52 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL by our partners for every activity funded by USAID and provided an aggregate analysis report to Congress. It was an intensive, robust workflow process. Working collaboratively and holding each other accountable were key to our success. In early 2025, this process were cut short and terminated by stop-work orders. Within a week of the issuance of the stop-work orders, the system of record disappeared, and the reporting and review machine came to a halt. Our data disappeared before our eyes. There is no longer a system of record, no accountability for taxpayer dollars. This led to a waste of funds and loss of staff capacity implementing tools to collect data in the field for transfer to D.C. The mechanism for collecting this data—data that tells our stories, the stories of the communities we served, and shares demonstrated impacts of our activities on the ground—is gone. What concerns me most about this disappearing data is that it not only represents the work of USAID but also the people of USAID. Our program participants—farmers, women, children, and small businesses—along with the partnerships we built are no longer visible. And when you’re not seen, you’re not heard. It is important for Americans to understand that what occurred in the first half of this year is wrong. These actions have consequences, and the data we use to tell stories of the communities we serve matter. These stories amplify and encourage good will and positive sentiments toward the U.S. Without them, our national security is at risk. —Anjali Richards Former USAID Foreign Service Limited employee I Have Known People MONROVIA, LIBERIA I have dinner with a Liberian midwife friend. We eat barracuda, fufu, and fried plantains. I write about the food because it is easier than sharing the conversation. We talk about our common calling as midwives—we who sit with women through hard labor, clasping their hands, holding their gaze, bearing witness to their journey. She tells me about her work as a midwife through the 14-year civil war. Brutal beheadings, beatings, rapes. Terror and mistrust. Utter fear. Her 3-year-old daughter fled the country with her father, who resettled in Minnesota. She hasn’t seen her daughter since. That was more than 12 years ago. The war waged on, with unending fighting, terror, destruction. And still babies were born. She did her best to attend to women with dignity in disaster. Dodging bombs to cower in the basement of Redemption Hospital, welcoming babies and fending off hemorrhage, rarely with the necessary supplies. She survived. Fifteen years later, my midwife friend attended mothers through the Ebola pandemic in the same hospital. Even with the fear of infection, women kept coming, and midwives kept working. Many new mothers bled to death. Not from Ebola but from postpartum hemorrhage. She did what she could, with no drugs, no surgeons, no help. There were 16 midwives in her hospital. Ten of them died of Ebola. She survived. As she shares her stories, I have no words. So I touch her arm silently. She catches my gaze and takes my hand, saying gratefully: “You are a midwife sister. You understand.” But the thing is, I don't understand. I can’t understand. It hadn’t happened to my own friends or colleagues, to my family. Some things are just too big to fathom. But I can hold her gaze, clasp her hand, and bear witness to her journey. We are midwives. BERTOUA, CAMEROON Today I am greeted by a slight waif of a girl, leaning against the wall with her makeshift IV pole, hovering behind the matron in curiosity as we review clinic records. When she sways slightly, the matron heaves herself up with lightning speed, catching the girl on her way to the ground. I see it all too slowly to respond. The matron gives a wry smile: “You learn quickly when it happens all around you.” She helps carry the unconscious child back to bed, ensuring the IV line hasn’t been pulled out. The girl had had a home abortion. She hemorrhaged, and now she is septic—a classic case study from this part of the world. The Catholic matron thinks abortion should be legal. Not because she believes in abortions, but because she is tired of hemorrhage, sepsis, and young mothers dying in her care. If this were the United States, I would say this girl will be fine. We would treat her with
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