I have seen them on resettlement projects over the years.

Sensitive souls who studied anthropology or social sciences because they wanted to understand people and the systems in which they exist. To do good. To make a difference. Somehow, they find themselves on the corporate end of land access and displacement, standing between company, government and the people who must move.

One particular young man comes to mind.

The first time I saw him in the field, he was sitting under a thatched gathering shelter propped up by crooked tree trunks. Blue plastic chairs were arranged in a loose semicircle on packed earth. The air was thick with dust and expectation.

He listened more than he spoke.

His notebook was already thick with names.

He painted in his spare time. His hands were often speckled with bright colour — cobalt, vermilion, yellow — the paint caught in the half-moons of his nails. It sat in quiet contrast to the tired lines beginning to settle around his eyes.

Resettlement projects rarely unfold in neat chronology.

Cut-off dates are announced. Surveys are completed. Expectations are raised. Project finance tightens.

Then movement halts.
Fields lie unplanted.
Walls remain cracked.
People wait inside a future that does not arrive.

In those early months beneath the thatch, he spoke about rights. About restoration of livelihoods as if it were both possible and urgent. He stayed long after formal meetings ended, crouched beside elders tracing boundary lines in the dust.

Later, I noticed the language change amongst the project team.

Deliverables.

Investment decision.

Timelines.

Alignment.

He had not become careless. If anything, he was more precise. But the gap he stood in widened.

Consultants do not usually crack because of workload. They crack because of asymmetry. Because of indefinite delays and shrinking budgets. Because expectations grow while options narrow. Because hope, once raised, has weight.

As extractive and infrastructure projects move deeper into remote areas — into rural communities living in poverty — the questions grow heavier. Development for whom. Development at what pace. Development measured how.

He was paid by the company. He was trusted, sometimes, by the community. Government officials called him late at night. Everyone expected loyalty.

Loyalty is not a fixed point in resettlement work. It shifts with context, with pressure, with who is in the room.

I have watched good people bend under that strain. Some leave. Some stay and harden. Some stay and remain soft, but tired.

In the evenings, he painted.

Not to make a statement. Not to resolve anything. Just to steady his hands.

Very few are untouched by standing in that gap.

Part of 100 Portraits from a Sustainability Career — my ongoing writing project exploring the people and forces that shape our work.

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