I look back on the past few years of my life and wonder, did I make the right decision?
Did I take a wrong turn somewhere?
I vowed to myself not to become another unemployed college graduate living in my parent’s basement. I’ve worked hard, held a number of jobs from camp counselor to deejay to food server all to save money so that I could support myself and my dream, my dream living abroad and saving the world.
I set off so naively to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia two years ago. I jumped right in- moved in with a family in a mud and stick house in the slums on the edge of the city’s largest trash dump.
The family compound where I lived.
Koshe, Addis Ababa's main trash dump, less than a 10 minute walk from where I was staying.
I crept outside in the dark of night in the cold under the stars to make my way to the hole in the ground that was the toilet and tried not to notice the spiders that covered the walls. I ate the same thing for lunch and dinner day in and day out. I got used to having no electricity and freezing cold showers. Once a week I would take two local buses to the hot springs to have a warm shower. But I made incredible relationships with a family I could barely verbally communicate with.
I painted each of my sister's nails!
I gave my time to the local primary school, the site that would be become my first project abroad. I started a prep class at the school where teachers and staff would soon become like family.
Then, my partner and host stole my credit card and passport information... *pause for dramatic effect*.... but I stayed… well not there, I moved out- had incredible luck and timing in finding an amazing house with five other foreign girls. Despite a lot of concern and advice to quit the prep class, I stayed at the school and continued with the at-lunch prep class to help 8th grade students pass their national exams. If they don’t pass they do not continue with school. The school had a 50% pass rate. It was so successful that I launched it at a second primary school.
The second school where I initiated my Prep Class.
Due to the unfortunate identity theft incident I could not extend my visa and so after 6 months, bye, bye Ethiopia.
Should I have stayed? I could have eaten the money, bought a plane ticket out of the country, taken a vacation for a few days, and then come back in on a tourist visa. Could I have really started a long-lasting project, dare I say a nonprofit?
I then went to Mombasa, Kenya to intern at a friend of friend’s community nonprofit that provides scholarships, mentoring, and career guidance to students in the poorest suburb. It’s funny how I came to be there. It’s truly a world of only 6 degrees of separation. A coworker in City Year threw a pool party at her parent’s house a few months before I left Columbus. I got to talking with her mother about my plans to go abroad and she mentioned a family friend’s son who had worked abroad at Hatua Likoni. We were e-introduced and he then e-introduced me to Gabi, the founder of Hatua Likoni. Gabi and I had been talking for awhile, but had planned on my coming to Kenya in the summer, after I had finished the school year in Addis. She was kind enough to let me come early in March, when my visa expired in Ethiopia.
So off to Kenya I went. Excited at a fresh start and to be heading to my second country. I lived in a beautiful little hut right on the Indian Ocean. I sat on my porch every morning and ate breakfast overlooking the water.
The view from my porch!
The beach by my house (my house is up on the right).
As beautiful as it was, it was also isolating, as I lived way on the edge of town, not in walking distance of well, anything. My coworkers were great and the organization was awesome, but I was lonely.
Before leaving to Kenya, I had applied for a year-long volunteer (more like fellowship) position with an organization called Tostan. Another by-chance meet…
To keep myself busy after I finished my year of service with City Year in the summer of 2013 (before I left for Ethiopia that fall) I interned with the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio. On my last day, I found myself alone in the office at one point and a board member walked in. We got to talking and when she heard that I was going to Ethiopia, started raving about a book she’d just read called “However Long the Night,” written by the founder of Tostan, Molly Melching, and how I must read it! She said she’d dropped it off to the office in a few days.
Now, the office is way on the other side of town from where I lived and I was leaving in a week and did not have time to run back over to get a random book someone I barely knew had recommended however kind a gesture it was. My mother was sweet enough to pick it up for me, as she worked out that way. I just so happened to pack it and ended up reading it when I was sick in bed within my first two weeks in Ethiopia. I read it in eight straight hours, couldn’t put it down. I was so moved that I emailed the general account on their website about how they needed to come to Ethiopia. Whoever read my email was so moved, that she forwarded it to Molly herself (the founder and author). That started a long conversation in which I was eventually directed to their volunteer program.
I applied and didn’t hear back until I was in Kenya. I didn’t get it. I was pretty crushed. Gabi had offered me to stay for the year though, so that seemed to be my plan until a few days later I got an email saying that Tostan’s selected candidate had declined the position and I was their next top choice. I got the job!
I had the most confusing week of my life deciding what to do- move to The Gambia (where is that even?!) or stay put. In the end, I decided to go to The Gambia with Tostan. It was my chance to branch out of education and into development and human rights work.
During my last month in the Kenya, I fell in love with the Kenyan co-founder of the organization (my boss). That did not end up working out well, so probably best that I was going.
Or was it? Should I have stayed? Whether or not we worked it out, Hatua was a smaller organization where I had much more influence and could have really risen, and made significant impacts. Maybe I’d still be there? Maybe we’d be engaged?
My first two weeks in Dakar, Senegal where I had training with Tostan were a hot mess.
For starters, I was only suppose to have been there for one week. I arrived covered in bed bug bites and appeared to continue getting bit. They exterminated my room. Also, I didn’t have enough blanks pages left in my passport to get my visa to The Gambia and so had to go to the US Embassy to add more, which took a few days, i.e.- the extra week. I didn’t know French (a must if going to Dakar) which made everything more of a hassle.
Finally, I set off to my new home. It was hot as hell and a tiny ass town, Basse (<20,000). I was the only foreigner. My two-bedroom apartment was massive...
... and had a horrid ant infestation the first night I was there...
I learned to live with having power for only a few hours a day and that I had to wash my dishes outside every night because I didn’t have a sink in the house.
I screamed as I learned to kill the giant pancake-like spiders that craweled on my walls.
I learned Mandinka and a little bit of Fula (local languages).
I ate lunch with my hands from one giant bowl that I shared with my coworkers every day.
I walked to the market every other day to buy fresh fruits and vegetables to cook with (I didn’t have a refrigerator, well I did actually, but with no constant power, it was pretty useless).
I learned so much- how to ride a motorcycle, how to work in diverse environments, how to sleep in a hut in a real African village in the middle of nowhere...
how to sleep outside on my porch each night because it was just too hot inside...
... how to take a bucket bath, and what the real meaning of self-initiative is. I also got extremely depressed. I woke up each day to the same thing, to the same lonely life and a position that wasn’t challenging enough.
I applied for other jobs. I applied for months and nothing came up.
Then, one day in March I found a position that seemed fun, it was short, only a few months in Tanzania. Within one week I applied, interviewed, and was offered the position. Fast? You could say that, especially now in retrospect. I was unsure, but so ready to make a change that I didn’t see how it could be worse than where I was. Timing also worked out nicely in that I was going to meet my dad in Ethiopia for a few weeks of vacation and to attend my friend’s wedding there before starting this new position.
Should I have stuck out my last month with Tostan? I could have made it work, seen if I could have transferred locations. Even if not, I’d finally made some Peace Corps friends and found another expat living in Basse who would’ve gotten me thru. If another job didn’t come up, I could’ve always extended.
I went back to Ethiopia, the place I love, so near and dear to my heart. I surprised Tigist, the teacher who’d become like a sister to me, who I started the prep class with. The look on her face- priceless as I had not told her I was coming...
To see the school, my old friends, it was amazing. I got to show my dad all of my favorite places. We traveled- fed hyenas, camped in the Bale Mountains, saw hippos...
I was a bridesmaid in my friend Haimanot’s wedding, which was a blast! I didn’t want to leave.
But the time came and I was off once again.
My flight was delayed and I ended up having a 15 hour layover in Nairobi, Kenya. Thankfully, my friend Jimmy who I’d met while working with Hatua Likoni lives in Nairobi, very close to the airport, and graciously invited me to stay with him and his family for the night. It was a great surprise and visit. Before I knew it, I was in the fourth African country I’d get to call home- Tanzania. My first thought was how green everything was...
Rainy season hadn’t yet started in the Gambia so everything was very brown and yellow there.
My new home was a big house in the village of Msaranaga a few miles outside the town of Moshi, at the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Walking (well jumping) in Msaranga. Mt. Kili in the background!
I was living in the volunteer house with one other coordinator. I was just so excited to be around people.
In retrospect it was probably the biggest 360 I could have done. It got to be a lot. I’d grown so accustomed to living alone and having “me time” that I didn’t know how to constantly be around people 24/7.
The projects were great, different for me- teaching English to adults and nursery school students, but I fell in love.
Being goofy with some members of the Community English class.
I made animal masks with my nursery school students.
Voluntourism isn’t exactly what I had planned to get into though. Anyone in international development will have a little laugh here as the two don’t exactly see eye-to-eye. I slowly saw that as the weeks went by. The organization is great and runs sustainable projects, more so than other voluntour orgs, in that the projects can run even without volunteers (they have enough staff). At the end of the day, though, it is a business and needs the volunteers to continue running and with that, the volunteer experience takes priority over the quality of the projects. It simply wasn’t a good fit and so my contract ended early and here I am.
Should I not have taken the position? Did I get pressured into it? Did I not see clearly because I so badly wanted a change that I didn’t think it thru? Could I have tried harder- made it work?
I’m now living in a fabulous little hotel called Mountain Inn, previously known as Shah Tours. The staff are amazing, my room is huge, and the food is heavenly! Anyone coming to Moshi, I highly recommend it.
And I’m here waiting.
I’ve put in applications and had interviews for two awesome positions. Now, I sit and I count the minutes and dread checking my email. I’m trying to prepare myself for both outcomes- continued unemployment or the start of my career (a real paying job in the field of international development).
I reflect.
How the hell did I get here? Was it all for nothing? The almost two years of my life I’ve given to communities and organizations for little to no pay (if you include stipends as pay, otherwise no pay at all). Yes, I’ve learned a lot, I’ve grown as a person. But, if I still can’t make it in my field after all of this, then what was it for?
I will be crushed if I don’t get the position I so badly want. I have backup plans though. I met a cute guy in Zanzibar two weekends ago who wants me to go traveling with him. I’m sure my parents will be thrilled that I’ve put job-hunting on hold to go off gallivanting with a stranger. If that for some reason doesn’t work, I’ll have to put my tail between my legs and head home. It’ll be nice to see the family, have some first-world comforts. I’ll keep applying and if nothing turns up in a few months, I’m going to Mexico with my Uncle come winter (he’s gone every winter for as long as I can remember because he hates the Ohio cold). I’ll relearn Spanish and continue to “find myself.”
So, I sit and wait.
I’m OK. I have the funds to sustain myself here for at least a few more weeks. I have plans. I may go crazy in the meantime, but I have them.
Tick
Toc.
Tick Toc.
Where will the future take me?
