Alert readers will notice how this blog – this source of light and hope and deep melancholia, this free resource to aid aid workers and miracle workers everywhere, this catalogue of eruditions – has not really had much to say the last two months. This happens when I am back in the land of milk and honey and 24 flavours of dog food, latent xenophobia and trivia. I just don’t have much to say here. I am pretty much critical of everything. We are too lazy, too closed, too affluent, too absorbed with our own lives, too well fed and well entertained, and I am critical of all that, but there is only so long you can go on saying such in a blog like this.

So sorry to say it, but until such a time as we head back overseas, don’t expect too much from me here. I have, you may note, reverted the front page to my standard ‘in Australia’ front page. Please check in from time to time. I have really valued the comments, the company and the solidarity of many aidworkers and interested peoples from all over the world, that this blog has generated. Thankyou. I am humbled by your interest and your support. Keep reading some good blogs that wrestle with the world:

http://bloodandmilk.org/ – Alanna – another aidworker.

http://vasco-pyjama.livejournal.com/ – Pyjama Samsara – another Aussie returned to this soft place, but still in aid.

http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/ – journo and traveller and thinker.

http://harryrud.wordpress.com/ – aid fella in Afghanistan

http://www.sojo.net/ – Sojourners – Christians for justice and peace. people close to what I think Jesus really was on about. Forget church and holy piousness, get serious about justice.

Final thought, courtesy of Cam Tero, at a time when every fashionable website sported a little, ‘Make Poverty History’ ribbon. Cam’s view was that to really make a change in the world in line with global consumption and resource depletion, was that we needed to make affluence history. I think he is right. And you know, it relatively easy to campaign for the end to third world debt etc – all good stuff. But how about denying yourself that new TV/ set of clothes/ car/ holiday/ airconditioner etc etc. As the Buddha says, there are two ways to have enough: acquire more, or desire less.

Some people come back from overseas posts with beautiful Persian carpets, delicate ceramics and expensive thankyou gifts from their staff. Others come back with fat payouts in recognition of being in a hardship posting. Some come back with bonuses for completing their contracts. Most, at least, come back, with bottles of duty free whiskey. Even most aid workers come back and get a debriefing, a medical and sometimes a settlement grant to help with fitting in.

We came back with no settlement grant, no debriefing and no medical. I did however, in my last weeks in Kabul, pick up an enduring ear infection, duty free. It is now in its 14th week, and it shows no signs of fading. What a lovely memoir. Without being too graphic, the gooey ooze that has leaked from my ear the last month would be enough to ice a wedding cake with. My pillow gets crusted nightly with the discharge and in the morning looks like a snotted handkerchief. Friends have had to get used to me walking round with my head on one side, or with cotton tips poking out of my ears. My family have graciously gotten used to me being deaf and grumpy. But I have not got used to it, and today after seeing the specialist for a second time, I pulled over to the side of the road and found myself pretty weepy. I think it symptomatic of the strains of life in Afghanistan the last year. My dentist, last week, found that I have been grinding my teeth at night, which over the years has eroded my jawline, so I am now in danger of lockjaw. He attributes it to stress, which he gently suggested could be alleviated by not going back to Afghanistan, again.

Lock jaw and thick of ear. My very own Afghan take-home gift.

I can now identify (again) with Vasco Pyjama, whose blog I read every now and again. I met her in Afghanistan, then she went off to Indonesia, then Sudan and then back to home in Canberra. She then went through what I am now (again) going through: that weird kind of loss of identity and purpose that returning aid workers feel. We were part of something big, sometimes a life and death thing, always a dirty and dusty thing, in a place so horrible and wonderful that most people only read about in the news. 

And then we come home. From being a major player in the Afghanistan aid scene, I am just another fella in Perth. The residual dust in my khaki pants means nothing to anyone here (except my kids, who smell my clothes, and say ‘That smell is Kabul!’). The stories I have to tell are too strange for most people, and the languages I speak no use here. There are no emergencies to manage, no Government staff I have to sweettalk, no convoys to run me off the road. Buying a toothbrush, getting money from the bank, having a shower are all remarkably easy, and the peace and quiet and beauty are lovely and all quite nauseating.

And there are decisions to be made. I have to work out what to do. For the meantime, I am part-time working at a kind of NGO, a coalition of goodhearted folks who set themselves up a few years ago to help asylum seekers, in the face of some of the most h0stile and intransigent Government policy ever enacted towards victims of persecution and violence. This NGO helps out refugees; we locate them homes, give them loans, link them up with volunteers and altruistic doctors, find them schools for their kids and English classes. It is good work. But it is not where my heart it. Every night as we say prayers with the kids, I tell God to direct our paths, I remind him that we are willing to go back to Afghanistan.Or anywhere else.

We are not in a hurry. I don’t have anything to prove, and I am bone-tired, so I can enjoy the rest for a bit longer. But spare me, God, from staying here in this soft and comfortable place.

For a long time though Julie was pregnant, life continued just as it was. That’s the odd thing about being pregnant, at least for me. Everything is different, only it hasn’t happened yet. We kept doing what we could do. While we knew it would change, it hadn’t.

Well, now it has. Yesterday at 7.50 am, after a speedy 45 mins of hard labour, Rachel Tiia was born into our family. Rachel because we think it a beautiful name. Tiia is a Finnish name, and we have good friends from Finland, good memories of Finnish people, and know a good woman called Tiia.

Our other two, Pieta and Elijah seem pretty pleased about it all. As are we.  Delighted and grateful. But everything is now really different. I changed my first nappy of many years yesterday, we keep being disturbed by little cries and whimpers, there is baby stuff everywhere. It is very wonderful, and suddenly we are back to having a highly dependent little life in our hands. 

Sorry to my 5 readers. Being back in Australia is taking some getting used to, and I am not at my creative and productive best. Partly this is due to lingering illness – I have come back to Australia with an ear infection I picked up in Kabul, which is rendering me partially deaf and extremely uncomfortable most days. The way hearing loss mutes interaction and dulls relationships is interesting academically, but just plain upsetting and distressing at a personal level. I was giving some lectures at the university last week, and I had to keep stopping to ask if I was yelling. And I could barely hear the questions asked. Still, a friend of mine working in in India came back with TB. I shouldn’t expect that long term work in a conflict zone is cost free.

Partly I am at a low because of the way I have parted company with the agency I have been working with. I am feeling somewhat abandoned. And I am just missing the hard edge of Afghanistan.

I’m not asking for sympathy. But I guess this is also a way of saying that I probably don’t have quite as much to say about life, from this position smack in the middle of Western affluence and apathy. Or rather, I have lots to say, but it is bilious, critical and needs a bit of moderation. I may tone down in a few weeks, hopefully by which time I will be able to hear again.

There are some really bad drivers here. Of course, there were lots more in Afghanistan, but you expect that there. Here, everyone has at least passed a test haven’t they?

There are some really slow drivers. In Afghanistan, everyone drives as fast as they can, given the traffic, the military dominance on the roads, the crap roads, the bodgy cars. Here, I would expect people to zoom, because they can. But no. Some people obviously just like the soft feel of the tarmac under the wheels and never want it to end.

There are lots of parks and libraries and good free things. This is good for our kids. I can also ride my bike. This is good for me. I hadn’t realised how much I missed exercise. I can ride here, and no one will try to kidnap me, shoot me, run me off the road, or laugh at me. In fact, I am not even remotely interesting.

I am not interesting here. No one is much interested in me at all. I like that. I go to the shop and buy a toothbrush and no one asks me what country I am from. No one asks me for medical advice. They just ask me to pay.

We have had plenty of people ask, ‘So how was Afghanistan?’ I think that is a bit like asking, ‘ So how was cancer?’ or ‘So how was it watching your father die of mesothelioma?’ Not that Afghanistan is like a cancer, but that a long, chronic, difficult, draining, all consuming experience cannot adequately be asked about in such a question. Perhaps no question works. The best encounters have been where people ask a few, targetted, intelligent questions. And listen to our painful, awkward answers.

‘So how was Afghanistan’ is a lazy question.

We are both unsure about what is next. The baby is next, but then? We are not sure.

The book I wrote in 2004 ended with this question, ‘Asylum seekers will come [via boat] again, and when they do, what response will they receive?’ It is grievous to see that the Rudd Government is nearly as unregenerated as was the Howard Govt in its management of those seeking asylum in Australia.

More reflections as I get my head in order.

Sorry for the long silence. We are still on dialup internet. Weird. It takes about three weeks to get a high speed internet connection in Western Australia. It took us less than that in Kabul. Trying to have a meaningful internet relationship is hopeless on dialup, so I have gone a bit cold turkey and pulled out from all web contact. Actually a good thing to do. What a waste of time the internet can be…
Plus we are still under the radar, in the deep southwest of WA. We may re-emerge soon.

Sorry for the silence. We are back in Australia. It is not an easy transition, and we are lying low. Many people are very happy to see us, and we are happy to see old friends too, but that does not make this place home. ‘home’ has become a layered concept. It is not Perth anymore, it is not Kabul, nor Mazar, nor the other places we have lived. It is not the friends we have, nor where our family are.

I guess where I now feel most at home is a place where I am part of a community with shared goals and hopes. Being part of a committed group of people, all oriented towards a similar goal. Living closely with people in a life and with a lifestyle where we feel tangibly, daily, viscerally, the urgent needs of people who are poor and marginalised and suffering. And where we try to do something about those needs.

It is going to be hard to build such a community here in Perth.

A few days back, Dave asked me how I could be missing Afghanistan and why I was so ambivalent about being back here. It seemed to him from most of my writings that I was generally not happy living in Afghanistan. It was a good question.

My answer then was trite and a bit clever. My more reasoned response now, is that being happy is not really that relevant. Happiness is not a sign to me of doing what is right. Happiness has nothing to do with following the call of my conscience and my faith. I would rather be unhappy and faithful than happy, any day. Happiness ranks very low on my personal priority scale.

That said, it is quite happifying being here in the bush in SW Western Australia for a while. But I know within a month or so, I will be pining for blackouts, cold showers, suicide bombs, crap roads, the wail of the azan and the smell of the sewer. Pining for a life more miserable, but infinitely more meaningful.

We are in Singapore. As usua,l a spray of emotions as we leave a place we love and loathe and travel on to a place we love and loathe. Robin put it well in one of her comments, ‘I have become an exile’. 

Neither Julie nor I are excited about arriving in Perth in a few hours. Too much sadness about leaving Afghanistan. Layered with anger at the officious Indira Gandhi Airport clerk who charged us $XXXX for our excess baggage. And with gratefulness at the Changi Airport clerk who just ignored it all. Tired.  Relieved. Overcome. Guilty at leaving a place we are committed to. Were committed to.

It just gets to be too much, trying to make a difference. All the people I know and love in Afghanistan are still there, working, sleeping, fearing, hoping.

I have left and they remain.

Thursday and Friday are our weekends here; so today was our Sunday. In Australia, on a Sunday afternoon you might go for a bike ride, have a coffee at the cafe, watch a game of footy*, mow the lawn. 

Here in Kabul, I spent my Sunday afternoon equivalent being the surgical assistant on a vasectomy operation. My good friend F, who we have have known for many years now, has had enough kids to pass the vasectomy threshold. Back home, it would cost him $1500 for the operation. Here in Kabul, he can get it from Ken, the Canadian super-surgeon, for the price of a box of nice chocolate. And I was invited to come along and pass the forceps. Wow! Who would pass up such an opportunity. 

Ken the super-surgeon is a nonchalent fellow. Ken distressed and freaking out, and Ken happy and peaceful are hard to tell apart.  This operation he did in his own home, on the spare bed. He was kneeling for most of it, because the bed was low. And the light was poor. All up, it took about 40 minutes, but that was mainly because Ken fooled around putting the Eagles on the stereo first. (Eagles =  good music to listen to when your manhood is being assailed.) And because we had to find the sutures, which he had left in the basement. Ken has previously done the vasectomy op. of another friend of mine on his kitchen table, while his wife held the tools. Legend has it he did his own, by himself, one afternoon.

I have to say, I quite enjoyed it. I thought Ken could do the first snip and tie, and me the second, but selfishly he did it all himself. I’d make a good surgeon, and here in Afghanistan I have done more than my share of stitching up peoples heads,  hands, feet and so on. But two sisters before me are doctors, and when it was my turn to go to university, medicine was no longer in fashion.

There’s still time.

Happily, F came through it all smiling. There was the odd grimace and I’m not sure it was fun, but he held it all together. He is staying at our place tonight, before he heads back to his home elsewhere in Afghanistan tomorrow.  I’m considering offering this as a service to friends and colleagues back in Australia. Home-based vasectomy and sleep-over. Email if interested.

* anyone who knows me, would know that me watching a game of footy on Sunday afternoon is totally anachronistic.

We are leaving in a short time. Returning to Australia does not excite me a great deal. Sure, it will be nice to see my family and some close friends. I am keen to go south, to my parents home in the bush. But, oddly, fantastically, I am going to miss Kabul. I have grown to love this country in a way I never thought I would. Afghanistan is like a teenage boy. Infuriating, recalcitrant, messy, always destroying things and disappointing hopes. But you love him anyway.

And I will really miss some of the international team here. We are part of something bigger than ourselves. While many days I achieve nothing, and only occasionally do I do something that actually benefits someone here, I am at least part of the humanitarian effort, the effort to bring to the forefront love, forgiveness, justice, hope, tolerance.

We drove from Maimana back to Mazar yesterday. I have done this road when you used to go through the desert. It would take eight hours and five of those were spent ploughing though deep sand, one hour being bogged and 15 minutes avoiding bandits. Now the road is tarmac the whole way and not a bandit to be seen.

But you still can’t avoid the desert sand. 30 minutes out of Maimana, we hit a dust storm. The worst I have ever seen:

It blew like this for two hours, till outside of Sheberghan and we slowed to a crawl for most of that time. When we finally hit Mazar, everything was powdered in dust. 

And today we flew to Kabul. We arrived home to new razor wire on the walls. Lovely. I do like a bit of razor wire to finish off the look of a house. Makes it so.. homey.

I am out in Baiha, in the Myandara valley. We spend the day visiting projects, talking with men, driving up rivers and along some atrocious roads. All without mishap, and with good results. At 3.30 my colleague Mark, and Julie leave and head back to Maimana, some 90 minutes away. I am staying the night to talk with more people and to try to get a feel for the work they have been doing here for the last three years.

The afternoon is spent at the lower village of Jarak, and then driving right up the valley to see the projects there. In the evening a group of men come to visit me, and spend a long time interrogating me about Australia.

How far is it? Could we drive there? What is the religion there? Why are there so few people? How old are you? How long are you married? Why won’t you tell us how old you are? You’re only 30. No, he’s 45.

Time passes slowly and finally I tell them a story about Mullah Nasruddin and the lazy donkey. It involves a chilli, and they find it hilarious. Then, abruptly, they up the leave. It is 10pm, and I brush my teeth, to the amusement of my six Afghan colleagues, who think teeth brushing is for pansies. In the darkness I walk into the doorframe.

Afghan doors in rural areas are uniformly constructed to be 4 inches lower than me, so about 5′8″. This cunningly ensures that I hit my head at least once a day. This time, however, I really hit it: so hard, I fall to the ground. Afghans, who normally find any kind of personal injury quite amusing, fing my injury alarming and are solicitous. I’ve had enough attention for one day and roll into bed, assuring them I am fine. F, however will not give up. He is determined to comfort me, bandage my head, give me antibiotics and swab my skull with alcohol and so on. Finally I instruct him to go to bed and leave me alone, and he gets the message.

It is however, beautiful in the morning:

I was sitting at N’s house this morning, where a group of us had gathered to do what followers of Jesus often do, church. Since some time now we have not met in the large building where we used to meet, as it poses too great a security risk. Now, we vary times and locations, meeting in small groups across the city.

I sat on the toshak and look across at the person next to me. She had a German bible. She also had a sidearm. I guessed she was military. Not a particularly brilliant piece of logic: while there are a lot of international civilians here who have weapons, they are pretty discreet about them. I watched as she read her bible and followed the message, which this morning was given by a visiting Irishman.

Guns and bibles. Guns in church. Guns and Jesus.

Not sure what to make of that. I have never knowingly sat next to an armed person in church before. And I happen to be committed to non-violence. Not the kind of non-violence often wrongly construed as standing by while your children are hurt, but an assertive, intervening pacifism. I believe that war represents a failure of imagination and an abandoning of creativity, and that violence must be met with an equally determined, committed and powerful force. But many, maybe most Christians don’t think like that. Most, if you press them, allow for justifiable self defence, aggressive self defence, just war (whatever that is) and so on.

I went away wondering about it all. What could I say to her? Should I say anything? Should followers of Christ be police (for this is what she was; part of the German police training force here). Should Christians ever take up a weapon? Christ, as I read him, as I see him, abdicated the use of violence. He saw that the way to win, was to allow your enemy to show, through their use of violence, their weakness and brokenness. Such brokenness, made public, shames the enemy and forces him to negotiate, to examine himself, to change (I guess this wouldn’t work with the profoundly psychotic and disturbed… restraint might be the only option there?). I have tried to follow this pattern, imperfectly, since I decided to follow Christ some 18 years ago. It has seen me injured a number of times. One person tried to strangle me. Another struck me to the ground. I have stood between men with knives in their hands and I have gone and had tea with the drug dealer in our street, in an attempt to win him. It is a lot harder to do this than to use force. Force is quick, blunt and effective in the short term. But it never succeeds ultimately: every war, every occupation, the life of every person who once used violence shows that.

I didn’t feel very warmly towards my gun-carrying sister. I made some joke about her later, which neither she, nor the others present found funny. We need police, I know that. And to say that followers of Christ cannot be police is ridiculous. Have to think some more about this.

This photo is from a few years ago. I lost it on a memory card, forgot about it, and refound it a few days ago. It is from one of the main streets in Mazar. Just near this place, a small boy threw rocks at me in 1996. I chased him, caught him and whacked him round the ear. A crowd gathered, laughing and cheering – for him or me, I am not sure. We then lived there for about 3 and a half years, from 1999 to 2005. It was a great time for us, full of good and awful memories.

We are heading back to Mazar in a few days. I have 10 days work with another NGO, evaluating some programs. It will be good to do something different, and to get out of Kabul.

Then we are leaving Afghanistan, a few weeks later, to head back to Australia, for the birth of our third child. We are aware it might be a long time before we are back: about the time we will want to return, will be peak insecurity season, and the election will be only weeks away. So I expect some delays.

It is a good chance to greet old friends again, before we leave.

Some recent photography.

1. This is from a wall just near my home. I guess it is quite old, as it is now several years since tanks have openly traversed the city.

2. This woman is sorting rubbish. Specifically, our rubbish. Yes, that is our 4L olive oil tin next to her donkey. An odd experience, watching a poor woman search through what we have thrown away. I need to think a bit more about this. 

3. Driving through Kabul today, a wall of photos. Actually what preoccupied me most after I took this photo was that we immediately came across an old man, begging in the street. He was suffering some palsy, very bent over. I drew my wallet too late to give him anything. And the next old man I saw, we drove past as well. 

I have been thinking about them since.

4. This man repairs watches near the bank we use. He has an excellent array of old Soviet watches and his hands are nimble.

5. This last shot is Bush Bazaar. At this shop, several weeks ago, there was a Penis Pump for sale. Used. It was in a trunk of US soldier junk – stuff that I imagine he was getting rid of at the end of his tour of duty. But a penis pump? Is that how he passed the lonely nights listening to the whump of mortars and RPGs? What if a rocket shell landed while he was in a particular state? 

Don’t want to reflect more on that.

Respected Sir I am waiting for a positive response from ur side. Plz Find out the Attached CV with the Mail

Texting English makes its debut in job applications. Guess it had to happen sooner or later.

In reference to your vacancy announcement posted on the ACBAR Jobsearch website, I with indepth interest working for your ogranization in our indegenious latitude.

Sounds good, just need to find out what an indegenious latitude involves.

I have more than three years experience as an English teacher; I was an impressive and permanent teacher in oxford English language institute in Pakistan and as well as here in (Kabul) in many centers such as; international English language center, scholars English language center(where I was teachers in charger and fresh teachers trainer and as well as I was accountable for motivating the nearby centers’ teachers to participate us) and schunizia English language center(where I am an important element of inducing committee in order to lure and motivate the students to get other people impressed of our center to get admission here so that is the reason that our center is one of the best centers in its surrounding and I have translated an American short stories book which named (wind and water children) and I have also attended lots of workshops of teaching methodology, making plans and evaluation and published last year for Afghan children and I have written two hundred pages novel in English but it is not published yet and as well as I have written numberless poems in English and I am a short story writer as well ,so these things (being an English teacher, impressive element of inducing committee, teachers in charger, trainer and writer) are proofs that I can play a vital role in developing educational programs for Hagar clients and arranging and providing skills training and support in finding and maintaining employment)

That, I think, is all one sentence. Even I, a person of unusual prolixity, don’t commonly make sentences like that. But he did lure students, so have to give credit for that.

I am writhing in reference to your vacancy for the position of “Education & Employment Support Officer”

Well, I make mistakes like that in Dari all the time. And I have never had to write a job application in Dari. Can you imagine? It would be incomprehensible. Most recently I confused ‘megzera’ with ‘megreza’. So instead of replying, ‘Things are fine’, in response to the question ‘how are you doing’, I replied, ‘I am fleeing’.

We are recruiting about 9 new positions for Hagar. I made up a list of the jobs, brief descriptions and listed the requirements. I asked applicants to state how they met the requirements, and then posted the advertisements on a few websites here in Kabul.

Within minutes, I started receiving applications. 90% of these applicants have simply fired back a CV, shooting straight from the hip. None of them – repeat – none of them have addressed the requirements. Their cover letters are all addressed to ‘Dear Sir/ Madam’, despite the advertisement requesting that applications be addressed to ‘Phil Sparrow’. Some applicants haven’t even bothered to change the details of their documents from the last job they applied for – so I have applications for positions with WFP, the Afghan Human Rights Commission and so on. Many applicants claim to speak excellent English, but their letters are full of the most basic typos. People have had ‘Gander Training’, have studied ‘Enlish’, they describe themselves as speaking ‘perfection English’. Many begin like this:

“To Whom It May Concern

I have recently found out through your job vacancy that your prestigious office is to recruiting new employee for the above mentioned post of so, being equipped and having the qualification needed for the post I apply and have the confidence that I will be able to contribute positively toward the achievement of your organization goal and objectives.”

I think that sentence is from a Jane Austen novel. Or they have lines in them like this:

“I have full command on the relevant subjects. As far as the communication skill is concerned, I can register, interpret and convey my verbal and nonverbal stimulus and response and lead programs well up to the standards and policy of Hagar Afghanistan.”

Eh? Here’s a selection of the best/ worst bits:

Languages:        Read        Write        Speaking    Understand

• English         flounce     Flounce     Flounce         V. Good        
  

• Dari          Excellent    Excellent    Excellent    Excellent
  

• Pashto        Excellent    Excellent    Excellennt    Excellent
  

• Urdu        Excellent    Excellent    V. Good     V. Good

  
  

Dear Mr.Phil Sparow

I have an aim to join your organization and try my best to benefit your organization form

The most useful and high standard skill that I have developed during three non-stop simultaneous years…

I hope I will get the chance start with your organization and build up a new empire composed of experience and dedication.

To Whom It May Concern:

I would likes to apply for the above Position. I can feel myself a component candidate for the above position.

Skills

Human rights and gender and word.

Human rights in Afghanistan.

Repot writing.

Loses Rudeness abut woman’s.

Loses the currency without cultures abut the woman.

Participate of the woman’s in the community.

HIV.

Participate of the woman’s in dally live.

Lose contrariety with woman.

Dues defective effect.

What is ‘Dues defective effect’? Is it a skill I need in an employee, that they lose rudeness about woman’s? Do I want an empire builder? Flounce English? (Sounds dangerous). And what is a ‘component candidate’? Do I need to know that that candidate feels himself?

“I am seeking a professionally rewarded and challenging position in a company that is aggressively expanding in Afghanistan market.”

I think the Taliban is aggressively expanding in Afghanistan. Perhaps he should apply there.

Honestly, it was a depressing afternoon’s reading. Such desperation, such hope, such dreams of a better future were hidden in these applications. I have put all the worst and unusable applications aside, and when I get a moment, I will write back, asking them to spell check (really, it is not so hard these days with Office software), asking them to address letters to the listed person, asking them to address the criteria.

It reminds me of when we were recruiting for a finance manager back in 2000, and got a string of people who claimed they were all trained accountants. I tell no lie, not one of them got all the answers right on a very basic maths test. Not one could balance a ledger. Well, to be fair that was in Taliban times, when all the skilled people were fleeing here as fast as they could push a wheelbarrow full of their bits of things.

The sad thing is that most of these people are probably competent enough. If they were less frenzied in their applications, and took say, 1 hour, to look at the description, address the letter to me, get the name of our organisation right, check out the website, and give me two or three lines on how they meet the requirements, they’d get an interview. What’s with the rush? It is not as though the first application in my inbox gets the job.

I’ll let Mr JT have the last word here:

Dear Sir/Madam,

please find attached, That I am Candida in below positon so I sent my resume for your consideration and I am looking Forward to having an opportunity how I can Contribute with your team.

I dont think we want anyone who has Candida in below position.