Was heading out of the shopping centre today when I was foisted upon by some people from the UNHCR. Usually with begging charity people in shopping centres I don't give a glance, the time of day or anything else. But I'd never seen the UNHCR in a shopping centre so I decided to stop and have a chat. I didn't really intend to sign up for anything, I have too much debt to be taking on another financial commitment, but I still somehow wanted to find something out. I asked if I could make a one off cash donation and the very polite African man who'd eye-contacted me said sorry but we can't take cash, you'll have to fill in a form and arrange a monthly donation from your bank account. I asked him if I could just have a form or some information or something and he said that he could only give a form to fill in, which they would have to keep. Oh well, but we chatted for a long while, must have been half an hour at least. I felt guilty and embarrassed after a while to be keeping him from his job, but then I thought about it later and I realised he was probably not getting paid anything anyway. He seemed sincere enough, committed enough to the cause of helping the refugees. The focus of the campaign he was spruiking for was the ongoing genocide in Darfur. We chatted about that for a while, I asked him if it was true these reports that the Janjaweed were now raiding camps of refugees in Chad as well as Sudan. He said that the government of Chad had actually declared war on Sudan. That came as a bit of a surprise. I thought Chad would be far too weak a state to deal with Sudan, let alone have any chance of despatching them in a conflict. We went on to talk about North Korean refugees in China, the other great humanitarian catastrophe unfolding, as well as the dire situation in his own native Zimbabwe, the destroyed credibility of Morgan Tsvangeri, the unravelling of the Mugabe government as it resorts to last ditch populism, destroying the economy as it goes.

Afterwards I felt pleased to be able to have a reasonably intelligent conversation with a political fellow traveller. Most people here seem more interested in interest rates than the situation in the world, the world beyond their mortgages and car repayments. The guilt at having wasted the poor man's time for really nothing nagged, then I decided that I really ought to offer my services to the UNHCR. If there's anything that I really care about it's refugee rights. Thanks to accident of birth, the luck of being able to travel with an Australian passport, I've been able to go wherever I want in the world and stay there as long as I liked, no questions asked. The injustice of all those people in far more precarious circumstances than me who could not move about so freely when their need was so much greater than mine really got to me sometimes. Australia isn't half as nice to many of the countries I stayed in as they were to me. So when the uni break begins I'm going to do what that sincere African bloke has done and volunteer to work in shopping centres, maybe just once a week during the uni holidays or something. At least something to give something back to the world that has really given me a lot, more than I think I really ever deserved. I came home and looked around at all the stuff in my flat and remembered what he'd said about the refugees in Chad. "They come across the border with nothing, not even a plastic bag." I suddenly felt rich in my little flat with it hallway bathroom, its kitchen and gas stove and big fridge and little bar fridge and shelf full of books and racks full of cd's and dvd's and the clothes, the cameras, tv, pc, shoes, backpacks, swiss wristwatch, food in the fridge, three types of gin, two of vodka, one of tequila and one of whiskey, martini glasses and whiskey tumblers, pictures on the wall, stereo system, soaps, eaux de toilettes, dietry supplements, mobile phone, landline phone and the restaurant dinners the pub and cocktail bar sessions. Why do I think that I'm poor?