Top captions, winning wonkus, and a new and seriously embarrassing photo competition

June 4, 2010

     By Duncan Green     

It’s Friday, and in the interests of accountability, transparency, yadda yadda yadda it’s time to announce the winners of two previous competitions, and launch a third.

First up, the winner of the photocaption competition is quite clearly Matt (see pic). But thanks also for “I never pictured Hugo Chavez and John Cleese hooking up” (Soren). Van, I have no idea what “Needs more cowbell” means….

What am I thinking?  Comment below

Second, the winning wonku (haikus for wonks). I asked Takumo Yamada from Oxfam Japan to be the judge and jury on this, and his preferred entrant from a crowded (ahem…) field is Oxfam’s very own Caroline Pearce (let me know if you want your free From Poverty to Power Caroline, but I fear you already have quite a few copies):

Decentralise all
power to the people
or the state off the hook?

With an honourable mention for both entries by D. Watson on Chris Blattman’s blog:

We’ll decolonize
Give conditionalities
Why has nothing changed?

OR

Down, colonial wolves!
Our own wolves will rule us now.
Why has nothing changed?

[actually, the last one isn’t a wonku – too many syllables. Takumo, you’re fired…]

To which I would add the proposed geeku (the genre is already splintering badly) from James S

When we assume that
ceteris paribus holds
true, we’re in trouble

and I thought Alex Evans on the post Copenhagen world was closest to the real haiku spirit

Waves buffet the boat;
Rocks in the water ahead.
But who’s at the helm?

And now, because people seemed to enjoy the last one, and to show just how painful transparency can be, here’s the most embarrassing photo from my whole time at Oxfam (and that’s a pretty high bar). White boy in Africa, being greeted with robes, ceremony and a very small hat (OK, maybe the real problem is the very big head) by the paramount chief of Bakori, a charming emir in an extraordinary pink palace in northern Nigeria. Over to you for the captions. I’m pretty sure I will regret this.……

Enter your captions in the comments below

June 4, 2010
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Duncan Green
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Aid
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