I didn’t know what to expect when I started journaling a few years ago. I had thought, then, that I would write about my work and get more or less technical depending on how I managed to get away from being in the field. I know, now, that these are the best stories, and they motivate me to write.
I had access to worlds most people I know don’t get to see: the outskirts, the isolated communities, the people the world seems to have forgotten about. But these are the real people, and guess what? - they are a better representation of the world than I am, and most people I know.
I don’t think I am able, however, to get their voices heard, or to even translate their world into mine, even though I try really hard.
I got away from the field because the job came with a very high personal cost. Even the flexibility, for instance, to spend all my sister’s birthdays with her was in exchange for missing many weekends and long holidays, and sometimes without getting any work done, as the people I was supposed to work with- surprise! - they too had a life; they had families, and wanted to spend time with them during these weekends and holidays instead of work with me. I didn’t take offence. I could do it for the better part of seven years, and I am very proud of what I was able to achieve, even though I have always questioned if my impact, as a piece of the puzzle, made a difference. Perhaps a few times, and that’s ok.
It is hard filling the gaps between the stories, the parts that explain how I got to one particular place or situation, and what took me to get there. Telling people I ate monkey is usually much more interesting than telling anything else I did at work, like why I use a particular methodology when I deal with social entrepreneurs by need instead of by choice.
Most of the time I just wrote because it amused me, made me laugh at the unusual things that I did, and the strange experiences of being a privileged person thrown into the middle of nowhere, finding its ways.
When I started this work, back in Rwanda, I didn’t like to be called umuzungu (white person, lost traveler), but in the end that was who I was all along.
Maybe one day I will read these one hundred and something pages again, try to organize them better, and maybe they’ll even become a book. I don’t know if it is worth writing (and reading) it, which language I’d use, if I’d ever publish it, and if I would identify all the places, maybe when I’m old.
This isn’t the only thing that I write, and I might do it still, for fun, certainly not every week for one hundred weeks, not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because I might not find it particularly interesting.
It was a pleasure writing it and sharing it with you and with my small community.
Feel free to reach out. And if you ever come across this text, try reading my stories from the beginning, in order.