You know you are a humanitarian worker when......

The following is translated from a French Facebook entry, with one or two phrases added by me. Anyone who has ever worked for a humanitarian organization will find it extremely accurate.

You know that you are a humanitarian worker when:

• Unlike your friends who have normal lives, you don’t have a wife/husband, children, or house, and when you return home, you sleep in your parent’s place.
• You have a university degree, you manage a team of at least 10 people and a multi-million dollar budget in a civil war situation, but you earn a minimum wage.
• You earn a minimum wage, but you have a cook, a house keeper and a chauffeur 24 hours a day.
• You enjoy sending verbal missiles at your colleagues from other non-governmental organizations.
• For you, Save the Children is called Save the Chicken, World Vision is World Illusion, and MSF is MFS (pronounce emefess – in french Et Mes Fesses - translates to: And My Ass!)
• You don’t like people from the United Nations, but once you have a beer in your hand, all white guys (Mzungus) are your friends, especially when the presence of females is limited.
• You are always criticizing the United Nations, but secretly, you would love to work for them to triple your salary.
• When you return home, your friends and family all ask the same question, “So how was it?” hoping that you can summarize 1 year of mission in 3 minutes, because after 3 minutes, they are no longer with you.
• You tell your acquaintances that you work in the humanitarian field, and they respond “Ok but what’s your job?”
• Upon returning home and looking for work at the unemployment office, you put in a listing under “southern coordination” and you explain to the work counsellor that he/she would be better off not wasting a lot of time on you. Anyway, you don’t fit into any of their categories!
• When you return home, you love making the round of your friends, but when you realize what their every-day lives are like, you wish to return quickly on mission.
• You really laugh when young street marketers stop you in the street and ask you “Have you ever heard of Action Against Hunger?”
• You would love to work in Latin America or Asia, but you always find yourself in Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, or Sudan.
• You understand mysterious phrases such as:
o The watsan always sends his sitrep to the HoM before leaving on R&R. (The water/sanitation guy always sends his situation report to the head of mission before leaving on break.)
o The nut and food sec want to use Plumpy Nut to combat kwash in under-5s in MdM’s CNT. (The nutrition and food security group want to use Plumpy Nut (a weight-gain product) to combat kwashorkors (one type of malnutrition) in children under 5 years of age in Médecins du Monde’s (Doctors of the World) therapeutic nutrition center.)
o The logs at Sol are working on NFI kits and shelters for the DAH proposal in RDC. (The logisticians at Solidarity are working on non-food item kits and shelters for the DAH proposal in the Democratic Republic of Congo.)
o Kilo Juliette for November Yankee, the situation is Oscar Kilo. (Kiwanja project (KJ) calling Nyanzale project (NY), the situation is OK.)
• The weekend, either you work, or you recuperate from an over-alcoholised Friday night.
• You shave at most 2 times a week and you have forgotten how to tie a tie.
• You always have a VHF radio and 3 different telephone chips with you.
• After having destroyed 3 blackberrys in six months, you buy a Nokia at $20 …. with the little flashlight on top and the black and white screen… which lasts 2 years.
• You have an IBM Lenovo laptop; ugly but indestructible.
• You have an external disc drive full of films, television series, music and nothing pertaining to work.
• You know that Relief Web is not a geographical site.
• For you, malaria is just a bad flue that everyone passes around.
• Nutella and/or Jiffy peanut butter become luxury items that you would do anything to have, at any price.
• A reinforced Toyota Landcruiser is what you call a car.
• A 30 hour bus trip (including a Jackie Chan film) on non-existent roads seems as normal to you as a New York – Washington plane shuttle does to others.
• You hop on a plane like others get into their cars.
• Entire villages in Africa call you by your first name, but you don’t even know the name of the person who lives across from you at home.
• All your friends are called Kasereka or Abdoul.
• Seeing men armed to their teeth on every street corner seems completely normal.
• You watch the news on TV and tell yourself that you have a job for life.