Mid-term Report: Taking Stock

The African climate to date has been one of little extremes – cloudless blue skies and sunshine daily – the only changes being a sudden heat wave with the end of winter and the gradual drying out of the landscape. For one used to the changing of the seasons, this constant weather has made my time here seem like one long month. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that while I have been here at home the snow has melted, the trees have turned fluorescent with youth, then a stately mature green, and are now preparing to turn the colors of fall. In a way, I can sympathize with the African propensity for focusing on the now and not planning ahead, because for me the year 2010 has snuck by unnoticed and all of a sudden I find myself in September.

It has been just over six months since I sat in the hostel in New York the night before we left on our African Adventure, excited but nervous and not knowing what to expect. The first three days in Africa are a blur in my memory of exhaustion, dehydration and travel from NYC to Johannesburg to Maputo. That first day, Brian, Zach, Orlando and I huddled together amongst our mountain of luggage in the Johannesburg bus station, seems like such a long time ago. Since those first days Brian and I have seen more of Southern Africa than we ever expected, worked in four different projects, and faced many challenges.

I have spent the last few days going over old entries, reliving this experience from the tortuous days of fundraising all the way to the present. And I have surprised myself with how far I have come, how much I have grown, and how much my own struggles and personal insights of the past have helped to guide and refocus me now.

I had forgotten how passionate and excited I was about this trip. I kept referring to this year as the ‘adventure of a lifetime’; my African Adventure. I spoke passionately and somewhat assuredly about achieving positive change, and how I would participate in effective development. And, in my very first post, I challenged myself to live up to two of my father’s quotes, to

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“Think like a person of action, act like a person of thought”
And
“Wonder, rather than doubt, is the root of knowledge”
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So, six months into this so called African Adventure, where am I now?

Sometime over the last six months I forgot that I was in the middle of the adventure of a lifetime. This is partly because at some stage my African Adventure stopped being shiny and new and just became life. Living in Africa, like living in any new country, has been a blend of the exotic and the ordinary. I find myself at times struck with the knowledge that I am actually living in Africa, that these scenes straight out of a documentary are my reality and are now part of my life story. Most days though, life is life. No matter where you live, day to day living is much the same – while not exotic or exciting our week consists of sitting in an office, grocery shopping, cooking, and doing laundry. The only difference might be raking our sand yard instead of cutting the grass; same as at home though, we don’t do it nearly often enough.

Development-wise, the last six months have been full of growing pains. I came to Africa with a keen interest in and loosely formed ideas about development. Having written my masters thesis on the concept of sustainable development I was interested to see examples of it on the ground and to try my hand at it myself. Unlike Brian, who is ambivalent about the necessity or wisdom of aid, I was fairly certain that aid was necessary if undertaken in a grassroots, sustainable way. I explained away many of the problems of sub-Saharan Africa by citing colonialism, civil war, lack of infrastructure, lack of education, man-made borders, and the havocs wrought by the Cold War, neglecting to include both aid itself or to hold Africans themselves to account in the equation. Unlike some volunteers, who come here seeking a new experience and the chance to do a little good, I came here in large part to develop myself professionally, and I am now certain that I will leave this continent more confused and uncertain about development and aid than when I entered it.

Sometime in late October, after taking part in an inspiring course on HIV/AIDs, I wrote passionately and confidently that “Teaching the basic facts is one thing, but motivating people, facilitating knowledge, leading and teaching how to lead others, that can change lives. That is how development is done”. To an extent, I still believe these words, although I am not nearly as confident in their feasibility as I was 10 months ago. MUCH easier said than done, past Kim. Brian and I are slowly, SLOWLY seeing progress on these fronts. The fact is that setting up a health clinic, showers, toilets and mosquito nets for the children of Cidadela may end up being the most personally rewarding part of my time here on this continent. But I still believe that this buzzword capacity building is our best chance at making a lasting, if small, difference. Building the capacity of a set of people means giving them the tools to do things for themselves, and I think it is one of the hardest things I will ever do. Teaching leadership, people management, time management, computer skills, etc. in a formal school setting where everyone shows up knowing their roles is easy. Try doing that when they don’t know you’re doing it.

So how do I judge these first six months of living in Africa, these first six months of doing development work? There is no one answer and I do not think there ever will be. The last six months has been a life experience and one that I do not, at this stage in the game, think that I will regret. It has been full of frustration, extreme anger, and confusion. It has been one full of sincere gratitude, awe and wonder. I have had many anecdotal experiences that I will carry with me for the rest of my life and a few rewarding little tidbits where I got to help some people. I have met some friendly people but also have been struck down at times by what I suppose are cultural differences and at times severe ignorance and bigotry.

I had come here with the vague notion, naively, that I would return home a different person; that I would have a hard time returning to the West because somehow my years experience in the Developing World would fundamentally alter my world view. Somewhat surprising to me, this has not happened. While forevermore I will be able to qualify my privileged reality with the broader reality of the world, I still want much the same things in life as before – economic security, a home, vacations, retirement. And there is some guilt in that fact.

The bottom line is that much of my time here has been a struggle. A struggle to find my place in my work. A struggle to create a life here, to create a sense of balance between work and life amidst a growing internal pressure to achieve something. A struggle against forming blanket negative stereotypes about Africa and Africans (or Namibia and Namibians) while at the same time not excusing everything away and holding people to account. A struggle to learn patience within myself. A struggle to maintain positivity and learn to make myself happy regardless of the circumstances. An everlasting struggle to achieve something concrete. And an ideological struggle with the concept of development, and my place within it.

The problem with ceasing to frame this experience as an Adventure is that immediately the mind narrows. Cultural and project flaws that I viewed as challenges to learn to understand and overcome in Mozambique and even in Outapi have become obstacles and annoyances here in Katima. I have become bogged down in my work, succumbed to a self-imposed pressure to achieve something and forgotten to view this as a learning experience, as an Adventure. I came here determined to view the world with wonder, to maintain an openness to things I didn’t understand or agree with, because the alternative is doubt, or judgment, which has a tendency to inhibit growth. This doesn’t mean that I have to think that everything and everyone around me is wonderful. It doesn’t mean that I can’t form informed negative opinions about some of the things in my new world. But it does mean that to view the world openly, to keep myself open to new experiences, feelings, and relationships, I have to stop judging - especially judging against my Western worldview, because this is not the West. I had forgotten that. I hope this is a lesson that I can learn, and that I can sustain throughout the rest of my life.

Six months down, six months (hopefully) to go. I wonder what adventures await me…

P.S. Brian wants me to add that I saw a lot of animals too!