The catch-up entry

This blog remains confused and a little schizophrenic: uncertain whether it's a slice of Honduran life or a series of honest letters home from me to whoever cares to read them. I'd love it to be the former, of wide and compelling relevance to anyone who wanted to know about Honduras or development; but if I'm frank with myself I know that it's only ever going to interest people who know me, because they know me. For this reason, I'll finally give in, and write the group mail that I should have written a long time ago, the answer to all the questions in all the emails: How ARE you Carol? What's it LIKE?

I'm well thanks. I live in a huge house with another Irish girl, and generally her Honduran boyfriend, who is one of my favourite people here, and indeed in the world. We have a relaxed, easy life, lots of rather random books and magazines (we try to take it in turns to buy the Economist, but it costs $6, and arrives 2 weeks out of date), a patio with two hammocks, a big kitchen where we sometimes cook for our friends, and a tv with 100 channels, many American. We get Fox and NBC and ABC from Denver Colorado, so the advertising is targeted at a rural demographic that we can't quite understand. We listen to a lot of Latin pop music and regatón, and on Thurdays two of our French Canadian friends come round and teach a gang of us salsa steps.

We have a nice group of friends, mostly ex-pats, but at least an interesting mix of ex-pats. Primarily either Irish or Canadian, there are also Swedes, Spanish and Nicaraguans and a few Honduran Capoeira experts, so there's a relaxed multi-lingual way about things. At least once a week we go to a salsa bar called Sabor Cubano, and we also eat out fairly regularly, generally in foreign restaraunts: Spanish or Japanese or Italian. Everybody I know who isn't Honduran works in development, and most work very hard, including at weekends. The atmosphere is vibrant and intelligent, and extremely laid-back. Dancing and eating feature strongly in our lives. This isn't what I'd planned, and sometimes the pace of things bores me - but it's all quite lovely.

I still haven't got a handle on work. There are a number of reasons for this, but by far the biggest is my Spanish. My Spanish is good: I could easily work in a bar or restaraunt, or indeed in an administrative job. I started a class a couple of weeks ago, and my teacher loves to tell me how well I speak and understand. But there is no disguising the fact that the work I'm doing requires fluency, and I'm far from fluent. You know, they didn't check in my interview, and I made a big point of explaining my level, but noone seemed to mind.
Now, I'm learning every day: I'm happy with my progress for myself. But for getting the work done.... I don't know. I feel like a bit of a fraud, though noone else seems to (at least not openly). I'm here as an intern, but I'm not treated as an intern; which I appreciate, but still.
I'm not sure whether I'm too hard on myself. I find I'm not as busy as most of my colleagues, because my colleagues are so busy that nobody's had time to sit down and discuss the parameters of my role with me. I'm learning to be proactive about this, and forcing myself to take initiatives that scare the life out of me. For a long time, I'd had a trip to the north coast planned with some co-workers this coming week: on Tuesday they decided to cancel. So I announced that I was going anyway. This is ridiculous, I have no idea what I'm going to do or even what needs to be done. But I do know that I'm not busy and that I'm bored of being in the office and I need to meet more partners and see more work. At the office Christmas party yesterday, I told the accountant about my decision, and she said she'd come with me. Nice one.
Being new in a job is horrible, and being new in this job is absolutely no different. But I'm getting there, and I think it'll get easier.

So I feel mixed up a lot. I feel a responsibility to be better at this work than I am; at the same time I'm aware that I'm pushing myself hard and that I will improve. Essentially, I'm still in the place where I'm gaining an awful lot more personally than the organisation is gaining from me. I know what my sister would say to that: that that's always the way for ex-pats in "the field". But I don't feel I've contributed much of anything yet. You know what? I think this means that I'm being "challenged", which is what I've always claimed to want. Is that it? Is it just that I'm never happy? Answers in a comment box.

Have a nice week, and next week I'll report from my field trip.