What is WRONG with us? lol. Oh well. This is happening a bit too frequently for comfort.

Remember we reported that we had found our teams of TOTs and Watchdogs not too long ago? Saying glory hallelujah while we were about it? Well! So much for the haloos and yays. Suranjan and Dougie went in to check and interview the short listed candidates for themselves and as the discussions wore on, some doubt, some false note crept in. They were masters at identifying irregularities and this was no exception. Some of the people who were touted as being “it and a bit” by some of our field staff were found to be seriously lacking in any sort of skill. Further inquiries by the GMSL leaders found that some of those who had been long listed were actually buddies or those with whom our field staff had established special relationship (ahem) during the course of their work. What can we say?

“Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck YUCK! Go away and do it all over again and this time, get the REAL men and women into the long list because we know you know who they are!”.

And…. so it came to pass. The second round of candidates proved to be the real deal. We had no problems with them and our leaders were able to get the final list of our well… call ’em whatever you want … coaches, trainers, community mobilizers, field assistants … guardians of the KCF if not the galaxy… whatever. 8 women and 15 men who truly deserved to help their communities help themselves were finalized. Dodged that one. Phew.

But then again, this is the type of thing that makes our work so … bloody interesting yeah? This understanding of human fallibility. No one was penalized for tracking down a bad path. They were just told not to do it again. As we said in our promise to the world “However, we also recognize in our lessening, in our self-destructive debilitation, an inherent and undeniable albeit frustrating and agonizing beauty to our kaleidoscopically colored and shaded world, its plants, its animals and its people. In that diversity, we know people are varied in their thoughts, words, actions and desires and each possesses a gamut of qualities ranging from the very good to the very bad but all of it is what makes up the reality of us and ours. In these dark times we live in, we truly know that when given the choice, we more often choose wrong than choose right. We, therefore, choose to be kind. First to ourselves and the possibility that we shall err and fail and then towards that very possibility inherent in every other sentient being“. Our teams are great. They may fail a few times but we know something about them. They have never, so far, ever made the same mistake twice and that is not because we chose the easy way out by throwing the rule book at them. In our country, that works contrapositively. No, we reminded them of our traditions of straight talking and even straighter shooting. They got it. We know it. That second round of TOTs and watchdogs? They were pure diamonds in the rough and it was that very same bunch of our field personnel who gave them to us.