I’ll never know which way to flow.

One month in and as soon as I feel a modicum of directed sensibility, I lose it instantly.

This entry began a few days ago, with a paragraph berating everything about this place, but within two hours time I was smiling, feeling great about the work I’m attempting.

Entry control-a’d and deleted.

I started working outside of the office, to escape both the literal and proverbial heat of exchanges within our mud hut, and things were looking even brighter. I spent time making myself feel better: more exercising, more chatting with the important people in my life and my internets, more reading, more photo-editing. I went drinking with colleagues and was bequeathed with incense and lively banter.

But then my irritability and snarkiness returned, much like the ever-present spider near my headboard, forever lurking and only seemingly lost.

If I can’t count on my western friends and our American post system to make something as simple as mailing a rent check happen, I wonder how stupid I must be to think things could ever be straightforward here. With other colleagues and our local partners I've been working to organize a community-stakeholder group and an election process to determine internal leadership. Of course after three weeks in agreement, everything unraveled today. At the same time, the terrible distance between our project aims and humanitarian vision, and the borderline contemptuous resistance felt from the “beneficiaries” is brain bending. I have to question just what the hell I’m even doing here when I get put under house/compound arrest and told that I’m not allowed to leave without accompaniment. Likewise, I’ve recently been informed that now not only is my photography generally not permissible, but that all the visual documentation work that I’m here to partake in requires notifying the mayor (equivalent) who will decide on the acceptability of said request and if authorized, send me to work with a member of the administration as a supervisor. Oh, and I’ve got to submit a written report following any photography or video as well. Let it be noted that for the most part, the administration can't speak English, let alone read it.

I have to wonder if I’m just a miserable complainer that will find something to be dissatisfied with no matter the predicament or if this emotive entry is reasonable. I tend to think myself rather level-headed generally, and in this case justifiably cantankerous. I know, and have people regularly tell me, that I am impatient. And I know that I’m demanding - of others and of myself. I would say though that I can be tolerant of difficulties and I’ve exhibited this – with grace, if I must add – at many points in my 25 years. But today I feel like my brain is spiraling, shaking, and shouting a deserved What The Fuck at everyone and everything, including the face in the mirror.