Vanuatu

Counterpart..

So, my counterpart's pregnant! This comes as a bit of shock, since she's going on maternity leave in a week and now, we have to try and squish in a tonne of meetings in the next few days since I also found out that, at the same time, that I will be covering for her, as the Provincial Women's Development Officer, while she's gone for three months. *eek!*

While she doesn't complain at *all* about being 8-months-pregnant (therefore the shock on being told), her pregnancy does have one side-effect: she's super-sleepy. So, she'll sit infront of the computer to work, but then doze off.. which I understand, but the only glitch is that there is only one computer that both her and myself are sharing. This is also the very computer that I run trainings on for the 20+ staff, and the very PC that other staff, who don't have acess to equipment, come practice on. So competition for computer usage is cut-throat already. I haven't been running trainings for this entire week, simply because too much paper/planning work was piling up, and I thought I'd take this week to deal with all that; also, being used to luxury of unlimited computer access, I started an electronic version (Rather than hard copy) of all my documents, and it only makes sense to continue updating them whenever needed.

Well, hasn't worked out the exact way I was hoping for it to since my coutnerpart will invariably arrive before me (yes, I've started being late *even* in this culture) and while using the computer, will doze off. And then I spend the next two to three hours trying to figure out whether it would be culturally-insensitive and/or in-emphathetic of me to poke her in the arm, and ask her to sleep on a chair that is not directly in front of the computer. It's been three days since this has been going on; I stil haven't been able to muster up the guts to wake up a pregnant lady who is, unfortuantely, sleeping in front of the only computer that is shared between 5+ staff members. LOL

Edit: It's been suggested by fellow volunteers that if she's sitting on a rolley-chair, than I simply roll her away when she fals asleep. So, the action plan from now on is (1) To get a rolley-chair and (2) make sure it's always placed in front of the computer. :P

posted by faa-T @ 11:54 AM