Someday we’ll be back in the US, working in offices that contain computers, printers, and internet at the touch of our fingertips. But that is VERY much not our daily reality. Although our work demands us to write grant proposals, draft memorandums, print documents, and send these via email or fax on at least a weekly basis, these tasks can most definitely not be accomplished in the span of one day. I’ve often remarked that although I may start a day with a long to-do list, it will be a productive and pleasant day if, for example, I am able to find a printer with enough ink to properly print my document and then find a stapler to attach the pages to one another.
To illustrate this, we’d like to give you a glimpse into a sample project and the many steps we work through to see it finished. At home, this would be a mundane series of office tasks, maybe given to a clerical aide and completed within 20 minutes…
The Task at Hand: Type, Print, and Submit a Budget Report for our Latest Grant-Funded Project
Step 1: Type the Report
Day 1: This should be straightforward. We brought a laptop computer with us from America for just this type of task. The night before, when reviewing the next day’s to-do list, this is at the top of the list. Must be done tomorrow. Alas, we are woken abruptly at 6am when the blades of the fan at the foot of our bed stop spinning. “Brownout!” No electricity today, as is often the case. The power company has decided there will be a 12-hour shutdown for conservation or to repair a broken pole somewhere on the island. Power returns at 6pm but we are too tired from the day of sweating. We pass out in front of the fan as soon as it starts spinning. Day 2: Type the letter first thing, just in case the power disappears!
Step 2: Add Information to Report from Internet
Go to internet café. This one has no empty seats - it is full of schoolchildren playing Halo.
Go to internet café #2. Log on, get info, pay for one hour of usage.
Step 3: Print the Report
Day 2, continued: Back at the office, the most dreaded part of the document process begins… Find a printer WITH ink. Several offices have computers, but do not be fooled!
Computer #1 – Our counterparts’ office: sorry, “motherboard broken” today.
Computer #2 – Brandon’s supervisor’s office: very new printer! Alas, no ink. (or if you’re lucky, you can print in blue or purple ink if they are out of black:)
Computer #3 – Mayor’s office: as the only remaining functional computer in the municipal hall, there is quite a line. We will have to wait until tomorrow.
Day 3: With the line still long at the mayor’s office, we resign and decide to go across the street to our trusty backup – Smiley’s. 
First though, we have to put our document on something portable…a USB maybe (but this is always very risky, given the abundance of viruses at public computers) or, our preferred-yet-probably-archaic-in-America choice, the CD-RW.
Smiley’s is a one-stop shop, a common sight here in the Phils – they do xeroxing (as copying is always called), photo printing, document printing, ID card making, button printing, and lamination. They also sell random bobbles associated with printing: lanyards for your work or school ID to hang around your neck, key chains with that picture of your special someone inside, CD-Rs, gold jewelry (oddly enough), and so on. They know us by name here and we know who just had a baby, who hasn’t been to work in awhile, etc. since we’re there every few days.
We hand over the CD-RW to our favorite printing lady and a few minutes later a crooked copy shoots out.
Step 4: Fax Report to the Manila Office
We return to the mayor’s office – the site of the lone municipal fax machine.
It is working, but the one woman who knows the outgoing passcode is absent today. Sayang (too bad). Will have to wait until tomorrow when she returns. Day 4: The fax code bearer is still out. We will have to send a hard copy instead – after all, it should have original signatures anyway. In the meantime, however, we will resort to an awesome new method we have discovered here and that is suggested by PC staff: Take a picture with our digital camera and email it - our very own PC fax system.
Step 5: Return home so Brandon can take pictures on our digital camera of each page of the report.
Step 6: Email photos to the office.
(First we must wait until 2pm when people [us included] wake from their mid-day day heat stupor/nap). Return to internet café and upload pics. This takes 1 hour with our dial-up speed connection.
Step 7: Photocopy original document before sending via mail (just in case the original disappears along the way…)Return to Smiley’s! for xeroxing.
Day 5
Step 8: Mail the Completed Report
Thankfully, our town is large enough to have a courier company – similar to UPS or FedEx at home. We can send docs one-day delivery to Manila. (This is also the only place in town that has air conditioning, so we really enjoy sending documents).
Step 9: (Very Optional and Avoided at All Costs)…Reimbursement
If by some horrible circumstance we need to recover the costs we’ve incurred, we must go through this:
To process a reimbursement request through the municipal hall, we have to ask one of our officemates (a municipal employee, which we are not officially) to prepare an expense report on this typewriter. With no carbon paper available, each of up to nine copies of each page must be typed out on this bad boy, which could easily consume a couple hours. We then sign each of nine identical pages, submit to the budget officer for approval, and perhaps receive our money within a week. Clearly, we never do this. We just say it’s our financial gift to the community.
To make this crazy process bearable, we are so glad there are two of us. We now divide tasks almost without thinking: one of us writes the report, one spends their morning at Smiley’s. One hunts down a functional fax line, while the other copies files to CDs.
We do not write this post to complain. We knew what we were signing up for, and these are the daily realities of working in a country that is trying to move forward. Although, there are definitely moments when I’m battling through this process where I wonder “Why am I doing this? Couldn’t my time and skills be put to more efficient use at home?”
But now, even to us, this has become normal, and only in writing it out do we see the stark contrast to our work lives at home. We write these things down to remember. To remember when we are back in America and can log on to high speed internet at the touch of a button. Print or fax from the same desktop. We write it to remind ourselves of all the technology we so often took for granted and for the vast luxuries of efficiency.
When you start to reflect on the complicated nature of doing work here, you can see, if only slightly, why places like this lag behind. People get tired of fighting against the current. Our coworkers struggle against these barriers to work and productivity and SO many more every day, and impressively, they continue. And we are proud to be working alongside them.
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