The Blues

It has been a rough week. We had some visiting dignitaries from Sri Lanka here at the beginning of the week and they turned the power on almost round the clock to impress them. I guess I’m in the same load shedding group as the Sri Lankan ambassador’s place so I got to enjoy the benefits of hot showers, TV and lights for almost three days. Sadly their visit was cut short due to the terror attack on their cricket team in Pakistan.

Things are getting increasingly frustrating at work. Due to my productivity levels, which are high by Canadian standards and astronomical here, the workload of the entire college seems to be migrating over to my desk. I have to admit that I have been responsible for some of this; I get so frustrated waiting for people to do things that I tend to just do them myself. It is now out of hand with some of the lazier staff doing absolutely nothing and dropping all of their work on my desk. Unfortunately, paycheques aren’t as easy to come by as work. At the last management meeting, virtually every task that came up was assigned to me, even though I am by far the least qualified person on the staff to do the bulk of them. I’m getting tired of being expected to do everything while the others sit around being useless. I think this is another function of the aid situation I mentioned in a previous post. I’m beginning to wonder if the Western world isn’t doing more harm than good with all their handouts in this country. The Nepali people seem totally unwilling to help themselves and are always waiting for the next handout.

My visa situation is a black hole and to the best of my knowledge, work hasn’t been started on it yet. The story keeps changing (as they tend to do here) and I really don’t know where things stand. The last option to be presented to me this week is light years away from the offer made to me back in December and is far from satisfactory to me. The lawyer was supposed to meet with me this week but didn’t show up. I’m not sure how this is going to play out.

You may remember that I previously referred to Khem as a “silver-tongued devil”. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that this can be much less charming and much more disturbing than I originally understood. He is the king of spin and it’s really difficult to trust most of what he says. I don’t think he’s deliberately malicious or a liar, but he never tells the same story twice and I feel like I’m on shifting ground with him all the time.

The latest issue was a faculty workshop that started yesterday and continues next weekend. I didn’t want to go partly because I didn’t want to give up 2 weekends, but mostly because I’m not faculty and it’s totally irrelevant to my work. After several discussions with Khem, he put his foot down and insisted that I attend. When I showed up yesterday morning, he was surprised to see me, and didn’t know why I was there. He claimed that he never said I had to attend. Needless to say, after having cancelled some fun weekend events in order to be there, I was less than pleased.

As a result of all this, I’m not sure what the future holds for me here. Worse, I’m not sure what I want the future to hold for me here. I’m becoming more and more disenchanted with the life I’m leading here. I can easily be this unhappy at home where at least I can take a hot shower and read by electric light in the evenings. The only good news is that I’m really enjoying the work itself and think I may have learned something about what kind of job may actually make me happy.

I have to post this quickly as the power will be going off in seconds. No time to proof-read. Sorry for bad grammar, typos etc.