A bit of a RANT.

Today a pasty white woman, with entangled varicose veins covering her face, who looked like she belonged in a sealed and sterile bubble approached me as she got on the airplane. I had seen the pasty white woman the previous day greet the NBC Today Show reporter Ann Curry after we had brought her NBC TV crew back from Goz Beida.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15655588/

'Good morning Jesse, my name's Mia Farrow...(pause, I'm guessing waiting for me to jump up and down at the idea I was shaking a famous someone's hand?, to which she got no joy)...I hear you are the Captain taking us to Goz Beida this morning. Well its very nice to meet you, here I'd like you to meet my assistants...' I couldn't get over just how repulsive this woman looked, as horrible as the thought was. Denny and Remy, two of the Chadian workers looked at her in almost shock, most likely at her color.

TV cameras focused in and out on the airplane, Mia, and Steve and I as we stood looking like two confused animals. TV cameras everywhere on a military controlled airport in a military state, which recently outlawed freedom of the press when it declared a state of emergency, and we are surrounded by gun toting, rabid soldiers. Mia, I think you need to tell your fan club to put the cameras away.

"Jesse, nice to meet you, I'm George(?), OOOOHHH, you don't have a bracelet! (pointing at my naked wrist and digging thru his knapsack to find a green rubber bracelet)...Here you are...now you can show your support for the embattled people of Darfur! Thanks for the flight!"

A bracelet. A green rubber bracelet. This is how I am supposed to show my support for the embattled people of Darfur. Thanks jack ass. I stood for a second debating whether to throw the thing at his now turned head, out of principle only you see. A bracelet. "Maybe you have mistaken me for one of the many Americans vacationing here in the Sahel, sir? Hmm? Or maybe it wasn't that, maybe you failed to think that possibly I hadn't made any sacrifices to be where I am now, trying my best to not let this crazy and hellish place and people like you offering me rubber bracelets get the best of me and my attitude, so that I can continue trying to help the 'embattled Darfurians' out. Or maybe you think it will help remind me of the issue and of Africa, as if awakening every morning and looking outside at barbed wire, and flying dying children over burned villages and hearing the stories from the camps, and personally getting sick almost every week doesn't remind me enough of where I am and what I'm doing. Hmmm? Is that what it was? Well here, take your bracelet back please, it's not my color anyway." I didn't say it, but I wanted to. I bit my lip and pondered. Everyone here is saving the world if you ask them, but they'll also tell you that everyone else here isn't. Later I used the bracelet as a rubber band and shot one of the local staff members between the legs, which gave us both a laugh. I guess the thing wasn't so useless after all.

Chad has declared a state of emergency, and has basically reigned in a state of martial law across the country. This just 2 weeks after all our local staff failed to show for work one day. When asked why they responded it was a National holiday. Upon talking with other NGOs we learned this to be the truth, and that it was indeed a National holiday, and none other than "Freedom and Democracy Day". To put it into perspective it would be like Blacks celebrating "Racial Equality and Civil Rights Day" in Montgomery, Alabama in 1935. Maybe they were just satisfied it got them a day off.

The declaration of emergency spawned an emergency meeting between AirServ, UNHCR and the WFP tonight to discuss the various security concerns that are blaring in all our faces daily. Attending as AirServ's chief pilot I was excited to share my thoughts, concerns and suggestions. Instead I walked out feeling insulted and extremely pissed off. I decided I'm going to focus my energies on building a spitball gun that I'll from now on begin shooting all UNHCR and WFP high management employees with whenever I might run across them. If anyone out there thinks that the United Nations, the World Food Program, or most likely even the US Government is run by highly intelligent and down to earth individuals who have a grasp on common sense, you are severely mistaken. What a bunch of immature, feuding, bickering, ridiculously self toting and inflated idiots.

I need a vacation, and next week I get it. Next Thursday, when I'd much rather be sitting down to a Thanksgiving dinner with my family at home, I'll instead be hopping an Ethiopian Airlines 757 heading for Thailand where I hope to forget my daydreams of UN employee strangulation.