So hot right now  

The heat does funny things to you here.

Once I tried to climb – literally tried to climb – into the fridge. Another time I stopped typing mid-sentence, collapsed backwards in my office chair and cried out in exasperation ‘Why does anyone wear clothes here?’, to which my colleagues barely looked up because I do that kind of thing a lot. And, quite frankly, I think they agreed with me.

You know that song by Nelly where he raps ‘it’s getting hot in here so take off all your clothes’ and the hoochy lady breathily replies ‘I am getting so hot I want to take my clothes off’? That song always used to seem stupid to me but now I understand – they were in the Solomons.

The very young and the very old have it set here – they get about with barely a scrap of material around their nether regions. It’s us poor in-betweeners who have to wear silly things like t-shirts and underwear and skin. It would be so much cooler if we could just take off our skin. Sorry – heat’s getting to me again.

The thing about the heat is it makes everything a little slower. You literally cannot rush about all day or you will collapse in a dehydrated ball of exhaustion. The definitions of efficiency and productivity are drawn out from what they would be in Australia and this can be hard for a lot of volunteers. Things get done – they always do – it just takes a little longer. Or a lot longer.

A lot of volunteers step off the plane keen to do as much as they can in the short time they’re here. They set off at a blistering pace only to butt up against different local expectations and kind of have a dramatic swan dive meltdown that involves collapsing in a bar with other volunteers and exclaiming in frustration ‘I just don’t feel I’m accomplishing ANYTHING’. And everyone nods appreciatively and takes a swig of local lager.*

What I’m learning is that you need to be able to take all these grand expectations of timeframes and schedules and when things ‘should’ be happening and pool them together with your frustrations and impatience, then let it all sweat out of your pores and evaporate into the muggy air. Then take a deep breath, readjust your expectations and try and climb into the fridge. Until next time.

*Then they all go to a night club and dance to Brian Adams’ Summer of 69. This is part of the universal volunteer experience. I hear you nodding.