And the winner is …. STAY!!!!

In the end, I really was always going to choose to stay. I feel too much loyalty to the project, and to my staff, and I really want to see it through to the end. It’s been a year already (time flies when you’re stressed to your eyeballs), but what’s another six months? Especially if I get to see all the latrines and wells finished, the community happy, and be a part of the completion and handover of the project to the community and Indonesian Red Cross. That would give me a great sense of satisfaction.

While this place certainly has its drawbacks:
- It really is the middle of nowhere …
- Friends and family not here!
- Limited social life and opportunities to have any sort of relationship with ‘that special someone’
- Same same food all the time…
- Ongoing staff issues and office politics (that’s probably the thing that irks me most about this place)
- Being the ‘poor cousin’ of the Banda Aceh office and regularly forgotten and/or ignored
- Extra lengthy procedures for buying anything, especially since the investigation, not to mention forests’ worth of paperwork for everything!
- Logistical nightmares, including materials being difficult to procure, corruption, shit roads … the list goes on …
- I am always a novelty wherever I go (“HELLO MISTER!!!!” and other things yelled out at me, not to mention teenage boys regularly gesturing that familiar hand signal of people f*$#ing – which I hate - or men flashing their cocks at me when I'm walking on the road. Twice I tell you, TWICE!)
- The power dropping out on a regular basis … speak of the devil. HA! It just did then.

It also has a lot of positives:
- I work with a great WatSan team, and general ARC team in Simeulue;
- I get to go out in the field whenever I like and don’t have to be stuck in the office;
- I’m my own boss (well, for my program anyway);
- There is a great group of expats living here, who make life tons of fun;
- It’s a beautiful place to live, not to mention a recreational paradise. For example: I get to play tennis every day, and go kayaking/swimming/surfing/ snorkelling/fishing/boating on the weekends;
- Living and working in a different culture is really interesting;
- I get the opportunity to travel on my breaks;
- I’m getting good at speaking Bahasa Indonesian;
- I don’t have to pay rent or electricity or car or anything really except food, and while I’m not getting paid very much I’m not spending much either, so I’m saving my money; and, last but not least:
- The quiet life ain’t so bad. :)

Plus, I know that when I go home, after the initial fun stuff – catching up with everyone and drinking lots of beer and seeing all the little changes that have happened in my absence, the up-shot of it all is: Nothing really changes back at home. While I do miss everyone a lot, and doing all the normal things, not to mention the comforts of home, I am enjoying living and working in Simeulue.

While I only have a skeleton of a team at the moment, and I’ve been very busy (read stressed) since my engineers left, it’s actually been very good for me to have to cover their workload – I am much more familiar with how everything works, the components of our latrine design, how much things actually cost, and the processes involved in making things happen. Before, most of this was the engineers’ job, and I just signed a lot of papers J. Now that I have to do it all myself, I have a greater appreciation of how much work is involved in doing it, and am more familiar with the nitty-gritty of my project. It’s a good thing. I feel that my title of WatSan engineer is now actually a bit more applicable. :)

I seriously considered going back to my old job, but I know that I would be way too restless with it – I was last time I went back there, and that was only after one year, let alone two! Plus I know that a lot of the projects I’d been working on will still be there (it is government after all).

Plus I think that when I do go home, it’s time for a change. If I decide to stay in Oz and not do another stint OS, I want to get a new job, have a change in career, and possibly even move away from Adelaide for a while – Melbourne looks good J Or somewhere completely different. I don’t know if I could go back to working in an office all day, especially after 2 years with Red Cross working in the field. I like the idea of working in a national park, or working with refugees from Liberia, or something like that. Maybe even pursuing some extra education or artistic pursuits. Who knows? Or maybe I’ll just throw it all in and travel for a year. That always sounds good :)

But for now, it’s all about Simeulue. Of course I’ll cruise home to see everyone for Xmas, but until then they’ll have to wait. And I don’t mind, until then I’ll keep enjoying my experience here.

And the good things is, I’m allowed to have a whole month’s holiday – WOOHOO! Which is just what the doctor ordered. Getting off Simeulue and not thinking about work for a month will be what I need to refresh and refocus on getting my project finished. I’ll get to hang out with four of my my best mates – two of them my brother and sister – which is the part I’m looking forward to the most.

You would not believe how excited I am getting.