Above my pay grade

Usually I chafe at my low status at work. I wish they would give me a little more respect, let me do more interesting work.

But sometimes, it feels so nice to be able to say "that's above my pay grade" and walk away.

Today was one of those days. Someone was mad, and I was getting yelled at over email. (For something that I had no control over, because I'm too low-level). Normally I try to handle whatever comes up as much as possible myself, because I like being in control and it's a good way to get myself promoted (it's worked once, anyway).

But it had been a very long day of one meeting after another, and it was already after 5 pm, and I wanted to go home. I did not care about this fight.

So I called up my boss, dumped the problem onto her, and went home.

Sometimes it's nice to be unimportant.

Doppelganger

Have you ever met the doppelganger of someone you know?

I did once. I was in New Orleans for spring break, and my waiter at dinner one night had the exact personality of my older brother. It was like crashing into a parallel universe, where the person is the same but the life he is born into is completely different.

And today, I met another: the sixtyish doppelganger of one of my high school friends. She was teaching my Red Cross class, and was telling us about her collection of fifty pairs of cartoon character slippers. So I feel as if now I know exactly what my friend is going to be like when she is sixty years old.

I wonder if I have any doppelgangers out there, and what their lives are like.

Happy Diwali!

The finance office at my work is entirely made up of South Asians (Indians and Afghanis), so whenever it is a Muslim or Hindu holiday, one of them will bring sweets to the office to celebrate - which is usually how I find out that it is a holiday.

So today is apparently Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, which I now know because there are sweets in the kitchen with a sign that says Happy Diwali.

The sweets look like little triangles of dough, with something silver that looks like aluminum foil painted on them. They remind me of the homemade playdough my mom used to make for my brothers and me when we were little.

And just like that playdough, I keep eating these cookies - not because I like them, but because I can't figure out if I like them or not. Have to take another bite to see if I can finally make up my mind...

Prairie dog

This little guy was at the zoo. He was watching the tourists and making faces at them, sticking his little tongue out. So cute! I wish I could have one as a pet.

Librarian Action Figure

Found this at the Library of Congress and thought it was hilarious.

I have the best dad

I was talking to my dad tonight about my plans to go to Africa, and the subject of my grandpa came up. Dad wanted to know if it bothers me that my grandpa thinks my peace corps plans are a waste of time. I told him that grandpa also disapproved of me going to grad school, so I'm used to it and I don't care. And my wonderful dad said that he doesn't care what other people think, as long as I'm thinking through my decisions, he supports whatever I decide to do.

I have the best dad.

ICC prosecutions

An editorial in the New York Times reports that the International Criminal Court is beginning its first prosecution - the defendant, a Congolese militia leader, is charged with using child soldiers. Great news...

...but not without its downside. Fear of prosecution by the ICC is one of the big reasons why the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda is resisting putting down weapons, and why the Sudanese government is so reluctant to let UN peacekeepers into Darfur (they're afraid the peacekeepers will arrest those indicted by the ICC).

So somehow we have to move from bad guys being afraid to put down their weapons because of fear of being prosecuted by the ICC, to potential bad guys deciding not to pick up weapons in the first place because they know they'll be held accountable. The question is, can we reach that point if we make some sort of concessions on ICC prosecutions in the cases of Sudan and northern Uganda in order to attain peace and save lives? Or must we potentially sacrifice lives now, by refusing to make any concessions and thus drawing out the conflicts, in order to save lives in future conflicts? How many people do you have to prosecute, and how unyielding on holding people accountable do you have to be, in order to create a deterrent?

Gun ownership recommended

From today's New York Times: a small town in Idaho is considering changing its city code to recommend that every household own a gun. Apparently after watching all the looting that happened during Hurricane Katrina, they decided that we'd all be a lot safer if everyone had a gun, instead of just some fraction of the population. Funny, I drew the opposite conclusion - I think we'd all be a lot better off if nobody had a gun (except maybe the cops).

And once again, I am left wondering: how is it that in spite of having grown up in rural America that this is a completely alien world to me?

Making rules

One of my more recent projects at my job is to work with NGOs on improving their capacity to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse by staff members. You start off thinking it's a cut-and-dried subject: sexual exploitation and abuse = bad; it must be stopped.

But it gets so much more complicated when you start applying it to real life. (And I think that's where it gets interesting). The Secretary General's bulletin on special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, which applies to all UN staff and which most NGOs apply to their own staff (or at least have a similar code of conduct), prohibits sexual activity with persons under age 18 regardless of the local age of consent. But what about local staff who marry under-age girls? The rule is a lot fuzzier on this. Exchange of any sort of money, goods, or services for sex is prohibited - but what about the payment of marriage dowries?

The latest question which has come up is about domestic violence perpetrated by staff. At first I thought it's a no-brainer: it may not be covered by the Secretary General's bulletin if it's not sexual violence, but it seems pretty clear that domestic violence should be a violation of any organization's code of conduct, even if under local laws beating your wife is considered okay.

So I was thinking maybe we need to look at adding something into our Codes of Conduct about domestic violence, or violence in general, to make sure it's covered when local laws don't prohibit it. But then where does it end? If we prohibit staff from beating their wives, then (I would hope) physical violence against children, including spanking, should also be prohibited.

But there's bound to be a lot of resistance, even in the West, to telling people they can't discipline their kids however they want (I should know - I was spanked regularly when I was a kid - my mom says grounding takes too much time, the kid mopes forever, and she'd rather just spank the kid and be done with it). But how can we claim any moral high ground if we say violence against some people is okay but violence against others is not?

Where, in the end, do we draw the line between respecting local cultures and imposing our values on them (especially when it's clear that our own values could use some improvement)?

I think this project is about to get more controversial. I love it.

Fire

Last night I was on call for Red Cross, who I volunteer with, and we got a call to respond to a fire that had destroyed a whole row of townhouses. I've gone out lots of times before, but this was the biggest incident I've responded to.

Found out when we got there and were interviewing people that a family had gotten trapped on the upper floor of one of the townhouses. They heard screaming, and saw their neighbor hanging from the third-floor window with his back on fire. Eventually he fell. They heard children screaming too, but never saw them come out of the house.

And my job is to comfort these people, to help get them back on their feet. Give them some food, a place to sleep. But listening to a story like that, responding with "that's awful" and "I'm so sorry" seems so inadequate. I wish there was more I could do, that I could find the magic perfect words that would help.

Bad dreams last night.