Despite my promises to keep my blog up to date, I have hesitated writing till now both out of a lack of coherent themes and because leaving and moving is a complicated, messy thing and for me a highly emotional time. However, as a friend recently reminded me, the emotional turmoil that accompanies changes is also part of this experience. In his words, to not write about it would be to deprive my friends (and interested readers) of this understanding. I’m not sure if that is or is not true, but either way, I’ll try to lay out some of the thoughts I’ve been having as I prepare for my training with EWB, and what I have doing to get ready.
The past month has been one filled with turbulence. Like most people, I find coming home after a long time away is great because I get to see my family and friends again, but it is also hard to settle back into a routine. Often, I feel like I’m gate-crashing into people’s lives for a brief burst of catching up and laughter which I appreciate immensely, but followed by a rapid departure, it feels all too brief and rushed. Coming back from an incredible experience at Cambridge, I’ve been trying to find my footing and figure out who this new person is. You might roll your eyes, and say “who cares! Just keep going and it’ll all sort itself out,” but when heading into another year that promises to be equally as transformative, I feel the need to know where I am to know where I am going.
Much of the past month has therefore been spent thinking about my past and my anticipated future, with far less attention on the present. I think that this is understandable for a variety of reasons. Primarily, I have a lot of great memories, experiences and learning to reflect back on. These have transformed the direction I had previously predicted for my future. However, it is far easier to picture the familiar that the unimaginable. It is therefore conceivable to reflect on what I know, and what I can predict with some certainty (or context) than to imagine the course of this coming year in Malawi. I know that I am going, but it still feels surreal.
In a week, I will begin a month of intensive training with a team of 11 other long-term (1 year) EWB volunteers in Toronto. In preparation, I’ve spent a fair amount of time discovering the cafes of Calgary while researching and reading about the history and progression of the development/aid sector, health and safety, rural agriculture, livelihoods, various sustainability frameworks, and a brilliant article about the challenges, misperceptions and traps that well-intentioned volunteers can stumble into. The best prevention for these mistakes is to learn as much as possible, to be self-aware (to know when I am making mistakes, which will inevitably happen) and to be open-minded. The following month of training aims to build on these foundations with workshops, guest speakers, forays out into Toronto, etc.
So now I have everything packed into a big and little backpack and I’m on a plane slowly working my way back around the world… this time a bit farther east and a lot farther south to learn, teach, discover, apply my limited knowledge and make mistakes about my passions: development, sustainability and people.
