shopping and socialising

We're in the middle of a blissful 4 day holiday (All Soul's Day); the time has been spent moving into a new apartment (new to us; a few doors down in the serviced apartment block that has been our home since leaving quarantine); we have been mostly looking at trays, many trays; trays of trays; shelving units, and cutlery. I have an oven now!

We have been visiting various churches and it has been refreshing to experience different communities within a common bond of fellowship. As we sat in a service today running in what we call "Tetun Speed 15" (I find 4-5 comfortable, 7-8 briskly challenging- TV/radio speed- and 10 impossible to follow), I reflected that to the Timorese colleagues we seek to train, we must sound as incomprehensible. I considered that I need to practise speaking slowly and dial my speech speed way down, consistently.

We went out today with the few team members who remained in Dili over the long weekend. We talked over live music, black sand drying between our toes, while watching the burnished sun sink into a violet-vermillion sea. I have yet to see an ugly sunset in TL.

Assorted thoughts:

1) Some volunteers benefit from extremely specific role definition. Some may prefer the freedom to find their role and flourish in it. Maybe volunteers can write their terms of reference/job descriptions in detail at the end of every rotation.

2) Part of the difficulty with defining roles is that an overall program manager just might not know what the nutrition team or finance department does in detail because there is just too much info to cover. To mitigate against this, having the team leader or direct counterpart be part of the interview/interest engagement process may be key to preparing volunteers mentally for the job.

3) Jaded/cynical/bitter/burned out leaders are corrosive/discouraging to younger volunteers. The analogy X gave is the driver who keeps going on the road for 12 hours and is flagging in attention and performance- he/she could rest, but that will delay the journey if nobody else can do what they do, and therefore he/she may choose to press on despite the disadvantages. Questions:

- How to catch burnout early in myself or others, and do organisations have a "co-pilot" arrangement that safeguards the leader in case he/she needs a break (an eject button!)?

- A theology of burnout? this definitely exists- remembering Christopher Ash's helpful little book "Zeal without burnout"

- What burns me out? (I keep going back to the Deci/Gagne model of Autonomy, Competence and Relationships. I think that if the work environment lacks these components or if any of them takes a hit repeatedly over time, that would burn me out)