relief

I was going to just erase that last entry because...ugh. But I don't want to silence the voices of my friends who wrote very nice and supportive things. So I will just add a disclaimer.

I told them I don't want to do it. Last night I was sitting in the office completely overwhelmed and I couldn't figure out how to make it go away and when I went to the bathroom I saw that I had streaks of mascara all down my cheeks and I looked just about as wrecked as I felt. Since His Excellency is not so excellent with the follow-up and still hadn't sent us a speech manuscript, or even a flipping topic for that matter, I felt like there was nothing I could do to prepare myself for this, no concrete steps I could take to make myself feel better. Except canceling.

So I went to the lady who had asked me to do this and asked her if there was any other possibility for tomorrow. She said she could do it herself... she had been nervous about it before, but now that the conference was in full swing she realized how laid-back everyone was, and now feels fine doing it herself (and she told me she had spent a year studying in Scotland).

Thank God. I told her I'd be glad to be there as back-up if she doesn't understand some English word or phrase... but without a mike, please.

Maybe another of the big life lessons I am supposed to be learning here is how to know when I am in over my head. And to get out.

So... soon I am off to provide translation back-up. Having someone's back: now there's something I can do.

[P.S.: It went fine, but I really couldn't have done it myself. The good ambassador was an excellent speaker in English, but the vocabulary I picked up during my four months of German class and three years of reading theology and fiction, watching TV and talking to my friends just would not have been adequate to translate his comments on the process of economic development in Ethiopia... Did you all know that Ethiopia is the only African country that was never colonized? Interesting. Anyway, I sat up there and did the translating INTO English, which is no problem, and felt at least marginally useful. And the woman who did the translation was nervous, but did a truly excellent job and it was definitely the right decision. I kept waiting for the overwhelming load of guilt to fall on my shoulders... but nope. I had to back out, and I did it as responsibly as I could under the circumstances, and thankfully I don't feel guilty. Whew. ]