More on Monchi the Drain Cat

Here's yet another picture of Monchi, (by the drain) looking pensive and contemplative. Like a feline Buddha.

The thing about not dealing with Clients everyday (as I used to) is that it becomes so easy for you to forget the stuff that happens in the real world.

You get comfortable in the office and become the worst sort of animal - the self-righteous, armchair humanitarian worker concerned only in making your presence felt, making assumptions about lives of others based on scant information on tip-offs and hearsay, living off scarce resources and being a slave to donor agendas.

You oppress your staff who stretch their working hours beyond their salaries, abdicate your non-political responsibilities and civilian character in favour of a Machiavellian world-view ('the ends justify the means') and absolve your bad behaviour by telling yourself 'at least I work for humanity'.

You write books that become Bibles for academics, produce commentaries in prominent left-wing literature, appear on TV chat-shows and travel the globe on a world-peace agenda.

And maybe you adopt a child in a conflict-area. Or two.

Voila! You are the toast of the community - a bastion of hope, hallmark of humanism.

But deep inside, you may be nothing more than an opportunistic, fleecing, self-important piece of shit who has fed off the misery of thousands and sacrificed yet others on the altar of a Glorious Career.

There is a beautiful phrase coined and implemented on an increasingly larger scale at the moment: Participatory Assessment - to respond to issues concerning just how inclusive we are re: community participation in our operations, and how much our policies/interventions actually address the ground realities.

As in all humanitarian fields, the Clients are always part of the Solution.

And we divorce ourselves from them at our peril.