Here's the thing...

There’s a fund in Southern Sudan which is something everyone calls a ‘pooled fund’ and that means that instead of donors giving their money to whatever they want they put it into a big fund that is run by the government and the UN. The problem with this particular pooled fund is that it’s been badly managed and manipulated by the powers that be and so has actually delivered practically nothing. This is nothing surprising here where funds frequently don’t actually disburse money that has been committed to the people that need it. It sits in bank accounts in New York, DC, and Nairobi and accumulates interest (to the tune of $1 million dollars in the case of this fund) and no one is really the wiser nor upset by the matter. Which makes me ask: why? And that niggling question led me to think about the economics of aid about which already volumes have been written so I won’t bore you with too many details however, if we think of aid as an economic transaction where someone is giving mone...

I was reminded this week that I used to be an interesting person, to whom interesting things happened, and I used to write about those things in this very blog. This week, however, when I received an email from a former avid blog reader reminding me that I have an interesting and 'adventurous' life I decided to look back over the past week and figure out why I don't blog as regularly anymore. One look at my schedule told me why: Monday: 10am: Meeting with ODI 11am: UN Country Team Meeting 12.30pm: Meeting with NGO 2pm: Meeting with Budget Sector Working Group Co-Chairs 3.30pm: Meeting with DevInt 6.30pm: Handover meeting between Steering Committee Chair and Deputy Tuesday: 11am: Security Management Team Meeting 1:00pm: Meeting with UN Agency 3:00pm: Meeting with Swedish Donor 5:00pm: Meeting with an NGO 7:00pm: Dinner with National NGO Bored yet? Wait for it...the week only gets better! Wednesday 1:00pm: Meeting with Pooled Fund Managing Agent 2:00pm: ...

I would like to apologise to all those who might be reading this and are aware of this purely fictional incident and may not find it as amusing as I do. Any resemblance to characters living or dead is coincidental...although all of them lived, for the record. Once upon a time I got a phone call from an NGO who had people involved in a security incident in which there were reports of heavy gunfire. Their field compound was smack in the middle of the action and their HQ located in a town - let's call it Luba - called me to see what can be done. Now, everyone knows that you shouldn't call me unless you want me to do something and, after more unsuccessful attempts on their part to get someone mobilised in the field area to go check on their compound, they gave me permission to do this. Well, low and behold, we (note: change of pronouns not related to disseminating blame) managed to get the 'army' mobilised to go and check the area. Unfortunately, they found themselves ...

My brain is too small to chock it full of the miscellany that flies at me everyday. Hence, I would like to make a list of all the things that I refuse to remember: 1. When the rainy season begins and ends in Sudan. 2. People's names if I've met them only once or twice. Or, anyone who has a contract shorter than six months. Or anyone I find immemorable. 3. Anyone's birthday. 4. Any phone number. 5. Most meeting times. 6. Sphere standards humanitarian indicators. 7. Anything told to me before I've had enough coffee in the morning. 8. In what state Kwajok is located. 9. Where Nigeria is located. 10. On which border Pakistan neighbours Afghanistan. 11. The type of printer cartridge my printer takes. 12. How much wine costs at Logali. 13. The fiscal year of the U.S., Canada, UK, or any other donor country. 14. How to make excel spreadsheets do just about anything nifty. 15. Flight times. One can simply not save the world and remember all the details. So, i...

Over the course of my life I have seen any number of looks of terror. The incidences usually begin the same way, as they did this morning. People just standing around some place - including bystanders such as myself - an unmarked vehicle with no license plates pulls up and men jump out. They are usually armed...no, I take that back...they are always armed. Menacing, threatening men. They always act with an air of importance, impertinence and swagger. Sometimes they have uniforms, sometimes they don't, depending on the state sanction of their activities. They wave the guns and point them at nearly everyone in the vicinity. They begin beating someone - also usually either a bystander or someone unimportant until they get the information they want. Others who try to intervene also get beaten or a gun pointed at them. There is always yelling. Eventually, the people they want are dragged out to the car. Sometimes they are fighting; sometimes they go quietly. But they all, and alw...

“There’s a truth that’s deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we can see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We’re helpless, usually, in the fact of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart.” - Gregory David Roberts

I like to think that there is a special state of mind into which frequent travelers often descend. You will know these people by their irksome calm when they, in the same awful travel predicament as you, watch calmly as you lose your temper. Their bags might be missing, their flight delayed, or cancelled, the airline clerk being a heinous twat and yet they stand next to you with that placid look of acceptance and love for the airline clerk, and the airline industry - and universe at large. Sometimes, I enter this state of travel zen. No, I don’t enter it…it usually descends upon me for no apparent reason and in those moments I feel calm – and somewhat superior. I’d like to think that most of my travels over the holidays I was in that state. Flight from Amsterdam cancelled…no problem. Flight to Boston cancelled…no problem. Flight to DC cancelled…no problem. I was the poster child for travel zen. But now the universe is tempting my resolve. I am set to fly DC, to Amsterdam, to Nairo...