I decided to go to Africa because I wanted to make a difference. I guess that’s what you do when you’re young and idealistic. Money didn’t matter to me; neither did power. If they had, I would have taken my elite international relations degree and gotten a consulting job in DC or London. Instead, I joined a humanitarian organization as a relief worker and set off for one of the regions being ravaged by genocide.

Nothing can prepare you for seeing mass slaughter or mass starvation. Bodies so distorted that they no longer look recognizable. Famine so widespread that people eat bark from the trees and worms from the ground. Desperation so devastating that women, rather than men, go out into the woods to collect firewood, because sexual assault by roaming gangs is preferable to death.

At first, I worked in the aid camps. Every day I’d wake up and hope the next day would be better—that the supplies we needed would actually come; that the local radios would silence, and calls for Nuer to kill Dinka and Dinka to kill Nuer would stop; that my co-workers wouldn’t disappear in middle of the night and that cholera would; that the politicians around the world would stop putting their own agendas and campaigns first, and actually do something to halt the swaths of people systematically dying. Sadly, that hope was never realized.

One day I decided I needed to do something different, something that would make a broader and more positive impact on the people suffering. So, I asked my boss for a new assignment. He put me in charge of assessing which villages (or people) got food and which ones would probably starve—because despite our best attempts, there simply wasn’t enough for everyone.

And just like that I went from being impotent to omnipotent—the giver and taker of life. How could I possibly play God? Who was I to make such a call? How can I render a decision for this group, not that one, and then put my head on the pillow and drift off to sleep, knowing that if not for the good fortune of geography and citizenship, it might be me instead of them? I never found answers. Instead, I went on, like those politicians I condemned, systematically contributing to the swaths of people who were dying.

In my first job I used to smile and stare into the eyes of everyone I met, because I wanted them to know that I really saw them and that I would do whatever I could to help. Now I struggle to look at myself in the mirror, let alone at any of the people I’m trying to “help,” knowing that my decisions will send many to their graves.

I went to Africa because it was there that I thought I could do the most good. But as it turns out, in order to do good, I have to do bad. Every day I feel myself splintering away a little more.