Tag Archives: Otto

Otto the Aid Worker

Bailed in Bazimbi

    I don’t know if you’ve ever been sucker punched? You know: when you set out on a lovely morning, brimming with effervescence and ready with a smile for all, when you step on a hibernating bear with a hangover and you wonder how fast you can do nought to sixty up a tree? Well, I have. Not literally stepped on a bear of course (not sure they have bears in Central Africa), but metaphorically my life has recently become wall to wall angry bears, all equipped with running shoes. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want to complain or appear ungrateful, but things seem to have taken a *slight* turn for the worse here in Zabarindi since my last sitrep. And to be totally honest with you I’m not entirely, a hundred percent sure this is what I signed up for…

    Let me explain. My life before all this happened was rather meh. Blah. With all the zing and joy of Tesco tofu. So in an uncharacteristic fit of… well, just a fit really, I threw caution to the wind, carpe’d that diem and signed up for a stint with GAWD: General Aid Without Divisions. Imagine Oxfam meets Special Forces. My goal: to See and Change the World, Do Good, Make A Difference. (The capitalisation helps.) In short, I wanted Adventure that wouldn’t hurt me and Kudos that wouldn’t cost me. Except it’s starting to dawn on me that – and this may surprise you – that my efforts are *not* appreciated as much as I had been led to believe they would be.

    I got here in North Zabarindi a month ago (except of course it’s not North Zabarindi anymore, not since the border was overrun, but that’s another, much longer story) and ever since then things have been a little… well, fraught. Again, not complaining, wouldn’t dream of it.

    But I mean to say arresting me, taking my passport AND my vitamins and then denying me basics like airconditioning. This is not the behaviour of a grateful nation I must say…

    The first I was aware something was wrong was outside the guest house, having been dropped off by a taxi (only $60! I’m really getting the hang of this haggling business) and all of a sudden these enormous men with unnecessarily shiny muscles and sunglasses move in, yell at me in some dreadful lingo and, when it’s clear from my slack-jawed expression that I don’t understand a word they’re saying, they gesture me into their van with AKs (did you know they don’t speak English in Central Africa?? French! I mean to say!)

    Now, I’m just a press officer ok? My job is basically making sure people back home (donors) know what we do in the field (think we’re heroic), speaking to journos to promote what we do (get them to warzones and back safely in return for positive press) and stay on message no matter what (navigate the minefield of internal GAWD politics which is just stupidly harder than it needs to be).

    And in that capacity I’m literally the only Communications person on the continent. (Which, for an organisation that keeps banging on about advocacy but then doesn’t employ the staff is a bit of a disconnect but anyway.)

    Back to the scary guys with guns. After much yelling and repetition (the Latin lessons at school finally paid off huzzah!), I surmised I was under arrest for breaking curfew and being in the Green Zone at the time. I *may* also have been slightly trollied and singing a song I learned from the askari (“Mobutu’s Dumplings are Round and Sweet”) while waving a bottle of vodka at what I thought was a taxi but turned out to be a police van. Happily, a taxi *did* stop so I jumped in. Unhappily, the boys in blue just followed me home.

    So here I am, in Bazimbi’s main police station, trying to remember why I came here. The capitalisation helps… Gawd help us

    Next week: Otto accidentally goes on safari.

    Otto the Alien

    Sexual destiny?

    Hey guys and gals and all those in between or beyond; how’s your half-life treating you? So it’s been a while huh? I’ve kind of been observing, learning, treading water – not literally of course, I wouldn’t want to draw attention to myself like Gary did (you guys knew him as Jesus, but to us he was just Gazza. Actually maybe that’s why he ended up in Judea… Things might have been different if he’d gone to Congo but that’s for another time).

    I digress. In the intervening years since my last post I’ve noticed something odd about you lot: your species treats half of its members like gorp. Steaming gorp.

    This is not, I realise, an original observation, which ironically makes it all the more necessary to make.

    Back where I come from, we automatically change our sex every few stellar oscillations; it just happens. I’m currently in my female stage and starting to wonder if that wasn’t a mistake here. I notice, for instance, that I’m the only female on this forum – and I’m an alien… What does that tell you.

    So explain some things to me please.

    Why are female humans so often exclusively defined by their familial or sexual relationships with others…? When those relationships in turn define her…well…everything! Her name, work, longevity, education, prospects, sex life, love life, suffrage, mobility, appearance, rights over her own body, voice, her whole purpose. How the frook… I mean…I’m speechless.

    And I’m not just talking about some of the livelier parts of the planet where cutting off female body parts for minor infractions is de rigeur. It’s everywhere.

    Attractive? Can’t be clever. Attractive but rejects male? Lesbian. Have a strong sex drive? Nympho. Weak sex drive? Frigid. More intelligent than him? Gobby bitch. Want kids? Unambitious. Don’t want kids? Selfish. Single? Aww. Swear like a bloke? Common. Ambitious? Masculine. Emotionally intelligent? On her period. Eloquent? Yap yap yap. Protest against ANY of this? Screeching man-hater.

    Are female reproductive organs really that threatening..?

    Take something as simple as bras – just hear me out… If you have a push-up, you’re a gender traitor, but if you prefer a sports bra you’ve let yourself go. Breasts are continually scrutinised and spoken at, while their owners have to endure comments like “Huh is it cold out?”, but wearing a padded bra to avoid this is a false promise.

    Frook, you people haven’t evolved much have you. No wonder I’m the only female on here. And so many females just submit and add to this pile of gorp. Getting the competition for the alpha male out the way I guess… “Pick me, pick me, I’ll be your dog!”

    Fun fact: when a male finally conquers (interesting verb) a female, he is biologically impelled to move on to the next one. When a female finally submits (…for frook’s sake) to a male, she is impelled to want it more.

    You monkeys are complicated.

    Oh, and #metoo. Though he lived to regret it. (Never try to feel up an alien on a tram unless you want to lose an arm.)

    Otto, Nero's violin tutor

    Nervous With Nero

    Erm… Is this thing on? Can you hear me? I haven’t got long (His Imperial Bipolarness is just catching a show in the Colosseum), so I’ll make this quick. Right. So my name is Otto, although given this forum I think you already knew that. And I work for the Emperor Nero – yes, the one who made Rome nice and toasty – as his violin tutor. It could be worse. I could be his official food taster and have a life expectancy of three meals.

    My boss, let’s face it, isn’t very popular. I mean, he’s not even a Marmite sort of bloke (you know, hated or loved); he’s more a flatulence kind of guy. Only the dealer likes the smell, the rest of us stand upwind. I just pray he never finds this tablet as I’d be crucified along the Appian Way faster than that hippy in Judea. Luckily he’s also the dumbest man since Severus the Simple headed north to “talk some sense into the Visigoths”. Nero, in short, doesn’t know his culus from his cubitus.

    Which is a good thing, because his capacity for inflicting agonizing pain is frankly impressive. In an age when casual sadism is celebrated as heroism, when 8 out of 10 Big Cats prefer kosher meat, and when the main form of exercise for women is Escape the Rape, you’ll understand what I mean when I say Nero makes Caligula look like a hypnotised buddhist. Oedipus was a well-adjusted first-born compared with Nero’s daddy issues.

    I confess, he makes me a little nervous. I’ve had to put three smallish fires out already this week, and I’m running out of ways to say “E Minor, not A Major” without implying that he is less musical than Tarquinius the Tone-deaf Tenor who was publicly lynched for his rendition of Mamma Mia in the forum. (There’s nothing more dangerous than an angry mob maddened by dissonance…)

    I’d better go. I can hear screams of agony from the corridor and the pitter-patter of tiny feet running for their lives; ah the little tell-tale signs that His Unhinged Majesty is on his way and has a story to relate.

    Next week: Otto fiddles while his toast burns

    Otto the West Bank Barrier

    Hamo Hamas Hamat

    Finally. After seven weeks of bombing interrupted by short cease fires, we have a long-term truce in Gaza at last. Wonder how long-term that actually is. The previous cease fires were not pauses so much as dot-dot-dots of waiting for the next round of shelling. But right now all I know is that the party to the left of me (on the -alestine side of Isralestine) is going full swing and long may that last too.

    And as the rest of you tip ice water over your heads in support of ALS research (not just because you’ve been challenged to and because you want to be part of something fun and big, of course…), some Palestinians have taken to tipping the rubble of what used to be their homes over their heads to raise awareness of Gaza.  Calling it the Rubble Bucket Challenge. And demonstrating that humour, not love, will always win over hate.

    After all, love is – in a fragile break from a war that has claimed tens of thousands of innocent lives – possibly a tall order. Amo, Amas, Amat, as we learned in Latin class, is first and foremost a matter of grammar. Let alone Hamo, Hamas, Hamat (or PIJ, Hamas, Fatah, as the case may be). But humour may be the first step for those with little reason to love their enemy, whatever side of me – well, of the Gazan border of course, but I speak metaphorically – they’re on.

    If you hate me, for instance, for being a symbol of divisiveness in an area that really doesn’t need any more divisions, just switch the first letters of my name – West Bank Barrier – and have a giggle.

    If you can’t love your enemy, you can at least take the piss.

    And given the truce forged in Cairo this week, it appears to have done the trick. Maybe tipping the contents of your hoover over your head will bring back the missing girls in Nigeria, who knows.