Day in the Life...

Tuesday, January 26, 2010 

As this day comes to close, I am wishing that I had some Hollywood connections.

A producer, cameras, a fat paycheck, a moral to it all.

Luckily, I have the actors, the set and the soundtrack, which would sound a lot like me just going “…..ughhhhh, seriously? What? You’ve got to to be joking!” – over and over again. Add to that the background noise of hammering, barking dogs and street vendors, and settle back in your seat as the scenes unfold:

Scene 1:

Work place. New building. Same town, outside of Phnom Penh.

Amy is burned out on two social work jobs (=6 days/week) and the endless frustrations of managing a language divide (read: gaping chasm), and the complicated relationships between members of a large and overwhelmed staff. Cried the day previous in the staff van from frustration.

It’s hot outside and in.

In supervision, social worker unwittingly reveals in the course of a case discussion that clinical skills of staff are way below my already limited expectations, based on experience. Special new perspective on how far we still have to go here, both internally and with our community partners.

Scene 2:

Work place. Afternoon.

Colleague tearfully unloads about her abusive past and present relationship in a team meeting. Crisis management in full effect. What should have been a team bonding moment feels more like a Calgon ad. Burn out in full swing now…

Staff commuter van supposed to leave at 4:30, supposed to arrive near home at 5’ish so I can meet the repairmen, stuff a snack in my maw and rush to yoga. Seal on our little fridge door has been broken for days, so we have had a heavy, Cambodia wooden chair pushed up against the door to keep as much cool as possible inside.

At this point, I am tired of listening to people’s problems, tired of trying to make people feel better, trying to make decisions, to organize things, and to try really hard to understand what someone is communicating to me when I know that I will never truly understand.

Scene 3:

Arrive home exhausted and pissed off. Have been holding urine in for about 1.5 hours.

Enter kitchen only to see roommate on her knees on front of the broken refrigerator, working with repairman #1 and night guard to remove all contents into boxes on the kitchen floor.

Come to realize that the repairman has unloaded all the contents of the fridge door into the cat’s empty (thank god) pee pan, including the fresh ginger that roommate has been adding to her tea for the past few days. Hmm.

Over the next hour, four workmen come and go, trying to fix the fridge and the kitchen faucet, which has been leaking for two weeks solid.

The fridge is carried out of the house and strapped onto the back of a motorbike to go to the repair shop. We are told we will have a replacement fridge within the hour. We are glad, assuming that it will be larger and better than the tiny (think dorm- or rumpus room beer fridge) one we have been stuffing to the hilt with food for months.

Scene 4:

Night guard hanging out with roomie and I in the kitchen, just wanting some help with his English homework. We discover that our sickly cat, Oscar, who has FIV (kitty HIV), has been hiding all day in the cubbard with the water vessels. The guard gets so excited to see his pal Oscar, that he gets down on all fours and starts removing all the cubbard contents, going, “Os-CUH! Os-CUH!” and making the exact same cute buh-rrrrrrrrrr noise that Sinead makes when calling the cat to come inside. So cute…..

Soon the new fridge arrives on the back of the moto and is carried up into the kitchen. The repairman, who speaks less English than I speak Khmer, begins telling us (more or less), with hand gestures that the fridge is very dangerous and not to plug it in.

I usually have some idea of what someone is trying to tell me, but I was in over my head with electrical and mechanical talk – these were all terms with which I was not familiar. I have not, as of yet, had cause to learn how to say faucet or water valve or screwdriver or wattage.

Soon, Sinead and are going, “Yeah, we get it. The fridge has a problem, but WHY cant we plug it in?... ok, we won’t, but WHY?” This hilarious line of questioning soon turned to “ok, we won’t -- but WHEN can we plug it in?” until the man got frustrated and left.

Patient, gentle, purring night guard explains, employing a model bottle of liquid dishsoap as a prop, that we have to wait awhile to plug in the fridge because it has been turned on its side on the moto and will otherwise explode. Good thing we have it positioned right next to the large canister of kerosene that fuels the cooktop. Wheeee!

Scene 5:

After one hour, and just before we make the night guard plug in the tiny, new, potentially deadly refrigerator, another workman arrives to fix the kitchen faucet and the drain in Sinead’s bathroom. At this point, its 7 pm. We haven’t eaten and our food is sitting in a litter box on the kitchen floor.

…Sinead also has strep throat – did I mention that?

After a fruitless search for a long-handled screwdriver (which seems like something a plumber might already have on hand), I am asked if I can ‘butt tuck.’

Yes, that’s right.…

‘Turn off the water.’ (butt plug = turn off the light, and butt tuck = turn off the water. Should’ve known….)

After many calls to the landlord, we find it and butt the tuck. Done, right? Nope – there is still the part where the workman loses his grip on something having to do with stemming the tide of the tuck and water begins to spew across the kitchen like Old Faithful. The night guard is hiding in the bathroom off the kitchen, Sinead has fled to her bedroom and im searching for my camera, realizing that no one will believe any of this if not for photographic evidence.

 

Scene 6:

Got a drunken and much-needed happy call from two favorites in Brisbane!

Now just a bit of time for blogging and decompressing before an early bedtime.

Here’s hoping for a dull and seamless tomorrow…