Reflections with Our Friends

Even though we’ve still got a little over a week left of work, already we’ve been focused on ‘transitioning’ and trying to make sure that the output that we’ve developed will be useful after we leave. It seems that the end is near, but we’ve got so much work to do and have had so much fun, that I hope it does not come too soon.

In the meantime, we’ve been having fun with our friends visiting from ‘upcountry’ (Nairobi). We met all of them during the first week while in Nairobi, all eager to get going with our projects, all under some illusions to make a major impact during the summer (all are other Technoserve or United Nations volunteers). It’s fun catching up now that the summer is winding down; we’ve had some visitors each week wanting to enjoy the Indian Ocean summer breezes before they head back to Europe or the U.S. And of course this has given us some time to chat and reflect.

Was the summer everything everyone wanted? Is everyone going to change their careers to development work? It’s sad to recognize that universally everyone we’ve spoken to has realized in one sense or another that development work can be in so many ways so difficult, challenging, demotivating, and frustrating, that most, after their summer experience, decide that they don’t want to do it. Whether it’s high level policy stuff (World Bank or United Nations), or on-the-ground, specific project involvement, the frustrations, although different, all lead to similar conclusions. Which is too bad. Technoseve has actually been more successful in keeping spirits up, it appears, and most people were very pleased with the projects they worked on. However, the limited motivation of people, often incompetence, rough working conditions, bureaucracy, lack of support and so on has led many people to reconsider. This is NGO work and it’s not going to be perfect. But this crowd, most from Ivy-league schools and experience in banking or consulting, think that they can do better elsewhere. Maybe so. At some point I’ll write about our overall thoughts, but we’ve still got some time left and I want to be fair in our assessment.

In any case, we’re enjoying our last few days here. This past weekend we spent all day diving on Saturday and ‘sailing’ on a beautiful dhow boat. We met other volunteers who are med students – their experiences at local hospitals sounds much more intense, I must say. On Sunday we visited a local village with one of the plant supervisors (more on that later) and spent the rest of the day relaxing on the beach…of course it’s difficult to think about this lifestyle ending anytime soon!