Working (ish) 9 to 5 (ish)

We spent a chunk of time working on a set of rules around use of the motorcycles and cars that the project has paid for. The project, which does not have huge reserves of cash or the luxury of time, is compromised in meeting its goals when too much time is spent doing detours to homesteads to collect sacks of maize or ferrying second and third wives from A to B.

This is one aspect of the ingrained perception that foreigners have a never-ending supply of project resources. It also speaks to something equally globally fundamental which is the blurring of people's professional and personal lives. In all but the most industrious places, these merge and the 'working day' contains varying degrees of inefficiency depending on location, work ethic and morale.

In Yambio as lives often don't stray far from home, on the surface it can seem to the uninitiated that personal and work time are less well defined. People here can't save up to treasure their work-free fortnight in the Costa del Sol or clearly delineate their lunch hour as a time to nip to the post office or exchange that pair of laddered stockings in Marks.

In Yambio the lives of people with regular paid jobs, as opposed to the many who subsist or engage in casual labour, blur the line between performing one's work duties and dealing with personal matters. In reality the prevalence of this is the same in the UK and everywhere else: people doing internet shopping while in the office vs people at the market buying squid (a regular occurrence in Cambodia), people rushing away from their desk to answer calls from a child's nursery vs people grappling with charging their portable radio in the office; people going outside for a fag vs people locking themselves in their office for twenty minutes to pray (often encountered in Indonesia).

If the acts of 'non-work' seem startling, people like me who work in places like this must remember that I merge personal and professional to a similar extent, just that the details of the non-work change and often revolve around different foundations of status and wealth. I can buy squid outside of work as I don't rely on a project vehicle for transport, I can charge everything I need to using electricity at home, and I don't need to pray five times a day. However although it would be nice to more disciplined I don't hold back from using Whatsapp throughout the day, nor do I feel bad for grabbing a hot chocolate in the common room when I'd be more effective at my desk.

Where it gets tricky is when project resources are used too blatantly for personal affairs such as finding excuses for non-necessary field trips to transport one's crops to market with the project vehicle. Hence the drawing up of some vehicle use guidelines that we can all agree to, to ensure we comply with insurance and that we're still all thinking primarily of the project's goals.

Africa has suffered too much from
foreign superiority complexes and there's often an embarrassing deference or expectation towards outsiders for their knowledge, influence or wealth. I long for the day that this won't happen; that we can interact as peers.

As outsiders working here we must never carry any attitude of 'our way is best'. Our way is just different. Conveying anything else adds to the damaging status quo. As with everything else that is logically or culturally different, we must accept, embrace and work with it.

Acknowledging differences in work style when the natural reaction is to accuse them of affecting project performance is not easy and requires Ivan and I every minute to be shaking off the shackles of our own conditioning. But it certainly makes for a more fulfilling time here when we do it.

The evening was spent at the UN Mission compound eating cheap grub and observing the karaoke that is a feature of every Friday night. It's testament to the strong 'in it together' mindset in the compound that there was not one shred of self-consciousness among the UN workers when grasping the microphone and bashing out La Bamba, Wonderwall or Jingle Bells. The music was eclectic. Some excellent voices. A rendition of Stuck on You was notably good.

However hearing some of the chat and being exposed to some of the spiel, we're happy to live on the other side of town, within the community.

The trash pile, toilets and Justin's chicken house in the compound.