Thatta Kedona

The amounts allocated in the federal budget for development aid say it all, namely that too much is being done and too little at the same time. How can that be, -only one thing can be true? And still, both are correct because for one it is too much and for the other too little.

Now, how does it look for the actively engaged people in development aid? They are mostly not thoroughly acquainted with the problems of the developing countries because they constantly make comparisons between their home and the project country und therefore very quickly develop a certain way of thinking, namely to develop themselves so much in the normally three years of participation in an overseas project, that they can build a small house of their own at home.


To these actively engaged persons also belong the diplomats, who –given the bad experiences- have to posess certain qualities, namely: be gladly in the home country and be in a position to use the German language in the foreign country. Now what does that mean? – foreign languages are learnt only later during the training process for the official post. Those posted in the foreign countries appear to hate their mother countries and therefore wake up early in the morning. Since they love security and safety of their official premises, they leave these only on arrival and departure and otherwise they are too busy in the table work or are participating in enormously important conferences and are therefore totally overloaded to even think of taking out time for not so important matters. To these not so important matters also belong the development aid projects. Their activity is mostly limited to finding paragraphs which speak against a project and to ensure employment at the base station for processing the incoming project proposals.

A pleasant side-effect is the official therapy. At home subjected to otherwise long and tedious therapy, these officials obtain official and free psychological treatment in which they are required to look after the visitors and applicants in a friendly manner and thereby ascertain their importance, which can be summed up to be zero. This strengthens the officer and makes him resistant to inter human contact.

The projects most successful are the ones in which the families involved in the project are well looked after; that’s also a sort of development aid.

Employees of the population and immigration offices are called human smugglers. They have improved their image in the meanwhile quite a lot and now offer complete immigration packages. The concerned family has to pay a certain amount of money and with that it gets a guarantee that one person from the family will get an entry visa to the desired country even without any knowledge of the language of the host country. A lot of advertisement is done in this context; the diplomatic representation or the embassy on its part does not keep one eye closed here. On the contrary, they keep their eyes wide open on their work tables and avoid in case travel in such a dangerous country.

In short: how bad it would be if these officials of the foreign ministry and the ministry for development aid were not there? - The country would have additional unemployed persons, not much but still. Moreover, the expensive therapy costs are saved by way of the residence in the foreign country, where aggressions and humanly mistakes can be let out without anyone making a fuss!

Related: With love from Cameroon