people’s lives in my own little ways. However, when I can no longer throw myself in warzones, I would like to be a photographer or a documentary filmmaker someday.
How did your degree in Physical Therapy help you adjust to the demands of humanitarian work?
Physical Therapy is a dynamic profession where we are constantly learning and also allows us to think critically and solve problems. Having these skills have definitely helped me in my work. As I am also working for an organization that helps persons with disabilities, my technical knowledge in physical rehabilitation has given me an added advantage.
REFLECTIONS AND LESSONS
What did you learn from the people you work with in some of your projects?
I’ve learned that the key to be successful is to learn how to accept each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and work together to fill each other’s gaps. We are all interdependent. In our line of work, no is better than the other. There will be always someone who has better skills than you in one area, but then you are also better in another. I can say that I have learned to work in complementarity. My previous managers and mentors have also taught me that being a leader is not a popularity contest. We are not here to make friends or to make people like us. Sometimes, we have to make the most difficult decisions, even if it means falling out with one or two people, but then gaining the trust and respect of the majority. I can’t really say what others have learned from me, but as a manager, I have always tried to be seen as a colleague, not as a boss, and I strive to be fair as much as possible.
INSPIRATION AND ADVICE
I have so many high-profile people I look up to, big names in the humanitarian world and kick-ass philanthropists, but my family inspires me the most. They have always been there to support me despite the unpopular decision I made to choose the erratic life of a humanitarian worker over a stable career in the US as a physical therapist.
For Filipino PTs who want to take that leap of faith, I say try to volunteer first in a country that is outside of your comfort zone to know yourself better and to see if this kind of work is something you would want to do as a lifetime career. Ask yourself if you are willing to give up not only life’s little comforts but also relationships and friends for this life. It can often become lonely, and many humanitarian workers suffer from mental and emotional distress. Make sure that you have a strong support system, who will understand and support you all the way. Lastly, if you think international aid work is for you, go for it, don’t let anything stop you. It’s a crazy adventure but all worth it in the end.
HOPEFUL FOR WHAT'S COMING
I look forward to coming back home to the Philippines someday and start my own NGO, as a way of giving back to the community that has molded me to become what I am now. I believe physical therapists can contribute a lot in development and humanitarian work. In emergency response especially following conflict or disaster, physical therapists can help save lives and improve people’s functional capacities through early rehabilitation. Injuries sustained during conflict and disasters often lead to complications which may result to long-term disability and even mortality and morbidity. Physical therapists can help prevent these negative outcomes and help improve the quality of lives of people affected by crises.
NOTE: Aside from humanitarian work, Reiza runs an award-winning travel blog: http://www.wander-if-you-must.com/
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Photos above taken during field visits to Handicap Intl's beneficiaries in a remote village in South Sudan.