Deep Field (Tom Bamforth, Hardie Grant)

Tom Bamforth is an Australian professional humanitarian aid worker who has worked in many of the world’s most challenging locations, including Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, involved in humanitarian catastrophes caused both by war and natural disasters. His book is sobering and, by and large, depressing as he describes not just the huge challenges he and his colleagues face in trying to improve the lives and prospects of their charges, but the overwhelming obstacles they face: competing aid organisations with self-serving agendas; incompetent or corrupt bureaucracies; inappropriate supplies (one example—porous desert tents sent to an area of tropical rains); and many more such frustrations. We are told of women who must ride six hours by donkey to obtain water; of the extraordinarily complex, volatile issues in the Darfur region; of the total devastation of parts of Tonga in the last tsunami; and more. Bamforth includes potted histories of major aid organisations, their agendas and motivations. World Vision, Red Cross, Salvation Army, Medecins Sans Frontieres, among others, are briefly and critically assessed in terms of their effectiveness in the field. The only light note comes when the author travels to Kazan, in Russia, for a spell of teaching. The rest is a passionate account of small successes against overwhelming odds.

Max Oliver has just retired from the book trade after 55 years

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Category: Reviews