I am now officially packed and ready for the flight tomorrow...except for uni stuff. Am ready to finish one tonight, that leaves one which is still unfinshed, unreferenced stream of consciousness. fuck. The one I'm about to finish should be good though, based on primary research including:

Had a field trip and interview today with 10 fishermen out at a tiny wooden community centre at their jetty about a truly appalling situation. What is interesting is that I was so excited to be there - I started off thinking, "look at me!! We're talking to people about real issues, look how rustic this is, I'm in a developing country, how *authentic*!!" I am such a complete dork. Then the excitement wore off and I became overwhelmed, humbled and angry in turns as I grappled with their situation and how fucked it all is. It got hotter and I got sweaty in that listless 'why bother sweating because we're in the tropics and there is no wind' way and bugs started to bite me and I didn't catch all of the conversation because I speak zilch on the linga franca and flies kept landing on my coconut juice in the shell... Plus not being able to guffaw or say "well that's fucked!" when they tell you stories but just having to frown or nod and take notes.

Officially this country is a democrary, but look it up on human rights websites and they'll call it an illiberal democrary, autocracy, psuedo democracy. Ask some people and they'll call it a totalitarian state.

The Government here (the same party in for the last 40 years) is barely distinguishable from business and there is no 'public' to be servants to.
Anti-government sentiment is not tolerated and people get arrested under a certain Act not disimilar to an out of control version of the anti terrorist laws emerging in the West. Under this (internal security ) law people go away and never come back - no charges, no trial, just gone.

So with these guys today it's a situation that can only be tweaked from the inside - if you know the right people (and they don't) the system can be played to save this one group - but overall nothing changes. I know what you're thinking - it's the same here, but trust me, it's not. It's really really not.

The other week at lunch someone scathingly said "everything can be negotiated in this country" and someone missed the point and replied proudly "yes that's because we're so tolerant".

Principles can choke you to death in this place.