I’M OVERWHELMED

My first few days alone in the field have been difficult. I’m cut off from others. There is no phone. There is no electricity. There is no water. I have a squat toilet. I don’t speak the local language. And everyone on the project knows the project well. I’m the American the technicians can’t communicate with who is trying to get involved in their business. But, hope is still there, as I think we are finding a happy medium as my language skills improve rapidly and they get used to the idea that they need to come to me with their problems and not the other engineer who they have been working with for the last year. These types of transitions are always difficult. The hardest part is that I get back to my house and I have no one with whom to complain. It is a proven fact that complaining makes you feel better.

Yesterday (Wednesday) was the worst of it. I had to explain how to cast a tank with a separating tank on top, something that the local technicians had never done. After forty minutes it seemed clear that they needed to put a pipe in the forms, to allow water to flow between the separating tank and the storage tank. We even put a hole in the formwork for the pipe and gave them the dimensions. But when I came back after the poor, the tube had not been placed in the tank. In fact they had patched the whole in the formwork and cast the tank as usual. Now we are going to have the difficult task of boring a hole through 10 centimeters of concrete laced with rebar; we can’t hit the rebar, which would be a miracle.

What distressed me was that they didn’t trust my technical advice. At least the other engineer, who they do trust came into town for a short while and chewed them out for not listening to me, and creating a difficult problem. They may be a little more trusting of me from now on.

Also, it seems that more of the technicians are coming to me with their problems instead of waiting for the other engineer. That’s good, then they understand that I’m the local go to guy now.

Okay, it is ridiculous that I’m even mentioning this after so little time managing them, all of 4 days now. I’m certain that I will look back and laugh or I won’t even remember this difficult time because it will be a miniscule amount of my total time working in Passabe.