Day 41 – Penultimate

My laptop has a charging fault which means I have to sit in the most awkward position to write. Just another excuse for the huge delay. I’m writing this 9 days ahead, which sucks, but I guess you’ll understand what state of mind I was in at the time when you read on!

By Monday I had a good idea of what was going to happen – they were going to send me home. I decided to work out my own plan, something I’d started doing a while before. I worked hard that day, having decided that it would be my last day on the project. I helped to dig three potato patches, followed by a large onion patch. It feels good when you can see the direct results of your actions, and I left the garden satisfied.

If you’ve been following the blog, you may be confused by how things could have taken such a drastic turn. I must confess, however, that I haven’t been writing everything. Anyone can read this, including the organisations that put me here, so I couldn’t be very vocal about my concerns with the programme (although it has definitely seeped in a few times). In attempts to remain optimistic about the then coming weeks, I also tried to eliminate my feelings of spite towards the authoritarian structure and the most stringent rules. What happened on Friday, the second time I broke the rules, can simply be put down to my frustrations with unguarded irrationality.

On Monday night I packed my bags for the second time since being here. Ah yes, I might not have mentioned the first time either – my roommate and I moved host families about two weeks prior.

To end on a lighter note, the topic of late comedian Bernie Mac came up: “What was Beanie Mac’s show called?…The Bernie Mac show.” Yes, I realise that most of these are ‘you had to be there jokes’. Too bad. Ok how about this one, one of the volunteers realised how long we’d been on the project for: “6 weeks?! That’s like a month and a half!”