Monday, January 18, 2010

UN Report from Haiti

"Hello. I am Jean Pierre De Maurier, in charge of the UN disaster relief for Haiti. Which I hope you realize is a difficult task because there is no possible relief for Haiti. It is in a perpetual state of disaster. Or as the Haitian Prime Minister himself declared: 'The hope is that Haiti can one day move up from a state of misery to one of poverty.' (Trust me; he did say that.) So please forgive me if I answer all of your questions in the UN special "bureaucratise" language. As you know from talking to UN officials for over sixty years, we always try very hard to say nothing, but to say it very, very well. In many languages, of course, especially fractured English.

"Now, those of you who have interviewed us before knows there is a good reason we often say nothing. The reason is because we often know nothing (except always how to very, very well; and usually in somber tones). And the reason we often know nothing is that we are unusually hampered in information-gathering: such as reading, speaking on the telephone, and reading up-to-the-date online reports on the computer. The reason for this information-gathering dilemma is because, as you know from this daily contact with us, we keep our two hands behind our backs at all times, to protect our asses. And when you have your two hands behind you 24/7, it is very hard to turn pages in reading, picking up and speaking into the phone or working the keys on the computer keyboard. We of course could turn around and do all those things from behind us, which, if you remember, we occasionally do, especially on critical issues (from whence comes the term "UN officials, speaking from their assholes..."). Unfortunately, his undesirable state of often painful flatulence occurs usually after banquets and state dinners outside the US and Europe when we are forced to consume ethnic-identity foods containing excessive lactose and fats. I think you all remember, one time, a conference call where I told you all I was standing in the middle of a gusting windstorm in the Sahara amongst 5000 Africans who had died of thirst? Well, in truth, I had just finished a local African cold dish of greasy lamb and, with no water to drink, of course, to aid in digestion...well, back to Haiti. Are there any questions you'd like avoided? If not, we will pass pictures among you of dead Haitians and emaciated women and children with broken limbs so we can all weep and empathize and lift CNN's ratings, instead of understanding why a 7.0 earthquake kills only 65 people in San Francisco a few years ago while the same force of earthquake kills up to 200,000 in Haiti. Misery, the Prime Minister said, hoping for poverty."

1 Comments:

Blogger Cliff Osmond said...

Sorry. Could you translate that for me? I am language challenged. That, among many other reasons, is why I never tried to work for the UN.

11:00 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home