Background
He grew up in Andover, Massachusetts and graduated from Northfield Mountain. Hermon in 1973.
He grew up in Andover, Massachusetts and graduated from Northfield Mountain. Hermon in 1973.
As an undergraduate he attended Hartwick College in Oneonta, New New York
His book, about his experiences in Somalia, The Road to Hell, was called "the seminal critique of foreign aid" by The New Yorker. Maren joined the Peace Corps after college and served for two years teaching at a secondary school in rural Kenya. He then spent a year with Catholic Relief Services in Kenya where he ran the organization"s food-for-work program
In 1981, he worked for the United States Agency for International Development (United States Agency for International Development)in Somalia, serving as a food assessment specialist on the Somali border with Ethiopia.
Maren returned to the United States in 1982 and attended Columbia University"s School of International and Public Affairs, earning a master"s degree in 1984. At the same time he worked for the now discontinued Africa Report Magazine as an assistant editors
Maren published articles about Africa in The Nation, The New York Times, Harpers, the Village Voice, and other publications. His work centered on war and famine and the culpability of aid organizations.
He was highly critical of journalists who took their world view of Africa from aid organizations.
As he wrote in Harper"s magazine, Because reporters are as dependent on aid organizations as the organizations are on them. lieutenant would have been impossible, for example, for the press to cover Somalia without the assistance of PVOs. There"s no Hertz counter at the Mogadishu airport, and no road maps available at gas stations.
If a journalist arrives in Africa from Europe or the United States and needs to get to the interior of the country, PVOs are the only ticket. journalists sleep and eat with PVO workers.
When they want history and facts and figures, they turn to the PVOs.