Filed under: Global Health Corps
I intended to writeway more about Global Health Corps training as it happened. Ooops. 2 weeks. 6 staffers. ~40 fellows in two person teams (each team is one person from country plus one from out-of-country). Suffice to say the following:
California is lovely, and Stanford is a lovely bubble. I’m not sure going to Stanford even counts as going to California, in the same way that going to Disneyland doesn’t really count as going to Florida. So I spent a little time in California, a lot of time at Stanford. Approve.
Other fellows are AMAZING. Twelve hours in I was internally cringing and wondering why the hell they had selected me and hoping no one would notice I had snuck in and send me home. Around the end of the second day I realized that many if not all of the other fellows felt the same way, and confidence, energy and general mutual admiration-fest followed. It’s really helpful to carry that into what will sometimes be a lonely year, I’m sure. I feel not just supported but actually loved by the staff and other fellows (and I love them right back).
Speakers were incredibly generous with their time and energy. We had a lot of phenomenal people from government, private sector, non-profits, and the academic world. We threw a lot of questions at them and they impressed me with the breadth of knowledge and articulate nature. Also, no one talked down to us. We were partners, and they were sharing what they knew.
Finally, I felt a little of my optimism return w/r/t the possibility of the future actually looking better than today. The concentrated energy and intelligence and community, the spirit of sharing across disciplines and between the fellows from host-countries and from other countries AND between the more experienced workers with us relative newbies – it felt like I was part of a force to be reckoned with and that maybe, cumulatively, we can shift the balance. It’s not a pragmatic shift; Either way I’ll do the work that falls to me, and trust the rest to other people’s hands and God’s plan . . . but internally there’s an energy and an internal lightness to optimism that I had missed.
So, yay. GHC. 8 days to take off.
Filed under: Words of Wisdom
“I got to see the bigger point of baseball, that it can give us back ourselves. We are a crowd animal, a highly gregarious, communicative species, but the culture and the age and all the fear that fills our days have put almost everyone into little boxes, each of us all alone. But baseball, if we love it, gives us back our place in the crowd.”
Anne Lamott (in Bird by Bird)
For non-baseball lovers I would venture to say you can substitute anything that you love that you have ever found a group of people who love it as you do. I am not a vast lover of sports myself but feel something of what she means whenever I go to a well-attended sporting event, but also, thank God, at a well-attended concert or rally, or even at a smaller group that suddenly discovers a real shared love of task or idea. Yay! People!
For the duration of the fellowship, I’ll be writing occasionally on the Global Health Corps blog. Check out what other fellows have to say too (right now more interesting than me, since they’ve mostly left for their jobs already while I’m in upstate NY for two more weeks, reading about development and enjoying the comforts of home and family).
Good intentions are necessary, but insufficient.
For those who don’t read development blogs incessantly, there’s been a furor lately (or maybe I’ve tuned in lately) about well-intentioned but somewhat ignorant people getting involved in international aid in one way or another. Sending stuff instead of cash to Haiti, when it clogs the ports and creates distribution nightmares. The later flashpoint of 1 Million Shirts, whose goal was to collect a million tshirts and send to Africa, despite potential disruption to local textile or clothing markets. The overall idea that humanitarian aid is something that can or should be done by everyone, rather than experts (well argued on the blog Tales from the Hood).
Anyway, absolutely valid points made regarding the need for better, smarter aid, and better education of people who want to help – but! – it veers into a snobbish disdain of the intentions themselves at times. The post I wrote is a response to that. Enjoy!
Filed under: Boston
Props to dear Jules, from whom I stole this idea. The morning I left from Boston I made a mix CD designed to let me cry, and let me heal from crying. It was also populated with songs for belting along to (the virtues of driving alone) and songs I wouldn’t mine listening to roughly four times, since I only had time to make one CD. Plus the Get Up Kids because when 50% of your drive is the Mass Pike, you have to play that song, right?
Overall I was happy with it, but I think the emotional switches were a bit too quick. For Burundi, I will make at least two mixes: “Songs When I Need to Cry,” and “Crying would be a bad idea right now”. Suggestions welcome.
As a new owner of a kindle, I eagerly biked into Spencer* yesterday and downloaded my first four books:
-
Tess of the D’urbervilles (Hardy);
-
White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Easterly);
-
The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy; and
-
Dead in the Family – A Sookie Stackhouse Novel (Harris).
Oops. One guess as to which book I’ve already finished.
*Because one of the things my parents’ house has in common with where I’ll be working is lack of a 3G network.
Filed under: Words of Wisdom
“You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”
-C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
I’m cleaning out old boxes to make room for new boxes, and found my application to the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership program in 1998.
Q: In your school and community, what is the most rewarding and challenging aspect of being a leader for you (75-100 words)?
A: The most challenging aspect of being a leader is that between all the activities of leading, you have to keep in the front of your mind who you are and where you want to go. If you go out walking, chances are people will follow you, but you have to remember that the primary goal of walking is getting somewhere, and that if you don’t know the way, then the people behind you are lost as well. I think the most rewarding feeling would be to take a look around you and know you’ve arrived where you want to be, and then take another look and know you’ve helped other people get there too. That’s what leading is.
I’ve been reengaging my international brain lately, with an eye toward Burundi and surrounding countries. A few favorite reads:
Texas in Africa: Thoughtful analysis and useful links to other news.
Aid Watch: NYU Development Economist William Easterly’s blog. He and other writers have a definite angle but lay out their arguments well.
Wronging Rights: What might happen if the bloggers at Jezebel wrote a blog about human rights. Not frequent postings but well written and refreshingly funny when they do.
Sustainable Peace by Piece: A Burundi specific blog from a staff member at the Friends Women Association in Bujumbura.
Filed under: Boston
. . . don’t do it in the summer.
Because even on the (second) hottest day you can remember, a cooler wind will leave the Harbor or the Charles just to find you and wish you well. And the afternoon light off the River or the Pond will know just how to sneak between the trees and break you open. And buildings that have been a background to your life will slide into the haze of July, edges fuzzy like they are already something you barely remember. And the children and the birds will be splashing in fountains and even the cashier will be friendly to you because the cold city of that other season has disappeared. What you have been here, what you have hated, what you have loved, will sneak along side and inside you, because the hot air retains emotions even better than moisture. You will turn your bike over your favorite bridge one last time and be newly amazed that you can be newly amazed each time you fall in love with the skyline. Then you will watch the little white sails moving along the water and know that everywhere the city is going on around you, and tomorrow, without you.
