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Don’t Give Me a Line
Well, I’m back. Or am I?
I spent Thursday evening at the Thunderpub excited to be back and to catch up with all of the familiar faces around the room and yet unable to move. Perhaps it was culture shock, perhaps I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of awesome in that room, perhaps as we have been learning in our Cross Cultural Communications class, the more I travel, the more I feel like a fish out of water in my home country. Either way, I’m back.
South Africa and social enterprise have been on my mind quite a bit here in this environment perfectly constructed for me to dwell on these ideas all day long. What keeps coming to mind is a mantra that was drilled into us as aspiring social entrepreneurs (forgive the lack of acknowledgement, but I’m sure someone wrote it in a book):
Think Big.
Fail Early.
Act Now.
I feel like I’ve followed these succinct guidelines to a “T” in my professional life these days (Think Big: Move across the country for a world renowned grad school named after a mythical creature then move across the globe to build social enterprises…check; Fail Early: I almost would rather this say “fail often”…check; Act Now: well, I guess I’m writing now, but most of the time I’m acting…check). However, my personal life might not have as impressive statistics on these directives.
A lot of current literature points to the need for boundaries. I’m learning how boundaries allow me to say “no” more easily and help prevent me from my over committing tendencies (don’t worry, my color coded calendars keep things straight). Recently, in speaking with a number of close friends, they seem to draw boundaries around themselves that blur the purpose of the boundary itself. Does a boundary protect you from an external threat or prevent you from truly being a part of the life just across that invisible line. For example, the other night, were my boundaries at the pub helping me to adjust to life in the states, or were they keeping me from sharing the amazing experiences I’ve had. My friends’ boundaries were definitely holding them in. But they couldn’t see it. One friend allowed age to dictate his feeling unable to reach where he “should” be by now in his life. Another allowed her toxic workplace to make her feel like she didn’t have skills valuable to any workplace. Instead of using the boundaries to keep out the bad, somehow, they were keeping it in and not letting their amazing selves out.
Brilliant GOOD Magazine once again hit the nail on the head regarding the lines we draw in the article “Finding Tarzan at the Sanitation Department” by Nicola Twilley. A staff member at The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) in LA stated that, “The lines we draw around the edges of a place often provide the clearest view of the framework we are using to define it.” How is it that I can so clearly see the excellence and potential in my friends through these lines and because of them, when my friends can only see the lines themselves?
In our roles as catalysts in asset based community development, we were meant to act as a mirror to the communities. Allow them to better see what they already have right there. We need to start being better mirrors to one another in our personal lives, too. Let’s not drag down all the walls people have up. Some of them are important and do protect. But we need to see them for what they are and use them without letting them use us. Again CLUI notes that, “The landscape pulses with potential meaning. The heightened sense of awareness—the ability to notice the marks we leave on the Earth’s surface and listen to the stories they can tell us.” It is time to think about what marks are we leaving on one another, and what stories they can tell. And then we need to tell each other.
How else will we Think Big. Fail Early. and Act Now.?
Farewell Clare
As I wrap up my time here in Clare, I am at a loss for words. So I am going to recap some of the words I have heard here in the hopes that it will shape my memories of where relationships and businesses began.
Man standing outside the tuck shop (a kind of convenience store and the only stores in the village): “I need your phone number?”
Me: “Sorry, my phone is only for my job.”
Man: “Oh good. A job is looking for me.”
While his syntax may have been off, I like the idea that jobs are looking for us. I hope that they find each of us. And soon!
Conride, a homestay “uncle” of sorts: “Can you see the moon in USA?”
Me: “Yes.”
Conride: “Can you see the sun?”
Me: “Yes. Why do you ask?”
Conride: “The students seem surprised each time they see things in the sky here.”
Me: “Oh yes, we can see the moon, but sometimes it is hard to see the stars.”
Funny, it is easy to see the whole of the Milky Way here and somehow we are seeing people, each other, and ourselves more clearly, too. He made me wonder what it is that is blocking our vision back home.
Conright, who was one of our go-to guys and the Marketing Director of our bread company, Xinkwa xa Rixaka (Bread of the Nations) upon tasting the first batch of prototype bread: “I’m eating the product of my mind.”
Conright again later when he bid us farewell: “You will leave a gap here that will not be filled, but we will remember you and what you have done for us. And we will succeed.”
We have learned a great deal from the people here in Clare through words and actions. We have also taught ourselves a few things: to value process over product, participation over decisions and how by moving with the tide of time here, we become accepted by the community instead of viewed as peculiar outsiders. Now we know that no one’s worth is indicated or determined by a job, but that a job does bestow a sense of worth and pride.
Through becoming part of the community here, I was reminded of one of the Chronicle of Narnia books, The Last Battle, where the characters go through a door to find a bucolic land after a great battle. They assume it to be the end of the battle and a paradise place of rest, but are urged to push “further up and further in” towards increasingly more beautiful and good things. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not comparing a rural developing village to what is meant to be a metaphor for heaven in the book. Heaven best not have latrines. And I’m certain no one will be hungry or sick there. But what Clare does have going for it is the ability to let people in. The community has let us come “further up and further in” to know them better, to teach us how they live. Ultimately, this openness allowed us to help them build better businesses.
I leave Clare tomorrow with utmost gratitude and with the hope that the next time I come, I won’t recognize it at all.
Super Size It and Throw in a Funeral Plan
We have two more days in Clare and I’m pondering death. Before you decide this is going to be a depressing post and leave, hear me out.
Death is a part of almost daily life here in Clare. Animals are slaughtered for food, kill one another or, like the two tiny kittens we found and tried to nurse, die for no apparent reason. While I dislike seeing this kind of death, I understand it is part of the food chain here and ultimately, probably for the good of the community.
However, the almost constant reminder of human death has really struck me. Funerals are conduced almost weekly. Ask any community member and you will find that they have lost at least a few siblings. People rarely seem to know the cause of deaths, either. Most seem to be caused by car accidents or “illness,” which I’m fairly certain means HIV/AIDS related deaths. Even commercials casually reference death. “Support the Kaiser Chiefs soccer team by SMSing this number and you can win a funeral plan!” It even includes groceries for a year.
—
These commercials bring two thoughts to mind.
1. Those selling funeral plans sure know their target audience.
2. How in the world is everyone okay with this many people dying so often from so many unexplained causes?!
I realize the answer to the second question is a simple: this is a vastly different world than the one I came from. But realistically, anyone living in these communities has to be okay with it in order to function—whether that be someone who has lived here all their lives, or us, here for a two-month stay.
I was chatting with a friend in the states the other day to learn that her cat had undergone a number of tests to understand a recent ailment. I believe a brain scan was involved. She, being the socially astute person she is, acknowledged the strangeness of telling someone in a rural African village where healthcare is virtually nonexistent that she had just spent time and money on rigorous medical testing for a cat. However, it didn’t phase me. And I wanted to understand why. I think the reason is three-fold:
– first, we are in totally different situations at the moment and clearly one should act as logically and compassionately as possible given the potential to do so;
– second, if I constantly worried about the rural South African death rate, I wouldn’t do my job of helping those who are living to be empowered as business people, gain income, and afford decent medical care and nutrition;
– third, many people are doing fine. Which means, my meddling in something I don’t fully understand yet, could disrupt the system that is working for the majority.
I am certainly not saying that this is an issue that can be swept under the rug, but that instead if I focus on being sad and dejected because of the harsh realities of development work, I will miss out on how to actually make an impact.
——-
Speaking of impact, here’s how the bread baking business is going: awesomesauce.
This week, the goals were to: put a constitution in place, train core staff members in the business basics, decide on the areas for fully integrating the businesses social mission of increasing academic motivation of local students, and test and refine the recipes. We tested two types of white bread, raisin and banana bread.
Oh, and all of these goals needed to be reached without us doing anything. That is, it was time for us to only facilitate and not “do” anything so that ownership was solidly in the hands of the community partners at least a week before our departure. Unsurprisingly, this was much more challenging than simply attacking action items. This facilitation process actually helped us to get out of our own way. And it made delicious bread!
While I don’t know what will come of the business, everyone has high hopes. We are getting things in place to keep in touch through a mashup of facebook and email when people can get to it. Hopefully ThinkImpact will return to Clare next year and have a local bread company supplying the impressive 21 loaves a week our group consumes.
Clearly this half of the post had little to do with death. But my hope remains what I stated above: Creating jobs, and especially jobs where people feel empowered to make their own decisions and build things as they see fit, leads to all manner of improvements to quality of life.
Calling Home
“When are you coming home?” friends often ask me, and my inevitable reply is a confused and sincere, “I’m not sure where home is.”
Gratuitous and mildly unrelated photo of my petting a cheetah
For those of us who travel, move more often than might be healthy and are perpetually itching for new international experiences—home is a tricky thing. Is it where family is? If so, that’s still at least 3-5 places for me. If it is where I live, well, I wasn’t living there this time last year and I won’t be there this time next year…should there be a time limit on home? If it is where the majority of the people we know and love are, then my home is on 4 continents.
When I first realized that I had no idea where my “home” was, I got a little panicky. That’s something that we are supposed to know right? That should be the most stable part of your life, I’ve been told. For someone with such a strong connection to a sense of place, this dilemma has frustrated and confused me for all of my adult life in which I don’t seem to sit still for more than a few years—or months. Today, my home is Clare, SA in my homestay family’s house with a little brother, sister, mother and father, family compound of another 15 people, 50+ chickens, the occasional goat, 10 or so cows, 3 cats, 4 dogs and 2 turtles (the grandfather has a bit of a menagerie). But in two weeks, it will be the basement of my old townhouse in Arlington with some of the coziest friends I know.
In an ideal world, I could bring every piece of what I deem to be “home” with me. Each day would begin with the waft of chocolate croissants baking down the cobblestone streets of Florence; then I would walk across the street in Sydney to start a trek to explore a new museum with four ladies who share my adventurous soul. We would stop for brunch to pick up the variety of friends who flit in and out of New York, probably at 9th Street Market or Penelope’s. I’d spend the afternoon on a beach in southern Georgia playing in the waves with my family. Cocktail hour would be in a brilliant Atlanta restaurant with my high school friends who have a knack for knowing where good food meets good company. I would then carry dinner up with the Tazewellians and friends to their roofdeck in DC, pondering the ups and downs of the day over homegrown food and the perfect soundtrack. Then the day would close out with a hike watching the sunset over the desert in Arizona followed by a trip to the Thunder Pub probably with some unexpected mix of world traveler Thunderbirds. Of course at some point during the day I would have biked the hills of Rwanda and stopped by Gift’s house in Clare.
Instead, I am held down by that pesky thing called time and reality to be in only one place at one time. Thank goodness. Or I might have been too distracted to fall in love with each place I’ve been or to find the friends I’ve collected along the way.
—
My first Sunday here somewhere in the four-hour church service it was said, “When we cross a river to prove we are alive, know that is not the end. But expect a bigger river next, and then a sea. But fear not. God is with you.”
I find myself at the other side of the sea again and those standing next to me are looking for hope. Our team wants to build fast. Our urge is to pack the days with meetings and deadlines, action items and milestones so that we can se results before we leave. However, empowering others doesn’t work very well when you are holding the reins.
The final phase here is Innovation in which we begin to put a business structure around the design challenge and solution selected by our team with community partners. In order to build properly, we need to step back and put the power into the community’s hands. The hardest part of this process it seems is patience and being sure to include the community partners in every aspect. This struggle is kind of amusing to me. The people of Clare had no trouble opening their homes to complete strangers, trusting a partnership with us while having only known us a few weeks and signing on to a project that we agreed only to help build—not to fund or implement. And yet, we have a hard time slowing down long enough to include them in the process. Ultimately, the partnership has been very successful. I owe that in large part to the maturity and clear-headed direction of my students who were happy to discuss the business in group meetings, but would only make decisions with community members present.
I would have felt like Clare was a part of my “home” regardless of our success with the business. But the fact is, we crossed a river with our community partners, only to find a bigger river, then a sea. We cannot journey with them as they build the business to full operational maturity. But I know that they will travel with us as a piece of what we will always know as home.
Out of the Fire
As I walk to my morning meeting, the sun quickly begins to warm the cold sand road. The clinging bells as the cows make their way out to the fields serenades rays of light that poke through the clouds over the dam at the edge of the village. Ten minutes later the students have all arrived and I muse about the gorgeous sunrise. Only half saw it. “How in the world did you miss that?” “We were watching our feet to avoid all of the cow dung!”
While this response was fair, and what most of us logically do as we traverse the village, I hope that it points to the Clare I see now versus the Clare which was readily apparent to me as a newcomer. The Clare I now know is lovely. It is full of children rushing to school stopping to yell my name along the way, of people stepping out off of their front stoop as we pass to practice their English and the woman with the beautiful garden who shares with me her dreams of having her own farm. But also, it is full of trash. And poop.
Without another option for disposing of trash, residents dig large pits and burn their garbage to dispose of it. Cow manure lines every road like poorly hidden land mines. No one seems to notice. As someone who revels in composting, I’m loving having my own personal compost bin here (read: 50 aggressive chickens), but I cringe every time I smell burning plastic and see the piles of tin cans that will last for who knows how long. While we are talking about waste, I’ll mention that once dark (and sometimes during the day) every light in the house is on and the TV is constantly buzzing regardless of if there is even anyone in the house. While I expect people feel that burning trash is out of necessity, excessive electricity use seems to fit with the same genre of spending that includes my host father’s new BMW (that sits under a ceiling-less roof)—spending out of privilege and pride.
I would love to educate about how to conserve electricity, why to use manure as fertilizer and caution about the environmental (not to mention health) consequences of burning plastic, it seems that there could be a better approach. Just as cap-and-trade, Copenhagen and the Kyoto Protocol have done little to truly change behavior and thus our environmental future, any lectures or education I can give are for naught if there is not a viable and desirable alternative. As Bryan Walsh said in his article “Cap and Trade is Dead. Now What?” in the Winter 2011 Issue of GOOD magazine, “When climate policy is seen to get in the way of development and economic growth, climate policy loses.” In other words, in Clare—and other developing areas—human behavior will not change unless the alternative contributes to development and economic growth. To which my MBA training and the ThinkImpact philosophy respond: sounds like an opportunity.
The Inspiration Phase of the Innovation Institute uses IDEO’s design thinking approach to address social issues. Through this method the students identify social issues and what possible innovative solutions could combat them. Every manufacturer should undertake similar methodology when designing products for the Bottom of the Pyramid. With such a huge customer base, selling at small margins in volume can tap a severely underserved market—if you have the right product. Developing countries contribute more to greenhouse gases than most developed countries. But, perhaps instead of trying to change behavior through policy and pure education initiatives, we could simply design smarter products to sell to the BOP. If there were cost effective options that created little to no waste, I’m thinking biodegradable wrappers as a start, businesses could contribute to reducing global waste and improving lives while also benefiting their own bottom lines. The best approach would be to set up shop in that country and support development by providing what many people need the most: jobs.
Again and again as we were going through this phase, our community partners pointed to education as one of the biggest challenges in Clare. Many students, and teachers, are unmotivated, and those with ambition often do not have the funding to make it to university after high school anyway. Combining this knowledge with the catalogue of skills and assets Clare residents were found to possess from our initial research, the students and community members settled on a bread baking business to benefit education. The business will employ the bread baking certified members of the community as well as a group of fellows, recent high school graduates that meet certain academic and financial need criteria. This one-two punch of awesome will create jobs, provide nutritious sustenance to the people of Clare and encourage those in school to work towards a year-long fellowship which will also help to teach them how to save money to go to university.
It would be easy to come into Clare and see trash, smell noxious fumes rising out of fires and cringe at the squish of cow patties underfoot. Thankfully, we didn’t settle for easy, and I’m looking forward to my first community baking lesson tomorrow morning. Hope sure smells good.
[ThinkImpact Post] Introspecting
[This post is a bit out of chronological order, but I thought y’all might want to read some of the posts meant to go on the ThinkImpact Blog. More next week on our Design Challenges and solutions: i.e. the businesses we will start building next week]
This week we completed the Identity Phase of the Institute here in Clare, South Africa. The goal of this phase is to turn many of the activities we did to understand the community, back on ourselves.
Entering the room from the bright sunlight, our eyes squinted to make out the dim room. With music from the vibrant dance we’d just watched still ringing in our ears, we sat with a collective sigh that we would now be spending the next few hours inside “exploring our own assets.” Spending a few days inside exploring your own skills and assets was less desirable than the interactive learning of the previous few days, but once we got into it, we found a treasure trove. “Proactive, Adaptable, Insightful, Language skills, Excellent at mathematical analysis, Authentic caring for others, Musical talent…” These were just a few of the many skills and personality traits that began pouring out as students described their peers.
As an undergraduate student, I’m not sure I could have listed for you my marketable skills in the context of international development in rural South Africa. However, these students impressed me. They were impressive not only for their diverse backgrounds—two years of high school in Italy, excelling in intensive New York City private school systems, multi-sport team captains, etc—but also for their humility in speaking about their accomplishments.
In retrospect, I was not so much surprised that they had these wonderful skills and experience, but that an organization like ThinkImpact could have the faith in young people to know that they would be prepared to take on a challenging international development initiative. ThinkImpact doesn’t assume or hope, but expects every student to bring something vital to the table. When you put that kind of trust and responsibility on a group of young people, they do an amazing thing…they rise to it.
Now that we have the Identity and the Immersion phases under our belts, we are well on our way to understanding the collective assets that our team and the community brings to the table. Next, we enter our Inspiration phase where students and community partners work together to develop Design Challenges and solutions. Stay tuned!
Eating with Hungry People
As promised, I’ll continue on with my musings about the food that nourishes my body now that I’ve spoken about the words that come out of it. 
Before I left for South Africa, I began reading “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” a book by Barbara Kingsolver, in which her family takes on a year-long project of eating local food—mostly by raising or growing it themselves. I’ll admit, I was a bit too smug pulling it out on airplanes, proud of my choice to read a book that holds up the health, environmental, and social impact our food choices as an important and often ignored subject. As the pages turned, my list of promises of new ways to eat grew: make my own cheese, bake my own bread, buy all organic fruits vegetables and dairy, free range meat. I finished the book here in rural South Africa after dining on a chicken that the previous day had itself dined on my stale bread. My smugness melted considerably as I began to realize just how far I have been removed from the source of my food and how unwilling I’ve been to admit that.
Morally, I’m all for growing methods that create a more sustainable food supply, locally sourced food lessening the environmental impact of dining, and meat that has been treated with respect during both life and death. Practically though, I have a hard time wrapping my wallet and time around what seems like extra effort to change the way I have eaten for so long. That is to say: what I want, when I want it. However, living in a village where most people’s yards are filled with chickens, cows, goats, tomato, corn and spinach for personal consumption, I’ve felt my mindset shift. When I sit at the dinner table, I know that many others in the village will go to bed hungry. When I get out my sandwich at lunch, I know the peanut butter used to make it is viewed as an out of reach luxury for most of my neighbors. When I sit down with my morning oats, I notice that my host brothers and sister are given a fist size bowl of cereal.
Eating what I want when I want it now seems like a luxury. Some would argue that luxury comes as a privilege of being an upper middle class citizen living in a developed country—one to be embraced. But is it also our privilege to destroy our bodies with stress, obesity, and lack of exercise? Sure, but I’ve decided to opt out of that.
Thankfully, I started in an easy place in that I prefer food that is actually food and not the end result of a list of unpronounceable ingredients. With more understanding of what it would actually take for me to kill my own food (still haven’t killed a chicken as I promised to learn in my time here), I have realized that if I can’t bear the thought of where my food actually comes from, then I shouldn’t be eating it. Does this mean that I will return to the States a vegan who prefers her organic granola in a bowl made only of local clay? No. My first stop will likely be Starbucks; and my second Chick-Fil-A, and I know Dorito Nachos will be a standing tradition in our house’s late night snacking. As Kingsolver notes, “The more we know about our food system, the more we are called into complex choices. It seems facile to declare one single forbidden fruit, when humans live under so many different kinds of trees.”
Watching my food run around in the yard all day has made me want to know more about how the meat I’m eating was treated while alive, if the bananas I buy at an astoundingly low19 cents each used hundreds of gallons of fossil fuels, destroyed the natural landscape of a rainforest, and are keeping a poor population in a cycle of dependency to reach me. The price I pay is no longer simply going to be shown on my check out receipt, but in the path it took to get to my plate. Sometimes that price will be worth it, but more often, I expect it won’t. Thankfully, according to Kingsolver’s book, local food is not only more sustainable, better for you and ultimately a lower overall cost to the planet, but best of all, it tastes better.
When you eat with hungry people, it is easier to see your own excess: the places where just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. You might be wondering why none of this is about how to get more and a greater variety of food on the tables here in Clare. We are working on some stellar business ideas, which should create jobs, meaning more income, and more, perhaps even better food on more tables. I’m hungry for what’s next.
Mouth Related Musings
I often put a lot of thought into what goes into and comes out of my mouth. One will go in to nourish my body and the other is an outward reflection of my internal ideas and values.
Each week here we have a student led reflection session. This is a time where instead of listening to mine/ThinkImpact’s ideas on a topic or how to approach the curriculum, the students have free reign to direct their own conversation. I’m meant to be a silent observer, which gives me a fascinating insight into the influence the community and I have already had, as well as what is clearly not getting through.
As we have now entered the Inspiration phase of the Innovation Institute, the students are working in pairs to form teams with at least twice as many community partners as students—after which they will produce a Design Challenge and potential solution. More on that later as it deserves its own post.
This week’s reflection session focused around the use of language as the students selected community partners. It went something like this, “Guys, I don’t know if anyone else is feeling this way, but I’ve been catching myself talking about community members in a way that is too impersonal and is making me uncomfortable. We are talking about ‘using’ one person or another in our team, and I know if I were forming a team at school of my friends, I wouldn’t ‘use’ them. Also, we haven’t been thinking about which community members might want to work with each other, but instead just the resources and assets that they bring to the table. I think we need to ask our community partners who they feel would make up the most effective team.”
While I could have easily stepped in and told the students that we need to be careful about the language we use when referring to community members, I’m glad that I didn’t. The message got through and in a much more organic way that the students will hold more tightly because it came from their peers. Our approach to a community driven project fits this mindset, too, so I’m hoping this was an early glimpse of things to come as projects get off the ground.
While I don’t see a lot of value in nit-picking specific words to PC our language to death, this carefully thought out reflection rang true for the way we should be thinking about our partners here. Interestingly, in the same day, a young boy at one of the homestays in passing said to a Indian student in the group, “Hey, you’re a [N-word].” My student was essentially dumbfounded, gave a confused half-smile and kept walking. His reasoning for not retorting or getting angry at the boy was because he assumed that in this cultural context, it did not have the same meaning as in America—and he was right. We later asked the boy what he thought the word meant and why he had said it—he thought my student looked like a rapper. He thought that the N-word was meant to refer to someone who was cool since he only heard it in rap songs, it had to mean “cool,” right? We explained that it would be best not to use it when referring to any foreigner as it might be misinterpreted, but left out the true meaning of the word for him. Wisely, my student felt that we shouldn’t give such a young boy the tools to use that word in a divisive way.
I’m thankful to be leading a group of students astute enough to step back from situations to recognize the meaning behind the words we use every day. After all, it is pretty amazing that we have been able to communicate across so many potential barriers, we might as well be sure the right things are coming out of our mouths.
You might be wondering how food and nourishment fit into this conversation about language and words…stay tuned for part two.
Day in the Life
One of our activities to understand the community better is called “Day in the Life.” Unsurprisingly, it involves following a community member around for the day to see what their daily activities and pace of life looks like.
So, I thought it would be fun for you to follow me around for a “typical’ day. Let’s go!
3 AM
Wake up to roosters calling outside my room. Reach for earplugs. Note while reaching for earplugs that the Shabeen (Tavern/Bar) is still hopping on a Sunday night and Justin Beiber has arrived in Clare, SA. Say what you will about him, but that’s just impressive.
6 AM
Wake up just before the sunrise. Sweet, it is light enough to go out to the latrine. Grab 2 extra layers, my chamber pot (it’s a bucket) to empty it, TP and hand sanitizer and dash out.
6:30 AM
Morning run against the rising sun soaking in the dusty African landscape. Wave some hellos to mystified locals. Most laugh.
6:45 AM
Run into other team members and a player from the Clare soccer team out running, one of which is on the Stanford Cross Country team. Run and chat excitedly for a few minutes then make up a lame excuse about needing to prepare more before the day begins so I don’t have to keep up their pace.
7 AM
Put on water to boil in the kettle. Transport 3 buckets of cold water to bathing bucket. Add boiling water to bath. Make PB&J for lunch and clean chamber pot while second kettle boils.
7:15 AM
Bathe. Bend self in awkward positions to try to dunk my head in the 4 inches of water at my feet. Give self-congratulatory fist pump when I’m actually able to get all of the shampoo out of my hair. Pay myself on the back for having the foresight to warm up by running before bathing. Shiver into clothes.
7:45 AM
Put kettle on for oats and instant coffee. Eat over cartoons with my host little brother and sister and the cousin that seems to live here now. Not sure.
8:15 AM
Brush teeth by the chickens that dash to any water I empty on the ground searching for food.
8:30 AM
Meet with students to give them their tasks for the day. Try to be inspirational. Reprimand the guys for always being late.
9 AM
Walk to the other side of the village to meet with my co-leader Kathrin. Get stopped along the way by a translator who wants a job at ThinkImpact and by Gift who wants me to come help cook and eat the spinach she just harvested from her garden.
10 AM
Hash out the week with Kathrin and how to teach social entrepreneurship and design thinking to our teams of students and how they in turn can explain it to their community partners.
11:30 AM
Stop by the Tuck Shop that has fresh baked “fat balls.” I think they are just fried dough…Drop by Gift’s house to apologize for not being able to visit and share baked goods.
12 PM
Run into students who have just met a drum maker. Chat, photograph, video. Get excited.
12:45 PM
Run into other students who got stood up for their meetings and have no translator. Make 3 phone calls for available translators. Set up 2 PM meeting. Sit with students for lunch. Discuss their day so far and what they have been learning from their morning interviews.
2 PM
Translator hasn’t showed. Sit at Tuck Shop chatting with people for impromtu interviews.
2:45 PM
Call translator—“I will see you in 3 minutes!”
3 PM
Translator arrives, and I send the students off to finish up the day.
4 PM
Evening meeting with the students to download the day and prepare for tomorrow. Check in on food, water, health. Quell fears that they won’t be able to find a good business idea.
5 PM
Arrive home. Soccer is on. No one is watching. Set down bags in my room, return to find the family at the TV.
5:30 PM
Start cooking dinner. Pasta or Rice tonight? Family asks again why I don’t just eat pap every night with them. Cook something my body can readily digest. Eat some pap to appease my host mom.
6:30 PM
Host mom calls the family to the table. Only the father, Simmy, speaks to me in English. No one else talks. I try to address a few questions to them, but they mostly nod and let him reply. Get into fascinating discussion about why people in the States park their cars outside, fill their own petrol and why stealing isn’t a major problem as well as what life was like in Clare before 1994 and before electricity.
7 PM
Watch Women’s World Cup Soccer. Brush off mildly sexist/racist comments about women’s soccer and our “Chinaman” team member. Try to delicately educate about what terms are seen as offensive in America. Respond mid-discussion to the twelve times my 3 year old host sister tries to communicate to me in her only English, “Hello. Hello. Hello.”
8:00 PM
All lights are out. Grab headlamp to begin reading so my light doesn’t disturb others via rafters.
8:45 PM
Fall asleep to Justin Beiber blasting again at the Shabeen. Apparently the chickens are asleep in the trees. Wonder if I’m the only city girl that didn’t know chickens like to sleep in mango trees.
Color of Happiness 