The Second Country

Hello Sir. Please GET UP! Five o’clock!

What a transparency! Here the authorities are very clearly ranked ... from NUMERO UNO downwards.

 

Gained in translation?

Have you seen Lost in Translation? Where Bill Murray is told five words by the translator after his Japanese director had babbled away at him for at least one minute? Well here, most probably someone found something in the five well-chosen words of our spokesman as it gave way to a full one-minute translation. Well as our translator was an extremely educated, amiable, and intelligent fellow, and the listeners seemed quite happy with what had been said, I guess no harm was done. Quite possibly it might have been just the opposite.

 

Get them out of here!

NO WAY! I do not believe that we are doing right in resettling poor people in places where they will basically continue to do the same and most certainly continue to be poor. If any of the resettled fathers or mothers were to ask any of us EDs privately, “If you were in our situation, would you keep your children here?”—we would probably have to say, “No way! We would get them out!” And, if that is so, we are not doing our development work right. Sorry.