A typical week in the office

I sit at work in my second story office cubicle (oh
yes they have cubicles in Nicaragua) typing this. My days in the Environmental Department of the Mayor’s office are quite interesting and always a little different.

Some of the most entertaining days were a few days ago when I started writing my grant. (I may combine events from different days into one day just to make this a more enjoyable story.) I was pretty serious about getting the grant proposal done and my supervisor was a little more lax about the subject, which I understand now because we were starting it a week and a half in advance which is almost unheard of in Nica. Anyways I hardly had more than 2 minutes of her attention at a time because she kept getting called out of the cubicle or receiving a visitor or painting her nails or getting a phone call or text messaging or chatting or gossiping or the best one is when she calls multiple reunions in her office to sell Avon products to her fellow building members. Needless to say the first few days of grant writing showed little fruit.

It’s hard to work with someone in Spanish on a proposal that they will have a large role in but you’re writing it for a group of funders who want to see certain things. Basically I’m the middle man. Therefore I have to talk my supervisor, Jazmina, into doing certain things and hoping we actually complete them if the grant is accepted. Just imagine a group partner who thinks in a completely different way than you do, sometimes doesn’t listen to what you say and there is a language barrier. It’s rough.

One day we had a visitor, a friend who often drives us around in his truck or car. He is in his 50s and is also an engineer for the Mayor’s office. I’m not sure what the main purpose of the visit was but he ended up explaining to Jazmina and me how one can run their shower water into the absorption tank in the ground. He draws a picture to better explain his description and he goes as far as to draw a very voluptuous woman in the shower. He did it out of humor, of course, so we all had a good laugh. I think I laughed the hardest because of the awkwardness of it all, a colleague of mine drawing a naked woman…that would never happen in the US…I don’t think…

And that basically sums a day in the life of Jackie, but more so my last week of work.