sometimes i forget the power of words. like sometimes there’s a difference between my description of something and how i actually feel about it. and apparently my last post has triggered a bit of concern for my emotional well-being.
what i left out is the fact that i like a challenge. i like having to rely on my wits, and i like being able to make my own hard to reach goals under less than favorable circumstances.
my goal this trip: to help. more specifically, to do whatever i can to make this database i’ve developed a useful and used tool. what’s funny is that that has very little do with the actual development of the system (mostly because it’s done) and much more to do with the people. it has to do with talking and sorting out a thousand human and cultural issues before even sitting down at the computer. and then it has to do with sitting down next to every person who’ll be using the database and letting them drive.
and the unfavorable circumstances: living out of a hotel in cambodia for 2 weeks, traveling days to get there, getting dropped into a tense work situation all by myself, navigating countless office rivalries and personalities, being all by myself when i’m not at work, not speaking the local language, being totally unfamilar with the native culture and surroundings.
it is impossible for me to send a meaningful email from work. i am in cambodia for work. i am working. i am permanently in a work state of mind. i wake at 6am. eat breakfast at the hotel. get to work by 8am. and then i am at work until 5 or later. i get home to my room which hasn’t been air conditioned all day, and it feels hotter inside than it is outside, and i strip off all my clothes and just stare. at the ceiling. at a wall. out the window. maybe for an hour. until either hunger or the bathroom or the need to work more calls me. eventually the room cools down, and i am back on my laptop, and i will myself to do more as long as i can. music helps. small discrete accomplishable goals help. then it’s getting close to 9pm. i’m exhausted because it was only the other day that i arrived on the other side of the world. getting to sleep won’t be hard. staying asleep til 6am might be.
these trips are like exercises of will. like would i be able to cut off my own arm with a dull knife if i was trapped by a boulder with no food in a canyon crevice? or will i be able to wake myself at 6am and endure insurmountable frustrations only to find out at 5:30pm i am on my own as far as finding transportation between the embassy and the hotel?
I traveled to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in March 2003 to do some database work for the USAID mission there (just as I’ve done in Kazakhstan and Cambodia).
i wake up on the first morning and look out my window in the sea cliff hotel and this is what i see: the indian ocean!
the people at the mission only work a half day on fridays, so we were pushing to get everything done before noon. of course that didn’t happen. i had some lingering reports to complete and unexpected bugs to tame. and for the first time, i actually did some one-on-one training with people on how to use the system. just after 2pm i finished everything on my list to do, and by 3pm we left “fortress america”.
bought suntan lotion at the hotel, found out tanzanite goes for $200/carat, and sat by the pool, shirtless, snacking a bit before an evening of “nyama choma” (local tanzanian cuisine), which (you guessed it) essentially comprises meat on a stick (my favorite!).
we had beer, we got to hob nob with vicky chuwa (our contact at usaid) and her sister (who works for a UN organization in Tanzania), as well as a string of various siblings, acquaintances, and colleagues, all locals in some sense, but locals a little better off than your average tanzanian. it was wonderful. catherine left early to catch her plane, and soon the discussion turned to iraq.
i got a mouthful of accusative questions about why america (here i represented “america”) is so headstrong and brain dead. of course my pleading that i am so “on their side” (whatever that means), did not in anyway assuage their grave concern about how this particular war (and our present government in general) might destabilize societies all over the world, making it unsafe for americans to go anywhere.
i don’t watch the news anymore (helps not having a tv), at most i read the headlines of the top news items on Google News. in any case, i think this makes me less brainwashed by the present television news media than most (which, i must say, has created an almost orwellian environment, convincing a great number of americans that we are already at war, that iraq is reponsible for sept 11, that war is an inevitability). but i have some sort of faith or feeling or rational belief that we will not go to war.
but enough of this!
tomorrow i head to the airport around 10pm to catch my flight at midnight, so I’ll have a whole day to get out of the hotel and go into the city to explore and take pictures. i heard that the reason for the heightened security and the advice that americans not go out at night is credible information that americans may be the targets of terrorist attacks in east africa. should make for an interesting day.
looking forward to seeing everyone back in chapel hill.
