One of the hardest things about living in the developing world is that things so easy as to be taken completely for granted back home can take hours or days here and that can drive one up the wall.
This week I have had 11 employees quit, been threatened with a class action lawsuit (seriously, we had to meet with a lawyer), and dealt with the plethora of annoying minutiae that come par for the course with life here. I normally have a pretty high capacity to deal with these things but my emotional resources were low and so things that at other times would amount to small annoyances and nothing more, were really difficult to deal with.
Things are mostly better now though. The employees are back, they endured a gruelling 9 hour day of training (add 5 hours of travel time for me to get to the training site and back) yesterday but are now fully trained to take harvest measurements. Harvest has begun, and people are in the fields today. I am taking my first 2 day weekend in a month, as my weekends are normally either 1 or 0 days and I couldn't be happier about it.
Hopefully all the fieldwork/data collection fires are under control for now and I can take some time to breathe. Much as I would love to switch off my phone for the weekend, I do want to keep my ear to the ground in case something goes wrong as it often does in the first few days rolling out a new activity. I am also excited for Monday as I'll be in the field observing my field officers conduct some of their first harvests! Damn, I love my job...
Hang in there, Leslie! Sometimes it helps to go into another room and scream... although that can hurt your throat. Or throw things (not precious things). Or... well, anyway, I really sympathise! We're all cheering for you.
ReplyDelete