American work ethic

Some anthropological perspective in Day 5 of the 10-day biomedical sciences curricula review workshop am helping coordinate in Siavonga (gotta put that degree to use): I've noticed here that Americans have a pretty culturally-distinct work ethic. Americans work for longer hours, with less vacation, and value the sacrifice of personal life and leisure time and self (aka being kinda miserable due to being a workaholic) that accompanies being married to your work. Seems a bit like a parallel to the grim satisfaction of running a marathon - except that instead of running 26.2 miles, you work 50 weeks out of the year for over 40 hours per week, year after year. Europeans generally horrified. (Pansies. Just kidding, I think they're on to someting.)

Working abroad, this is thrown in pretty sharp relief. A Scottish friend Calum working at WFP asked me what's with you Clintonites (side note: this is an annoying moniker). You moved to Africa to work all the time? What's the point of coming to Zambia if you're going to work 12 hours a day and eat lunch at your desk? First realization that maybe the rationale I had - and shared with Megumi and I think my other American co-workers - wasn't shared by everyone here. I moved here for the express purpose of working ; that's why instead of camping on the weekends or road tripping to Malawi, am reading old HR reports or creating an accounting system for the Ministry of Health HR department budget from home. I didn't move away from all of my family and friends to live it up - but then... maybe I should?

Megumi, up late every night last week to do work, had another epiphany: CHAI just needs to hire more people. Voila! If there were 2 people doing this job, then 1 person wouldn't have to stay up late every day of the week to do all the work. Probably some sort of simple revelation that consultants and ibankers have had back in the beginning of the construction of the corporate ladder, but seemed kind of huge when bleary-eyed staring at my computer screen at midnight (I want to go to bed by 11pm, on weeknights dammit). This probably not going to happen.

But then this begs the question - from my Zambian co-worker - that for all the grueling pace of the American work ethic (professional success over quality of life), the American economy is still a total shambles, unemployment is still high, and disparities in wealth are growing larger all the time. On a smaller level, this means that we're busting our asses to finish projects for the Ministry of Health, but it doesn't seem like the sweeping change that this country needs to really start "developing" isn't anywhere near realization. A bit disheartening.

Enough brooding: Am in Siavonga for 6 more days - It's about five thousand degrees and 100% humidity. Oddly, though, my room's a/c is insanely powerful and makes the room either sweaty (off) or freezing (on). So alternating between sleeping sweaty or in sweaters. Here's a photo of the Ministry of Health's lawn:

That's MoH trash being burned.