James ‘Jim’ Goggin has worked with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for over half of its existence and so it is only fitting that his varied and colourful career reflects the wide range of USAID.
With USAID celebrating its 50th anniversary on Thursday, Goggin, USAID’s Mission Director in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, took the time out to talk to EASY magazine about how he has spent nearly three decades traversing the world to help others.
His career with USAID was actually his second after a first career in academia. He was working as an economist and instructor at the University of Florida when he saw an ad for USAID.
“I had previously been accepted into the Foreign Service of the US Department of State but the final hiring process was taking a very long time, and anyway development was what I really wanted to do,” he related.
He was hired in September 1982 and two-and- a-half years after that, he set off on his first overseas assignment, leaving wintry Washington D.C. in the middle of a snowstorm in January 1985 for Kenya.
Since then, the hiking enthusiast has spent 26 consecutive years criss-crossing the globe in the employ of America’s most visible and well-known aid and development agency. Over the years, he has been posted in Kenya, Niger, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iraq and Azerbaijan, before finally arriving in Barbados for what would be his last and longest tour.
The diversity of his postings is matched only by the colourfulness of some of his experiences.
He’s been in a high speed car chase in Cairo, pursued “at gunpoint by men in a Mercedes down a highway” while “weaving in and out of traffic to escape”.
It wasn’t his last close shave either. He was also “ambushed by three insurgents firing assault rifles at our vehicle in northern Iraq”, but added wryly “they missed”.
He’s also travelled across the Sahara desert in Niger to check on the food supplies in remote villages there, a duty that involved “sometimes camping out or sitting in village councils surrounded by tribesmen, drinking an unknown liquid from a carved-out gourd”.
After so many years abroad, Goggin admits it will be strange for him and his wife to return ‘home’ to the United States (US) next year. He noted that in the beginning, alienation from the familiarity of US culture and current events was the main drawback to a job he otherwise found “invigorating”.
“The only downside of the Foreign Service career for me has been the long removal from my home country and culture. It used to be much harder before the Internet and satellite TV. In the 1980s it was more difficult to maintain that critical linkage with my home country,” he explained, adding: “It will be interesting to learn to live in the US again after being abroad for 26 consecutive years.”
One of the consistently high points of his quarter century abroad has been the people he has worked with.
“The greatest pleasure has been working with so many intelligent, dedicated, and talented people in all of these countries and across almost three decades. I am continually amazed and humbled by the abilities and dedication of my colleagues in USAID, the embassies, but especially among our national partners in each country. This has continued to inspire me to do my best at all opportunities,” said Goggin, adding: “My fondest memories will always be of them.”
Though approaching retirement next year, he is still as enthused and passionate as ever about USAID’s work and its impact on local communities.
“My best experiences all involved getting good work done, making important or useful things happen in the lives of people – which is why I chose this career so long ago,” he mused. As he listed examples of some of his best work, the vast scope of his career and that of USAID’s global mission, became clear.
“Helping Alexandria, Egypt instal a new system for handling their mountains of municipal solid waste that was destroying the beauty of ‘the Pearl of the Mediterranean’. Helping the citizens of small and remote villages in Uzbekistan learn to work together to bring simple but great modern conveniences to their villages, like natural gas for cooking.
“Helping to build democracy and free elections in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Here in the Caribbean my greatest joy continues to be our projects working with young people who need a chance to re-energize their lives,” he stated.
It is these projects that have given him pride that fifty years after President John F. Kennedy signed USAID into being, the agency is still changing lives around the world.
“I think that it’s great the USAID continues to do its important work for a half-century now. And I am very proud that I’ve been part of the organization for more than half of its life!”