A two year penis operation -just dont ask!
on Colm in Kenya (Kenya), 08/Mar/2011 09:57, 34 days ago
It was a hot Sunday morning, my skin glistened with sweat and the breeze only whispered. The fire and brimstone sermon/rant from the pastor in the church next door was testing my dangerously abbreviated patience– I needed to go do something. My phone was silent, my wallet empty and for an hour my mind stuck on one seemingly unanswerable question"Colm, What the fuck are you going to do today?"I enjoyed my Saturday with good food, Granny's Irish Times, one of Dads Books, some of Bobs DVDs, a few of Tuskers Beers and Arsene's Football. I enjoyed my solitude, but I wished I could share it with someone. On Sunday, I had begun to crave that company.Work was painfully slow and ineffective, full of late or 'no-show' meetings with little or no support. My status as strange mzungu (whitey) and the stares that were associated with it in my village began to seriously test.But nothing was more difficult than Sundays.Alone.What the F*****CK am I doing here???Getting asked 'Why are you doing VSO for 2 years?' is liked standing outside the 'Penis Extension Ward' and being asked by someone what are you doing in hospital?Oh God this is awkward.Trust me, you don't want to hear the answer 'I want to make the world a better place' (I've broke away from the above analogy…) It will make us both uncomfortable. So I used to always mutter something about 'A chance to do something different, get out of Banking and a suit'. Laugh awkwardly, turn and run.Now comes the other difficult question - 'So did you have the impact as a VSO that you wanted?' This is like when leaving the hospital and after a few weeks someone asking you 'So are you happy with how it works after the operation?'(Bob Geldolf once said in an essay 'Make Poverty History' in the New York Times on the eve of the Gleneagles G8 Summit in 2005 "We must do something, anything. Whether it works or not". So by that wonderful summation of Development, VSO has been a tremendous success for me. I have done something and it was an extremely educational, enlightening and beneficial experience. Did anyone significantly benefit from my work? Hardly.)"Yes, I am delighted with it. It worked incredibly well for me." "What? Did it work well for her? - Heck I don't know! but it sure worked fine for me."You see, after the low points, slowly Sundays and life in Kenya in general got better. I worked with more groups and local NGOs, there was slow progress, some small successes, some huge lessons.I went to Uganda with friends, a few trips to Nairobi, a visit from Dubai and Home, and Christmas in Zanzibar. Most importantly, I met some more people around Kilifi. Ari, Ellen, Beau and of course Kate whom our daily battles about Prince shooting his Dad (not yet on the internet) and Westlife being a better band then BackStreet Boys made life all the more bizarrely endurable.Now I don’t think that I want to finish early but stay forever.I’ve never been 100% sure what I’m trying to say in these blogs. But one thing I know is that whatever I do next, it will largely be me who chooses. That’s a choice people in poverty, whose dreams are restricted by mere survival, don’t have.This is something we should really choose to do something, just choose to do something, totryand change.Thanks.From Kenya,Colm