the back burner

invaders from the west

Here's who I'm listening to at the moment.

Also, we should all be happy that friends are coming to see me this week... technically, there are some other reasons for their visit, but I prefer to think of myself as the main one. Everyone who hasn't visited me yet, take note.

You could learn from this.

Sometimes I get all subdued-feeling about the lack of quantifiable results from my work here. Even though there are papers and language ability coming forth from me, those don't feel like what I want to see. There are also, as always, lots of experiential lessons, but those are even harder to quantify. I want community organizations springing forth. I want injustice rolling back. I want inter-ethnic dialog to be normal. I want local partners to grow in effectiveness. I want new workers recruited. I want all of that now.

Fresh eyes and ears arriving here always carries the mixed blessings of helping us realize what a great amount of things are being accomplished while challenging us with the temptation to make the complexity of our tasks understandable, trendily-packaged, and easy to express. In other words, it's going to be easy to feel good about things and to tell lots of untruths this next week. Good thing there will be people among this group who are used to that challenge. And used to me.

In other news, I have a new roommate. Expect pictures as soon as (translation: "if") I can make that a culturally-acceptable thing to do.

Posted by nickles at February 26, 2007 04:37 PM | TrackBack