UN and donor employees: third world misery is their career blessing

BY GEORGE KAGAME

I am seated in the waiting lobby of an NGO office located on the 12th floor of a glass skyscraper in downtown Citi. There are eight individual chairs in the lobby but we are only two people waiting for different officials of the NGO whose main activity is to assist Citi families with counselling and awareness services. The other guy has been in the office longer than I have but he seems patient as if what brought him to the office is an important errand and he has to sit it out till his supposed appointment shows up. Despite the fact that there are only two of us waiting and in the past 15 minutes none has been called, the receptionist who is hidden behind a desk that resembles a church pulpit seems quite occupied. She repeatedly picks up the phone and says the same words to different callers. In the 15 minutes that I have been waiting she has picked up more than 15 phone calls and to each she repeated the same words. “She is out of office/ she is in a meeting/do you have an appointment with her?/is she expecting you?” Most of the people working in this NGO are women. Maybe they are the most compassionate lot in the gender class. But it cannot be true, I have been here for 20 minutes now while the lady I am due to meet is being traced or so I am told. The walls in the waiting lobby are affixed with trendy notice boards on which hang pick up brochures and pamphlets, a large flag of Citi stands in the middle, a family from the country walks into the office. The family comprises an aged couple and their chubby teenage boy. They cannot speak Citi so they need a translator. A man in his 20s accompanies them and helps with translation. He has ear piercings and earrings and it is obvious that aged couple do not approve of his presence in their entourage. He is a necessary evil since his services are needed and so they have no choice but to deal with him. They are particularly afraid that their teenage boy seems to like hanging with the translator. But whatever the country family wanted help for seems not forthcoming in this office. They are advised to go back home and make another appointment with the responsible officer of the NGO; as such they are given a phone number on which to make the said second appointment From the look of the old lady, she knows that when they make the call, there won’t be a person to pick up the phone on the other end. But the wisdom of old age tells her to accept what seems to be sincere apologies from the receptionist. The old lady puts up a brilliant performance of hiding her bitterness and obvious frustration at the receptionist and the NGO. The lobby was a good vantage point from which to observe the goings on in the NGO and the hoo haa of what their brochures advertised as activities and services. There was a fair amount of young beautiful woman in tight pants walking about with a pseudo display of urgency. The receptionist speaking on phone or attending to her colleagues was desperately trying to appear humble, courteous, kind, and at the same-time putting up an impressive performance of appearing to be busy too. After 20 minutes of waiting in the offices, I heard the receptionist say, “I am sorry,” more than 16 times when I stopped counting. The NGO is like an embassy of a bigger NGO whose headquarters are located in a huge city overseas and it is one of the major players of the do-good industry. I was here to do my part in the industry which was simply write another story to appear in their journal, brochure or pamphlet about what they do. As a result, I do not have a place in the hierarchy of the organization. I am a contractor and therefore an outsider. The lobby experience reminded me of a time I worked at the UN base in Citi years  yonder. At the UN I was also an outsider and as such I observed the goings on with a detached interest. The UN base was located in a relatively flat part of Citi but it was ironical that most of the employees in the UN offices exclusively drove sports utility vehicles. They might as well have as the UN subsidized the costs of maintenance and fuel. This area was also particularly stable and peaceful relative to the surroundings but this did not stop UN employees to have panic buttons installed in all the rooms of their exclusively built houses. From a distance, everybody at the base appeared busy but they really did nothing to show for their being busy. The violence the base was meant to stop was instead feeding off the excess of the UN. Violence and crime had/have a symbiotic relationship with the UN and the do-gooders. If/when a location where the donor and UN employees had a report of an incident of crime or violence, the employees gleefully wrote a report to their overseas offices that carried alarm and threat in high dozes. This ensured that the salaries and benefits of the employees would be revised in accordance with the crime and violence of the areas where they were working. This was called the hardship allowance. The hardship allowance ensured that the UN became the most hypocritical organization in the world. Having been started to help reduce violence, war, crime, ensure peace and stability prevailed and those other good things of saving the world, the UN employees thrived in war zones and conflict prone areas. This beats the logic behind the do gooders, one was constantly exposed to the double standards of the UN. It happened in Nairobi recently when UN employees publicly protested The UN’s International Civil Service Commission when they reclassified the  UN office in Nairobi from level C to B in what is known as ‘safe’ places to work and the subsequent allowances that the staffers receive for living in such areas. The Nairobi UN staff protested the reclassifying as it reduced their hardship allowance. Interestingly, Nairobi has been a high risk area to work since January 2001 when Mzee Arap Moi was still in charge. Today I prayed for my people in the DR Congo for MONUC is not likely to leave soon while their hardship allowance keeps rising!!