Missionaries

Missionaries

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You may not know us

We the modern day missionaries

Of the rational mind.

Our institutions are familiar,

The World Bank

The United Nations

CARE

OXFAM

World Vision

The list goes on and on.

We are the rural economists,

Macro-economy experts

Municipal planners,

Civil engineers,

Social health advisors,

Agronomists,

Emergency aid coordinators,

Educators,

And more.

We deal in matters of consequence:

Food deficits and drought,

Trade barriers and trade agreements,

Globalisation,

Deforestation,

Inequality,

Child labour,

Female circumcision,

And more.

We deal in poverty,

Calling  people beneficiaries,

Target populations,

Recipients,

Communities,

The urban poor,

And more.

In rare moments, I have known my people to look out over the landscape,

Through the mirages of states and governments,

Into a world without human order,

Only the shifting sands of power.

Briefly, we see the infinity beyond the horizon.

We see our busyness as meaninglessness.

But it is only before bed at night,

And then we sleep,

Or for a moment when waking,

And then we put our feet to the floor,

Because we must dash,

There is an office to get to,

Meetings, workshops, and conferences,

Reports, proposals, and evaluations,

Where we must assume without thinking

That what each of us does matters

While we worry about funding cutbacks,

Competition between organizations for zones of intervention,

Partners, collaboration, and donor policies,

Changing economies and shifting political winds,

And so much more.

Our hearts, we believe, are good,

We believe ourselves to be compassionate, concerned

For human rights

And equality,

That our struggle for fair trade agreements,

Cultural respect,

And environmental protection,

Makes a difference every day,

For we worry about the future,

We have children of our own.

But blind our eyes we must

For in our international lives

We are accountable to none

Excepting our donors

Who measure by the pennies we spend

Insulated statistics ceteris paribus

And positive public relations.

While the torrent keeps tumbling and…

Cultures exacerbate their distances

Wars keep exploding,

Famines unfold,

Children emaciate and die,

Migrant homeless refugees trudge,

Economies insatiably consume resources,

Disparity glaringly grows between continents and classes…

A torrent so immense none can imagine.

My people scurry faster,

Our rational minds ever more addicted

To a porridge of ideologies

All liberal, humanitarian, and democratic

Thought drugs we must keep taking

To blind ourselves from the Hobbesian course we race

Against the Malthusian tidal wave.

A terror,

I tell you,

Impossible to conceive,

From the comfort of twenty four on seven electricity,

Working traffic lights,

Maintenance free car batteries,

Avocados at will in salad,

Online catalogues of anything,

Face time in two dimensions

Impossible to see:

The one thing we missionaries do not save us from

Us, you, me.