ebb and flow

24 September
I’ve never felt as professionally inadequate as I do now. And it’s not even my fault. I think.

Today we had the first of several de-briefings. I won't go into details so let's just say we totally fucked up. The CEO of the power company was there, the head of the environment and social division, and all the other bigwigs. By the middle of the presentation, you could actually taste the awkwardness. I sat there, tapping the laptop keyboard stoically, going back and forth the slides in a daze. Our team's presentor had apparenty switched the slides in his copy (which he was reading from his laptop) and did not inform us of the changes he made. And that was the least of our problems.

Our team is composed of people whose combined experience exceeds my grandmother's age. How could things go so wrong?

I don't know. Frankly, it doesn't even matter. The bottomline is that it was completely my fault. Because I am responsible for everything. Everything. Even the things that have nothing to do with me, but concern other people's personal flaws, personalities and idiosyncracies. Little whims like having their hair done in the middle of a busy day of report-writing (correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a totally alien concept for me; I'm a crammer, sure, but I don't prioritize pagtitina over a critical deadline.) Are they held accountable for their actions? Nooooooo. Of course not. Because I am.

Ay naku. Like my teammate said, tatanda ako rito.

25 September
Nakai Plateau, the soon-to-be reservoir of the dam, rests on the northeast side of Laos, near the border of Vietnam. It served as a convenient hideaway for Vietnamese soldiers in their war with the US in the 70s. Because of this, Laos, which had nothing to do with the war, is the most bombed country in history, host to more bombs that all the bombs used in World War II. This little known fact played in my mind as I walked around the resettlement area. Prior to construction of the new houses, the power company did an extensive ground survey for unexploded ordnance. Outside makeshift village offices hangs a poster showing a variety of bombs. The system goes: if a villager sees a suspicious-looking object on the ground, he/she checks the poster, fills out a form, deposits the form in a letterbox. A roving team checks the letterbox, and proceeds to retrieve the object.

I shuddered at the thought.

I had been touching the soil since I got here. It was powdery white – sand. Scattered around were stones that looked like those you find on beaches. Strange at first to find such soil so high above the ground – on a plateau, that is, until you realize that this spot has a past life: it was once part of the sea. The ebb and flow of tide over millions of years created this landscape, and now that the water has receded indefinitely, its remnants sit silently with rice fields and vegetable gardens. How wonderful this Earth is, that I get to stand on something that is the child of both land and water.

Then I remembered the bombs, and I quickly stood up.

Humans always seem to destroy the wonder of life.

28 September
Things are a bit better now. Crazy, but better. I feel like my purpose has been reinforced.

There are good things being done in this world. There are noble pursuits of goodness.

Yes, even those involving the World Bank.