Kuku Karanga

Betty and I are just starting our second week of data collection for our new Orphans and Vulnerable Children project. We’re surveying vulnerable households in 20 communities where we’re hoping to work in the next year, to assess their needs and also gain a better understanding of household situations. The hope is that the results will determine how best to implement our program. Fieldwork, for me, has always been inspiring and humbling. It gives us the opportunity to go deep into the interior of a country- to a small village or town and truly see how people live, how they struggle, how they survive. It brings me back to my Peace Corps days when I was living day in, day out, in a community with similar circumstances-no access to services to meet basic needs, chronic illness, physically demanding work…and witnessing how beautiful and overwhelmingly hard their lives are.

Leading up to the survey and training, I was pulling tightly on my compulsive reigns and becoming utterly consumed with planning. After a bit of self-reflection, I decided this was not the way to operate. My goal for the next two weeks was to let go and accept that many things are just not in my control. And more importantly, that this was not my project, and I was just along to be helpful, supportive, hard-working, and not question everything that was happening. Not to sound callous, but I compare development work to event planning in many ways. Much of what we do takes unbelievable attention to detail-anticipating problems, developing contingency plans, and being a linear enough thinker to connect the dots and see how all of the components impact one another over the life of a project. We are just event planning for incredibly vulnerable people as opposed to people who work for corporations or are about to embark on a fancy getaway vacation.

So, yes. Would I be doing things a bit differently? Sure I would. But much of what we plan in the end doesn’t really make a difference anyway, as we are in Africa, and so much of what happens in a day’s time is simply out of our of control. I mean, we’re talking the bush here. It takes up to two hours to go 18km. We can’t do much about the road conditions, or about when the electricity in town is working to make photocopies, or the rain, or even whether the village governments are around to help us identify households to interview. So, they are long days. Really long days. But they are days that make our work feel worthwhile. They are days that transfer all of our frustrations from the office and impress upon us the needs of these communities and how our projects will inevitably impact lives for the better. It’s a reminder of the importance of what we do.

And of course, it’s also muzungu fishbowl time. Many of the villages we’ve visited in the past week have never seen a foreigner. I spent roughly five hours the other day sitting under a tree with 50 children at any given time starting at me with wonder. We played hide and seek. I taught them duck, duck, goose, or in this case, kuku, kuku, karanga (chicken, chicken, peanut. To date, all Swahili words I know are related to food. Obviously.) I fell in love with a two month old baby named Monica. I ate mangos. I let students practice their English. I giggled with shy toddlers and allowed the kids to poke and prod at my painted toe nails and freckles and tattoos. It was a day of inspiration. All the hard work seemed completely and utterly worth every moment of aggravation. It was peace and beauty and without question exactly what I needed.

The Deep Blue

It’s been a while since I last wrote. Characteristically I feel much more compelled when things are hard, when I need to vent, reflect, release, and writing has always helped me in that way. So inevitably, once things in my life start to improve, I tend not to share. I put the mental soundtrack on pause and offer up some peace to my quieting brain. I slip into cruise control. I revel in the goodness of it all. I mean, don’t we grow the most when things are really difficult? We impose harsh criticism on ourselves, turn inward, nurture our inner psyches to try to get some answers about what’s transpiring in our lives, and determine the role we have played to make this all feel so impossibly hard. Who the heck sits around when their lives are great, wondering “Wow. Things are pretty awesome these days. I should really invest some mental energy to figure out what the hell is going on here.” It feels fantastic when we’re up. We look inside ourselves when things feel out of reach, out of our control; it’s when we beat ourselves up, when we’re begging the universe to throw us a bone, give us a break. So when that change actually occurs (with subtlety as its best yearbook quality) change starts showing its face again at parties and we hardly notice. Things just feel different. We don’t trust ourselves to look back and remember when things felt any other way, because this feeling is so nice, and we want it to stick around, knowing all too well that eventually the shift will occur again, and the ups and downs of life will persist.

So yes, the past six weeks, I’ve established a nice little existence here in Mwanza. I’ve made some wonderfully caring , generous and supportive friends. I celebrated another marvellous birthday on the continent of Africa karaoking my heart out. I dusted off the running shoes and joined an ultimate frisbee team and began practicing yoga on the beach. I’ve ventured out into the market and forced myself to start cooking anything besides Ramen Noodles. It’s a routine that feels pleasant, comfortable, manageable.

Work, on the other hand, does not feel manageable many days. I’m grateful to be getting this experience—it’s fulfilling, truly…yet ohhhhh sooooo frustrating. The longer I am exposed to development work, the more the complexities of it surface, and the less able I feel to understand my role in this massive industry of “helping people”. The demands of the job are high, for everyone. Stress is fueled by deadlines, reports, and donors. In that sense, I would guess that it’s no different than most jobs. But it’s the bigger picture—remembering that the obligatory tasks and bureaucracy does eventually trickle down to helping incredibly vulnerable people improve their lives. It’s keeping my western expectations in check while learning to adapt to local culture and work ethic. It’s allowing myself to brush things off and recognize not everything is a matter of life and death. It’s looking past the red tape and the protocols and the donor requirements to appreciate the work that we do, and know that while it’s not perfect, it’s certainly something, and a something that is making a significant impact in the world. So, yes. Unnecessary to note, I’ve been flustered at work. Throw-my-laptop-through-the-window flustered. I’ve been on the verge of tears. Many, many times. My tolerance has evaporated. My fuse has shortened to a stub. It was time for a vacation.

There’s a reason why in much of the development world, staff are required to take R&R. Granted, I’m not in Haiti, Darfur, Afghanistan or Pakistan, but after three months in Mwanza, the concept behind it was ringing true loud and clear. Luckily, my birthday coincidentally fell around the time that I was basically ready to claw my face off at the office, and my wonderful father planned a long weekend getaway in Zanzibar for me and a friend. I allowed myself to be intoxicated by the turquoise blue ocean, powder white sand, and palm trees blowing in the breeze. I ate fresh sushi on the beach at sunset. I shopped ‘til I dropped in historic Stonetown. I floated in the warmth of the sea and soaked up the sunshine. I stuffed my gills with amazing food. I drank good wine. I slept like a baby. It was a magical, magical place and simply took my breath away. The island swept me up and renewed my love for Africa. I left feeling revived and recharged. I’ve walked away from the dreamy surf of Zanzibar with this lesson: self-imposed R&R every two months, even if it’s just a weekend to get out of Mwanza and eat fried goat and french fries in a sleepy little town 15 km up the road. Next stop?