ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS!

Usually African news is deeply depressing but I read a few things over the past week that really made me laugh.

Firstly, our mayor's house got burgled, but that's not the funny part, what's funny is that when he went to the police station to report it, he had to wait an hour and a half before he was seen to. He hadn't declared that he was the mayor (but shouldn't the police know who their mayor is anyway???) and I respect him for not wanting special treatment, but in true African style, no-one could be bothered to help him. Eventually he could take it no more, so he told them who was and he was seen to immediately. We're always complaining about how pathetic our police service is but at least now we know they treat everyone equally badly.

The next thing I found amusing was a report on an abandoned house somewhere in Nelspruit. The residents were complaining that it was attracting criminal elements etc. and wanted the municipality to do something about it (which they rightfully should but most probably won't). One resident in particular was complaining that the house still had running water so homeless people were coming there to cook and even bathe! (those damn dirty homeless people taking baths!)

But the most hilarious news by far is that the Zimbabwean reserve bank has now issued a $100 billion note! Ohmigosh, I can't breathe! ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS! Can you imagine having a one hundred billion dollar note? Manohman, I have got to get my hands on one of those! And I think $100 billion (Zim) is equal to about R5. How can mad Bob seriously still say there's no crisis in Zim when their reserve bank has got to issue $100 billion notes because of their ridiculously high inflation rate?

Third world aid

We recently had a delegation from an American aid organisation visit our clinic. I didn't stick around for the circus because preceding the visit a list of demands was given to the clinical manager. Now this organisation isn't even one of our major sponsors - from what I understand the money they've given us was just enough to put up some shelves in our pharmacy. Don't get me wrong, we're grateful for any donations, but if you're going to give money for a worthy cause, you should do it out of the goodness of your heart, not so you can make them jump through hoops for you.

Now, my boss was hoping that after their visit they'd donate a lot more money to us so she complied with their demands. This made me realise that I could never run an NGO because there's no way I'd cater to petty whims.

Anyway, so the first thing they wanted was 16 plaques emblazoned with their emblem to be put up around the clinic. Who knows why they wanted so many, but being a very small clinic, this basically meant that a plaque had to be put up on every bare surface. So when I stood in the passage where the patients sit and wait to be seen I could see no less than 8 of their plaques from one spot. It was ridiculous. Talk about hard sell. Maybe they think African people are just really slow on the uptake.

The next demand was that all doors should be open so that they can walk through the clinic and see into every room. They re-emphasised that no doors should be closed. I thought it was absolutely absurd to ask such a thing. How is anyone supposed to see patients with the doors open? Oh, that's right, we mustn't see patients - we're supposed to stop everything for them because they're so important. My question was do we also leave the sluice room, cupboard and toilet doors open? They did say NO closed doors...

Next thing was that they also wanted to know how we were managing TB, so they wanted to see all our TB facilities like the x-ray room and treatment room, but they specified that there should be no TB patients present. What a laugh. The kind hearted Americans coming to Africa to help poor sick Africans, as long as they don't actually have to come into contact with poor sick Africans! I was wondering where we were going to hide them. Maybe they heard that riddle about hiding an elephant in custard and think that we must be pretty damn good at hiding things! Actually, we are :) (But that's not the point.)

They sent forward their itinerary which was also fairly ridiculous with things like "park in parking lot" and "medical director comes to car to greet us" and at a stage I think somebody was supposed to jump on one leg with one hand on their head and the other on their nose or something. They also had specified times for everything. They obviously haven't realised that there is no time keeping in Africa. Especially Mpumalanga. But I can't really hold that against them.

Then, of course, there was the obligatory demand for bottled water.

I think it's great that 1st world countries are trying to help us out, especially since our own government doesn't give a rat's ass, but I really think that that doesn't entitle them to treat us like plebs and make us fall all over them and grovel at their feet. Because then I wonder what their real motivation is. It feels too much like "look at me, I'm a wonderful person, look how I'm helping these poor people, this is how you spell my name..."