I first played Cards Against Humanity soon after I moved to the United States. A friend of mine who worked at the World Bank invited me to her friend’s D.C. apartment where I cringed and laughed uncomfortably at the idea that the most politically incorrect person would be declared winner at the end of the game.
Cut to 2016 when I was introduced to Jaded Aid — Cards against Humanity’s international development cousin. By then, I was two years into a degree program in the subject, and had traveled to three countries for “development” assignments. The game’s tongue-in-cheek references to the everyday ridiculousness of the sector, as well as the heavy doses of self-deprecation, made me an instant fan.
I became obsessed with introducing friends to the game as well — and that’s what I did one night this month when I invited a group of badass women international development professionals and students to play the game (with wine and cheese, of course!). We were two Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, one former UN worker, one former contractor, and one English teacher in China — and all at least a bit jaded about the business of doing good.
Here’s how the evening went down:
Elif: I’m ready; I’m even wearing my international development pants! [You know, the colorful cotton pants that all of us had picked up at some point while traveling in Asia.]
Emma: Wait, did I miss the memo? I guess I’m not jaded enough.
Ashley: We’ll find out soon!
Jenny: The Peace Corps extension pack has a unicorn as the logo? We’re all magical creatures!
Yamatha: That only exist in the imagination of poor people? Sounds about right.
Me: Ok, I’m going to start. The first question card for the evening is: We’re not so much faith-based as ______-based.
Once I asked the question, everyone around the table looked at their set of seven cards and picked what in their minds was the wittiest answer. Just like Cards against Humanity, the player whose card gets chosen wins a point.
The answers I got included: An Unpronounceable Acronym, White Savior Barbie, Volunteerism, Emergency Sex, and Bleeding Heart humanitarianism. Obviously, I had to go with “We’re not so much faith-based as ‘an unpronounceable acronym’-based.”
Next, it was Elif’s turn to pick the question card. “Angelina Jolie will be the next envoy for _____,” she read aloud.
The answers that everyone gave were: Bush Meat, Hiring a Maid and Justifying It As Local Job Creation, The Smug Sense of Self-Satisfaction, Getting Upgraded to Business Class, and A One-Way Feedback Loop. I won this round with a card that one of Jaded Aid’s founders once told me was one of his favorites.
Can you guess which one it was? “Angeline Jolie will be the next envoy for ‘the smug sense of self-satisfaction.’”
“We wanted to be the cynicism we see in the world — to paraphrase an Indian guy,” Jaded Aid co-founder Wayan Vota said of his motivation to launch the game. If you look closely, the words Jaded Aid look strikingly similar to USAID’s in the official logo. “We used USAID’s branding guide,” Vota said, with more than just a hint of pride.
The game was first launched as a Kickstarter. “We specifically wanted it to make it a participatory approach,” Vota said, similar to ideal interventions in the development world. “Most of these are cards that people submitted. We wanted to poke a little fun of ourselves, and the ridiculousness of the situations we are in.”
Other cards reference well-meaning interventions and innovations, which often end up as buzzwords rather than results — like “another goddamn cookstove,”and “bribes paid in MPESA”.
“It’s funny to see how development practitioners think about this,” said Vota. “Theoretically, [they] might be super useful, but somewhere along the line we are screwing up. If you tell poor people the air pollution is going to be reduced if they use cookstove instead of firewood, is it going to work? People are not adopting this. People have agency — they can choose to say no and they are exercising it.”
By the time we ran out of cards (and wine), we were sure our friend Jenny was the most jaded of us all. “The more pit latrines you’ve used, the better you get at using humor to describe your experiences,” she said. Maybe she can offer some inspiration for their next expansion pack?
