one more thing

I had forgotten this happened, because I was sound asleep at the time, but the phone rang last night at some absurd hour - I don't even know what time it was because my eyes couldn't focus on a clock. I stumbled out into the living room to answer, and here is, approximately how the conversation went:

me: "...hello..?"

him: "hello!"

me: "hello?"

him: "hello!" (this happens a lot - apparently their phone greetings here are different than ours, so phone calls can stall out on the "hello" part if you don't go directly into "asalaamu alaikum")

me: "who are you calling for, please?"

him: "hello!"

me: "who are you calling for??"

him: "hello!"

me: "I don't speak Urdu, who are you calling for??" (yes, I should have just hung up)

him: "I am in love with you"

me: *click*

Judy had told me that she would sometimes get random phone calls or text messages from men, some even sent her text messaged poems. Very odd. Kind of like in college, when the freshman guys would figure out that phone numbers in the dorms were sequential, and would then make obscene phone calls to entire hallways of girls, one by one. But I don't think that these are a bunch of overprivelaged guys who are having the greatest thrill of their life because they get to drink Bud Light Ice and make obscene phone calls at the same time.

However, I resent being woken up by either one.

Another slight change in plans

In, what I consider to be, a spectacular and uncharacteristic display of advanced notice for my company, it appears that I will be staying here a few weeks longer than originally planned. We’re having a few issues with the project, and essentially, I have to stay here until my co-worker Judy returns in August. So this means that, if all goes according to the plan I have in my head, I’ll leave Karachi on August 10, stop in the UK for a few days for some time with family and to decompress, then home the following week – no later than the 17th. I have mixed feelings about it, because although I am adapting to being here, and Lois will be back July 25th, and all of those things – I miss my friends and my family and my life! Ah well – you guys will all still be there when I get back, right? This is actually a good opportunity for me with my company, because…well, because no one is under the impression that I’ve had the time of my life here, so the fact that I’ve said I’ll stay a few extra weeks to help us out of a potentially sticky situation is good for me. (Team player, dedication, blah, blah, blah…) So, I guess that’s my biggest bit of news. I think I would be feeling a lot worse about it if I weren’t going to Vietnam in the middle, but that’s going to be a nice break. I leave for there next Friday night, the 24th, and I come back here Wednesday July 13th.

Apparently, they have my visa all sorted out for Vietnam, but they had to get it changed, because the first version had my name down as “Mr. Amanda Goebel”. I found this particularly funny because my co-worker and officemate, Miho, has a difficult time with making people who have never met or spoken to her understanding that Miho is, in fact, a Japanese woman’s name. One of our colleagues in the Philippines, who has worked with her over e-mail on a number of things over the past year and can never seem to remember that fact, continues to address all his e-mails to “Dear Mr. Miho”, despite her signing her name “Ms. Miho Ihara” and our boss saying “MIHO IS A WOMAN.” I can see how he might miss the first part if he wasn’t looking too carefully. But I thought that my boss’s clarification was hard to misinterpret.

I’ve been out two nights in a row, which is something of a record for me here. Wednesday night, I went out with Samina and Faruq, the furniture designers that I met. They are just about the coolest people, very funny, smart, well-traveled, and just very interesting. We had a lovely conversation over dinner, Faruq told me about driving from London to Karachi when he was 21 with a group of friends. Apparently London to Karachi and back is about 16,000 miles. You’d better pick your road trip buddies really carefully if you’re going to make that haul. They actually reminded me a lot of my own parents, who I think are also very cool. We went to this place called Okra, off of Zamzama Street, which is, semi-jokingly, referred to as the “Rodeo Drive of Karachi”, with all kinds of super chi-chi boutiques and restaurants, and the most upscale Pizza Hut I’ve ever seen. Okra is very trendy with really tasty and creative food, everything was delicious. I had mango carpaccio for dessert, which was served with sugared coriander. Very, very interesting!

Last night, a bunch of people from the project went out to an Italian restaurant – the same one I went to with Lois and Judy a few weeks ago. It was as good as I had remembered, which was a relief, because you never want to be the one to give a crappy recommendation. It was in the same general area as Okra, and right across the street from a phalanx of shoe stores. (I made a mental note and will be heading back there soon…) We all had a really nice time together, but it made for two late nights in a row, which meant two mornings in a row that I’ve missed working out. I’ll get back on the wagon, but I am definitely dragging a little bit. With insufficient sleep and exercise, my post-lunch blood sugar crash feels worse, and keeping my eyes open feels like a Herculean task. If only I lived in a country where people took siesta, I would be the happiest girl ever. At the very least I’d be a pretty darn well-rested girl. I know, I know – my life is just so hard. I’ll stop.

I just realized something – I arrived a month ago today. Wow – time has gone faster than I thought it would. It’s a very strange thing, being here. It’s surreal and it feels like this isn’t really life, but of course it is, because I’m here and time is passing. When I get home, everyone will have been busy doing things and experiencing things for the past few months, just as I have been doing things and experiencing things here. It’s odd to think that I may have to go home for the fact that I’ve been gone to sink in. I’m having jetlag of the subconscious, which Barbara Kingsolver talks about in one of her books. My dreams are mostly still about things from home, people and places, etc. But I’m sure that when I get back, my dreams will be about things in Pakistan, Vietnam, and England. Maybe that’s how our minds keep us connected to several places at once, I don’t know. But it’s interesting. And it will be nice to get back to my life, even if that time is still a couple of months away. (I need to remind myself that the first month has gone by quickly in order to not feel freaked out by that sentence.)

*gasp*

So, who wants to take a guess as to what the most frightening sound I’ve heard since I’ve been here has been? No, no, it’s not gunshots or bombs – although if I’d ever heard either of those things here, they’d top the list. But the closest I’ve come to that was a tire blowout on Sharae Faisal, which made me jump, but isn’t quite the same thing. The scariest sound came last night at about 9:30…the sound of my air conditioner dying. Just…dying. Since I’m not an HVAC expert, I was powerless to resuscitate it, I just turned all the ceiling fans to 11 and tried to go to sleep. I’m going to inform the very nice gentleman who owns the house (and is the Executive Director of the company where I’m working) about this today and hope that he can get someone over to fix it, ins’Allah (I have totally misspelled that, just in case you were wondering – it’s pronounced “in-sha-la”.)

Ins’Allah is, as my mother has said, the great Pakistani escape clause. Whenever someone says that they are going to do something or that something is going to happen, they always say “ins’Allah”, which means “if it is God’s will”. Well, that’s a lovely saying, but the upshot is that, if whatever they said would happen doesn’t happen, or whatever they said they’d do doesn’t get done, then there’s really no one to blame for it, because it obviously wasn’t God’s will. So if your driver doesn’t turn up because he overslept, or if that addition to your house doesn’t get built on time because your crew was working at 50% speed…well, that’s obviously God’s will. What can you do about it?

One other thing that I have clearly noticed here is how accommodating and hospitable Pakistani people are – it’s something ingrained in their culture. The only down side of this is that people will always tell you that something is no problem, no trouble at all, even when it’s quite clear that it actually is problematic or troublesome, if not both. Any attempts I have made to give people a sincerely-offered out in such situations (“if it’s any problem at all, I can easily reschedule – I’m happy to make myself available whenever you’re free, etc.”), have always been met with “oh no, Amanda, it’s really no problem”. I’m starting to get a complex about asking people to do anything. Of course, someone saying that something is “no problem” doesn’t always mean it’s going to happen, but people really will go far out of their way to accommodate you. Ins’Allah…

It looks as though my schedule for Vietnam is going to be as follows. I’ll leave here next week, I may have to stop in Bangkok for a day or two to sort out my visa if I can’t get it on arrival in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon), then it’s going to be a few days in the field, followed by a return to Ho Chi Minh City for the remainder of my time there, as I work out cost estimates for our resettlement and poverty impact assessment baseline surveys. Then I return to Pakistan, and as far as I know, the plan is still for me to leave here on July 20th, as scheduled. I will be stopping in the UK for about a week to spend some time with family and decompress a little, then it’s back to DC! I have a feeling that it’s going to fly by.

I don’t know if they’ll want me to stay in Pakistan longer – it’s not my first choice (understatement), but with G-man gone, it doesn’t seem like as bad a prospect as it did before. Of course, with him gone, and with him having no interest in handing over the project to someone to make sure it doesn’t fall flat, things may grind to a halt for a little bit. I imagine that we’ll take the blame for that, but what can you do? I’m just going to try to document everything, and get ready to go to VIETNAM!!!

Have I mentioned that I’m excited about this yet?

Because I am.

Things have a way of working out

So, I just received a very interesting bit of news today. G-man is receiving a promotion of sorts, and will therefore no longer be involved with this project!! Quite unexpected, I must say, but the best news that I’ve had since discovering that I was going to Vietnam (still no details, but I think I leave in a couple weeks). Apart from the obvious reasons why this is a great thing for me personally, this will make my job easier if they decide to hire someone who has any actual experience in doing community development work. Clearly, they may not decide that, and the person with whom I end up working could be just as clueless as G-man, but at least the door is open for some improvement! Now what I would really like to see is if we could modify the village selection that has already been made in order to select villages that are actually near the project roads designated for improvements, instead of the villages his landlord buddies control that are nowhere near the project roads. The landlords will be the real ones benefiting from the first stage of the project as it currently stands, which bugs the crap out of me.

I doubt that changes are possible at this stage, and the villages chosen could still stand to benefit from assistance, as most of them could in this area, it’s just that the ones chosen have no relation to the project, and it rather defeats the purpose. (This may be a little confusing, but I figured that too many details would bore you all to tears. But if you want to know what the heck I’m talking about, I’m happy to explain a little more.) The short version is this: we're making improvements to the road network and want to measure how improvements in rural roads can help alleviate poverty in rural villages. Well, it's hard to determine the impact of road improvements when the villages are nowhere near the roads.

Apparently, G-man’s superior, who had been told about his behavior, decided to take the opportunity to speak with him yesterday and basically told him to watch it and behave himself. I would be curious to have known what his response was, but at this point, I no longer care since he’s not my problem anymore. I just hope that he doesn’t become someone else’s problem, although I'm probably being a smidge naïve on that one.

I had a feeling that something was up, however. I’ve been trying to meet with him since he returned from his last trip to the district last week, and he’s cancelled on me four times. Yesterday was the best excuse, where he told me that a friend’s mother had died and he needed to go to the funeral or something. Later that day, several of my colleagues came back from a meeting at which he had been present. Why he couldn’t just say that is beyond me, but again – not my problem anymore. HURRAH!!!!!

I’ve been thinking about how excited I am to go to Vietnam, and how much things have changed. 36 years ago, the best news my parents ever got was that my father was not going to go to Vietnam, and for me to find out that I am going has put more of a smile on my face than anything has in quite a while. I still don’t have final word on timing from the project manager, but I expect that shortly. After my “it’s okay if you want me to work with someone else” e-mail, my boss came back, replying to all, and said that it was NOT okay for me to work with someone else, and he really wants me to take ownership of the process. And…now I’m nervous. You know how, when you think you can do something, and someone more experienced than you says “I don’t think you can handle this”, there is a tendency to think that, perhaps you’ve missed something and it will be more complicated than you had thought? So I’m second-guessing myself a little (lot) now, but I’ve warned my boss that I may be testing the limits of his “there’s no such thing as a stupid question” policy, and I hope he stays in Dr. Jekyll mode, instead of busting out the time-honored response of “I’m really busy right now, you'll have to figure it out yourself. Welcome to the world of development!”

On the way home yesterday, I stopped at a fruit stand to buy some mangos, as they’re in season and…well, I’ve already declared my love of mangos more than enough, so I’ll just assume that my wish to purchase them isn’t a huge mystery. In any event, I mimed to the nice man how many I wanted, and he tried to mime the price (ever try miming prices? It’s not as easy as you would think, particularly when your miming buddy thinks that miming in Urdu will be helpful.). Finally Hamid got out of the car and helped everyone to decipher and move on. Good times. So we got back in the car and Hamid said that the price was 30 rupees per kilo. I asked him if that was a good price or a bad price…and he laughed. I took that to indicate the latter. However, since that still works out to less than $.15 per pound, I’m not going to pick a fight with anyone over it – especially not some old guy missing a few teeth who earns a living selling fruit an d can certainly use the extra cash. Although I have a feeling that if we’d asked Hamid to purchase them for us in the first place, it would have gone a little differently.

In any event, things are looking up on a number of fronts. I’d still describe life here as “interesting”, but yeah…it’s definitely getting better.

the lesson for today, grasshopper...

...is humility. There have been a bunch of e-mails going back and forth about the Vietnam project, and I just got another one, this time directly from the project manager, saying that he didn't mean it personally, but essentially, he doesn't think I'm qualified to do the job, and he wants to have someone senior on the project, to whom I can offer assistance. Now, as a little background, I knew my boss had proposed me for this position ages ago and was told by this guy that there was no way I could do the job. My boss said, au contraire mon frere, she's wicked smaht and can definitely do it. (My boss is neither French nor from Boston, but I wanted to spice things up a little.) So there has been much debate about this, and the project manager finally agreed to use me, but came back again today with the above reiterated opinion.

Now, one of the things that irritates me the most in life is when people will talk about me, and not to me. Makes me nuts. So I decided to just take the ol' bull by the horns, so to speak, and e-mail this guy myself, without the endless "reply to all"ing that had been going on. I said that I could understand his concerns because all he knew of me was what was written on a piece of paper, having never met or worked with me before. I added that I was confident that I could do the work, but had no problem working alongside someone more senior if that would make him more at ease and make the project run more smoothly.

The facts of the matter are that I'm still getting experience with this kind of thing, and this is specifically about resettlement, so I have a lot to learn, and I really don't have a problem learning from someone who has done this more than I have. I am well aware that there are many things in my field that I still don't know, and I have never claimed to be omniscient. (For those of you who beg to differ, let me just add that I'll only bother to argue about things about which I'm pretty darn confident - this does not, however, mean that I think I'm omniscient. It just means that I think I know what I know. End of tangent...) So I'm hoping that this was the gracious way to address the issue, as the project manager prefaced his e-mail with "please don't think I don't want to work with you", from which I inferred that he thought I was taking it personally. I'll admit that I'm a little intimidated by the thought of going to work for someone who doesn't think I can do what I'm there to do, but I am going to try to use that as motivation to prove him wrong. We'll see how that goes.

Sometimes just getting to the freaking project is more work than the project itself, I tell you. Oy.

I had a lovely time at the pool today, and there were actual people there besides the guys who work there, so that was a surprise. Apparently Karachi is not totally devoid of expats at the moment. Who knew? I think I have a smidge of heat rash or something, but that's hardly catastrophic. I'm up to doing sets of twelve laps, so that's very exciting for me. One of the girls in the office asked me what I do when I'm not at work. It was not a very long conversation. However, among other things, I mentioned that I like to go swimming. Her eyes widened with horror as she asked "do you actually wear a swimming costume??" When I said that, well - yes, I did, she looked as though I had just told her that I liked to walk down the street buck naked just to see what would happen. I thought of explaining that it wasn't as though I was prancing around in a thong or anything (leaving aside the fact that I don't "prance" anyway), but decided that it was best to just change the subject. I haven't been to the beach here, but apparently, women go swimming in...well, they still have to be completely covered, so they're fully clothed. I suppose that in comparison, I might as well be naked. Fortunately for all involved, however, I am not.

Particularly in light of the whole "heat rash" thing. Ick.

I had a lovely chat with the guy who lives downstairs, a very nice Finnish man, and our environmental guy, who is also Finnish, and in Karachi for a couple of days. The environmental guy's English is excellent, but I have to say - if he ever wants to pursue a career in hypnotherapy, he's all set. He speaks in this very low, quiet, monotone, and it's like being with a human quaalude. I almost nodded off, and I've even taken a nap today. It wasn't as though he didn't have anything interesting to say, but that voice just about did me in. I'm still trying to wake up.

Back to work tomorrow, and back to trying to placate G-man, who somehow managed to completely botch the surveys that were tested. I have several issues that I have to raise with him, but I need to figure out how to do it without resorting to saying "DUDE!!! What are you thinking???" As much as he hasn't been a paragon of professionalism, I still need to try to be. And, knowing how he is, I need to say all of this in a way that makes him think it was his idea. Life in Pakistan is many things, but what is it not? That's right, kids, it's still not boring.