Communication Breakdown

A source of confusion for me lately has been the fact that the company in charge of arranging for my car and driver has given me a new person almost every single time over the past few weeks, sometimes twice in one day, without ever telling me. Occasionally, they’ll call Itsy Bitsy or Teeny Weeny and tell them, but that’s still rare. So that means that I have to guess which car and driver combo is mine, all through trying to communicate with someone who typically speaks almost no English, and then there’s me, still barely speaking any Vietnamese. It’s not a really great set-up, and Teeny Weeny has complained to the manager of the company several times about all the switches. As far as I know, it has nothing to do with me being a horrible and demanding bitch or something like that. At least, I would hope it has nothing to do with that, as I don’t think I have been.

I was running ahead of schedule this morning, the happy result of waking up about 45 minutes before my alarm, just because. I did a little exercise, although my partially shredded toe is a bit of a hindrance, then hopped in the shower, and went down to breakfast after getting dressed for the day. At about 8:10, my cell phone rang, and a very short and confusing conversation ensued:

Dude: Is Mrs. Amanda?

Me: Um…yes. Can I help you?

D: I am driver, I wait downstairs. You come now.

M: You are supposed to come at 8:30…I will be down soon. What car are you driving?

D: …I am driver, you come now!

M: But what kind of car? What color?

D: (silence)

M: What kind of car? Toyota? Mitsubishi? Color? Blue, white…?

D: …kind… car? I drive, you come now!

M: (wearily) fine, I will be down soon.

Now, let me say first, I really, truly do not expect any of these guys to understand a lot of English, but if you know that whoever you send is going to be driving a foreigner around, there are a few basics they should understand. Like when they say “What time come back?” and I say “5 pm”, then the manager, with his own tenuous grasp of English, calls me back 10 minutes later to ask what time, and also doesn’t understand what I tell him, so I have to put Teeny Weeny or Itsy Bitsy on the phone. I can even write it down, as I have on occasion, and that still doesn’t cut it.

Ah…life in za tropics.

So, one thing that I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet is the BYOTP bathrooms here at the office. I had to pinch a roll of toilet paper from my hotel room to bring with me to work, because I think that there has been actual toilet paper in the bathroom three or four days since I’ve been here. If there happens to be toilet paper and soap available on the same day, it’s like Christmas! Yee haw!

I got an e-mail about working on a project in Senegal, although I’d be a home-office based client manager, and possibly a substitute urban planner. Not that I have any grand illusions about Senegal being a fantastic and glorious place, it’s a country with problems like any other, but I would really like the chance to go there – it seems interesting and I’d like to get more work in Africa. But given my amount of “road time” lately, I would also be JUST fine staying in the home office and managing from a distance. It’s too bad I can’t swap Senegal for Yemen, though. But opportunities like this are part of why I want to do something like an intensive French course – I emphasized to the guy doing the proposal that I didn’t want to misrepresent my French abilities, they’re still limited, and I don’t think I could conduct business in French. (He’d asked me to emphasize my French skills, which is why it came up.) But I’d like some more work in Francophone Africa, hence needing the lessons.

But again – right now the only thing I really need is time at home to reconnect a little.

Two reports to get out today – one should definitely be done. The other….well, I’ll work on it tonight and have it ready for tomorrow morning. Then it’s time to haul butt for the final report! Gah!