This is Africa calling



Here I am sitting at my desk, turning a neat black-on-white document into a butcher's shop of tracked changes and comments, my current equivalent of wielding a blue pencil, when the phone rang. It was someone from the UHNCR, who started out with the all-too-familar ploy, 'We really appreciate the regular donation you've been giving us and I'm just phoning to bring you up to date on our activities.' I suppose it's hard to imagine a script that goes, 'Hi. I'm from the UNHCR and I'm phoning to ask you for more money,' but this guy did depart from the script enough to call me 'Mate' three or four times, so I can allow myself to feel irritated at his initial disingenuousness. At least he didn't start out with, 'Hi I'm Ronald, How are you?' because my response to that opening is now to say, 'I'm fine but I don't believe you really want to know,' and hang up.

But this call got over the initial irritation hump. And suddenly, instead of wrestling with commas and finding ways of eliminating excessive nominalisations, I'm thinking about Sudan: thousands of people killed and millions homeless, aid agencies expelled, a brutal militia prowling in the vicinity of refugee camps to kill, kidnap and rape. And all I'm being asked to do is increase my donation.

An extra $3.75 a week or whatever hardly seems an adequate response to such a rift in the time-space continuum, and they happen all the time.

Posted: Thu - April 30, 2009 at 04:03 PM           |

©