This article centers on a particular category of foreign aid workers: the national or local desk officers employed by public foreign donors to run the daily administration of development cooperation in aid recipient countries. These professionals transcend the socio-professional binary between donor and foreign and recipient and local that is often constructed in anthropological research on foreign aid and its individual actors. While officially representing foreign donor agencies, national aid workers enjoy multiple ties to the domestic development industry—personal, civic, cultural, and professional. Given the high turnover of staff sent out from donor headquarters, national employees are often important for donor agencies’ ability to build and stabilize relations in the host country and gain the trust (and truth) of their partner organizations. Meanwhile, their ties to the host country also expose national employees to suspicions of “local bias” and the risk of personally losing the trust of their foreign employers. On the basis of the testimonies of donor agency employees in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the article explores the relational work of national staff and how they bring to the fore questions of trust, power, and individual relationships in foreign aid.

中文翻译：

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建立信任，获得真理

本文主要关注一类特定的外国援助工作者：受援国公共捐助者雇用的国家或地方主管官员，负责管理受援国发展合作的日常事务。这些专业人士超越了捐助者与外国、受援者与当地之间的社会专业二元对立，这通常是在对外援助及其个体行为者的人类学研究中构建的。在正式代表外国捐助机构的同时，国家援助工作者与国内发展行业有着多重联系——个人、公民、文化和专业。鉴于捐助者总部派出的工作人员流动率很高，本国雇员对于捐助机构在东道国建立和稳定关系以及获得伙伴组织的信任（和真相）的能力通常很重要。同时，他们与东道国的关系也使本国雇员面临“本地偏见”的嫌疑，以及个人失去外国雇主信任的风险。本文以坦桑尼亚达累斯萨拉姆捐助机构员工的证词为基础，探讨了本国工作人员的关系工作以及他们如何将信任、权力和个人关系等问题带到外援中。