Friday, September 27, 2013

Five Weeks In

I'm finishing up my 5th week at my new position, and I'm exhausted. It's a challenging job, more challenging than I ever anticipated it would be. A few people have said this to me when they found out about my professional background: "You used to work on airplanes and jet engines? Then working on cookstoves should be easy, right?" 

Not really. It might even be more difficult! So I'm sitting here now, trying to digest the past month, trying to understand the stress I feel in this new position. What makes it challenging are the various social and technical factors that are being thrown at me all at once. The learning curve is one of the steepest I've had to face.

First, I am a foreigner with limited Indonesian-language skills. This is not a new struggle, and I believe that every fellow in my position has gone through this. But that does not make my current challenge any less real, any less impacting. It's making me think a lot about how much I take English for granted, how much I take communication for granted. My voice, my ability to make conversation, my ability to make people laugh and smile, especially in a work environment, has always been one of my strengths. And now I am forced to express my personality in a completely new way, using a language in which I am not yet fluent. 

It's not easy. Sometimes I don't even feel like myself.

Secondly, I've had to come to terms with my identity as an engineer. To put my role as a VIA fellow here simply: I am here to offer whatever skills I have, whether it's my fluency in English, my ability to write and think critically, or my background in engineering. But the truth is, the extremely high expectations that come with that title, Engineer -- especially one who is fluent in English -- has created (what I feel to be) enormous pressure, with perhaps unrealistic expectations, on me and my role with the organization. Without getting into the messy details, let's just say that cookstove-science is really quite political, with fragmented bits of information and expertise floating around the world. Trying to piece together these many bits is like trying to read the minds of many scientists AND social scientists, some who are OVERLY technical (thereby losing me in their scientific jargon on matters in which I have limited background), and others who are not technical enough. My technical co-workers are great and are helping me understand some things, but other matters are a puzzle. What I need is a mentor, but I don't have that. Without a proper technical mentor to ease me into this world, it's a lot to take on.

But I'm trying my best.

Amidst it all, I'm trying my best, and I'm learning a lot, even if the information is fragmented. I really think that I could be good at the job given time, especially once I've come to terms with these two things: language (for ease of communication with my co-workers), and my role (as an engineer and non-engineer).

Truth is, I don't want to just be the foreigner and the engineer. I want to be one of them, a colleague who can communicate and ask the right questions. I want to be the multi-skilled individual, and I want to be given a chance to prove myself in areas outside of the technical. I've done the uber-engineering thing, and I want to branch out. That's why I came out here. I want to know about NGO budgeting. I want to branch into the social sciences. I want to be able to talk to the citizens we are supposedly helping and working with. 

Perhaps you could think of these things as goals. This entry was not meant to be a long rant, and I hope it's not taken that way. It's just that today was a particularly interesting day, and since I haven't yet written about my new position, here it is… in all its candidness. 

I am uncomfortable. I am unsure of myself. But I am hopeful.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Life Here

A lot of things have happened, and I need to write soon.  In the meantime, here's something I wrote back on May 7, 2013, after a trip to Bali:

Here's the thing, we're getting addicted to traveling. We look at our calendar frequently and think of the next time we have a long weekend, then try to plan something. Even if it's just two days, I always want to go do something… the beach, camping, hiking, biking. I want to see people, see places, smell things. My days are getting so busy. I'm backlogged on grading. I have been accepting way more side jobs than I can chew. But I love it all.

I think in many ways I have a pretty ideal job. My housing is free. I am getting paid. It's not much by US standards ($150/month), and I can't really save a lot, but it's enough to get to by in Yogyakarta. I can eat tempe every day (this, by the way, will probably be the thing I miss the most when I eventually leave, that is, easy access to freshly incubated tempe, fried to perfection). I can drink guava juice whenever I want. I have a job where I can impact the lives of students. Today we had a lesson on interviews, but I used it as an opportunity to instill this idea that failure isn't the end of the world. That experiencing failure is a way we can succeed.

Sometimes I get these chills when I teach, when I feel like students are really understanding the lesson, when i feel like students really care. I've been feeling it a lot more this semester than the last, and it's a feeling that I've grown to love. I am going to miss it when I stop teaching and start working at YDD.

Last week (Wednesday night - Saturday morning) I was in Bali: two days in Ubud, one day in Kuta. I met up with an old college friend, Habi. She's Malaysian but had never been to Indonesia prior to last week, so we decided what better time than now? Two months ago we booked our flights and finally last week got in touch about it again. Made last-minute plans, and it was amazing. Ubud was filled with delicious fresh vegetables. The yoga scene there (think Eat, Pray, Love) seems to have inspired a craze for healthy foods, namely organic produce. The presence of foreigners has resulted in a multitude of organic cafes, complete with fusion recipes. I had a tempe taco with guacamole, beans, lettuce, and tomatoes. What heavenly simple ideas! But sooo amazing. We also saw a lot of Hindu temples and even watched a Hindu ceremony. It was a contrast from the culture I have been experiencing in Jogja.

Habi and me, standing in front of the Goa Gajah (Elephant Cave) 
An organic strawberry farm in Bali
What I might take most from the trip, however, was probably the way Habi and I finally got to bond. We gossiped about people from college, told stories about people we had forgotten, stories of broken hearts and happy hearts.

There's so much we can miss from each other's lives if we choose to keep it to ourselves. I'm always so happy to bond with other women, and it's been happening more and more lately in Indonesia.

So there's no goal to this particular post except to say that I've been pretty happy lately, although occasionally stressed. But it's a good kind of stress, I think. I'm in a good place.