Night Duty

Working at night is not easy, even for someone who is a night person.  Very little happens at night even here.  There are people moving here, and the occasional vehicle there, but overall most everything still happens during the day.  Only in great cities like New York or Chicago are people as active at night as they are during the day.  I like the nighttime.  Somehow it feels like a different world.  The time, unfortunately, passes quite slowly.  There seems to be more hours to think about home, and how much I want to go back.  There is a job to do here, but I feel that it is mostly done and time for us to hand it off.  I know the outcome, as I did before I left the US, but it doesn't change that very little is still happening here.  We can spend more money, more lives, and more time to improve the lives of the people here but ultimately it is a band aid for which there is no permanent solution.  The people in this part of the world are very set in the their ways, as unforgiving as the mountains which cover this country.  No amount of anything we give, or do, or say will change that fact about them.  It is the same for my position here.  Nothing I say or do will shorten the time here, and not much can improve my standing.  It is limbo.  I laugh because when we got here there was so much to improve upon.  The last people to be in this place literally went backwards, leaving projects in disrepair and destroying any good will that had come to this place.  There was building to do, and it took months of hard work to develop our position.  But now that we are established and complete it is just a boring routine of the same day over and over again.  The mission is done, and now we should be going home.