Erin's West African adventures, starting in the Peace Corps
Friday, July 25, 2014
A Game Plan for the Future
The past couple of weeks (well, all of July post-Cape Town) have felt similar to Peace Corps in that the days crawl along, but the weeks fly by. What ended up being one of my primary projects - a spreadsheet detailing all US government health projects in Zambia - has pretty much concluded. The mapping team at USAID Washington was able to take that data and create fairly easy-to-read provincial level maps from the spreadsheet. My portion wasn't really the hard part (the software did that), but I do feel like the series of maps could end up being an important tool to have around, at least until the fiscal year ends and some of the programs change.
I'm making major progress on another front - talking to anyone and everyone about my future. One of my goals for the internship was to figure out where I should start out in global health, and specifically, if I belonged more on the administrative end (USAID) or in a more hands-on programmatic role. I'm still not entirely sure, but I do have a better understanding of the advantages of each. Over the past six weeks, I've had to chance to have one-on-one time with several people from USAID Zambia, USAID Washington, CDC, Peace Corps (of course), and a USAID implementing partner. State Department staff have also been quite willing to share what they love and hate about being an expat (having a housing allowance is great, finding quality schools for your kids is not). One thing that hasn't changed after all these discussions is that I still want to work for the US government - whether that's in USAID, CDC, or Peace Corps. The work is important, the benefits are pretty difficult to beat, and, honestly, if I'm going to live anywhere overseas, I'd prefer to be associated with the US mission.
Happily, with the advice I've received, I've begun to chart out a course of fellowships and jobs to pursue in the fall, once I'm again entrenched in school. I also feel really fortunate, upon reflection about the job search ahead of me, that I get to figure this out on my own and not worry about a family or spouse having to follow me wherever I want to go. For once, it seems like it's better to be single. Finally.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Adventures in Cape Town
One of my bucket list destinations is/was South Africa. I never really cared which part of South Africa, really, just as long as I got there. Using the 4th of July/Zambian Heroes Day/Zambian Unity Day 5-day weekend provided the perfect chance to visit the Rainbow Nation. Pretty much every American in the Embassy made Cape Town sound like a utopia, their preferred African destination for their R&R breaks. A fellow intern, Bren - our Midwestern-ness made us fast friends - and I hopped on a plane with quite a few boisterous missionary teenagers on Friday the 4th. We arrived to pouring rain and wind, the type of weather perfect for a movie and lounging around indoors. This wasn't really part of our plans, but neither of us minded all that much given that Lusaka, similar to Tucson, seems to have nothing but cloudless days. In fact, until that point, I'm not sure I'd seen rain for at least six months. Anyway, some of the highlights of the weekend:
The view from our hotel room. The Parliament building is in foreground, with Table Mountain in the back. |
I took my Jayhawk to the top of Table Mountain. |
Bren and I looked on in horror at this guy helping people propel down the mountain. WHY would you do this? |
The Victoria and Albert Waterfront, which is both a giant Navy Pier-like tourist trap and a working pier. |
Saturday, July 5, 2014
The last two weeks
Hi everyone – I can’t believe we’re already at the
end of June, although I also feel as if I’ve been in Zambia for my entire adult
life. It’s definitely been an adjustment
to work a 40-hour week, which I haven’t really done since I last had a “real”
job, aka, Life Before the Peace Corps.
Although I am generally enjoying the work I’m doing here, I find it
really hard to sit still for very long, and by long I mean more than about
fifteen minutes. Thankfully I can just
run up or down the stairs if necessary. Happily,
however, this return to desk life has also done great things for my
running. I have a ton of pent up energy,
so I’m now only 11 miles away from my goal of running 1,000 miles in the year
ending July 12th.
Last week proved quite busy, and for me was totally
focused on HIV/AIDS. For reference, the
prevalence in Zambia is 14.3%, a figure I read so often this week I committed
it memory. This has also resulted in
more than 1 million orphans, who have lost either one OR both of their
parents. I participated on a panel to
review concept papers for a grant targeting orphans and vulnerable children in
a way that focuses on both family structures and building capacity in community-based
organizations (so, granting money to primary awardees who then do sub-awards to
local organizations). The concept paper
phase precludes an official grant proposal.
Only a small percentage of the NGOs whose proposals we read this week
will be invited to submit a formal grant application. The entire process proved much more rigid
than I ever imagined, and, as I quickly learned, is not a place for
feelings! It’s not like, “these people
seem to be doing good work and would probably meet this objective,” it’s, “so
and so did not address Objective 1.3b, so they are completely ineligible.” There seems to be very little room for giving
people the benefit of the doubt, which I totally understand given the size of
the grants and that it’s government funding.
It’s just a definite adjustment to my usual mentality.
Socially and professionally, one unanticipated
challenge of this internship has become the dreaded age factor. While it’s sometimes great that most people
assume I’m fresh out of undergrad – not helped by the fact that I hang out with
the other interns, the youngest of whom is 20 – it can get annoying. It’s not that this translates to typical
intern grunt work like making copies (I’ve only had to do it once); it’s just
humbling to have people not really consider that you have experience. I’m also
trying to become friends with “older” people (meaning those who are actually my
age) at USAID, but I’ve found that a bit difficult to navigate. Honestly, the social aspect of all this has
been the most difficult so far. I don’t
think people are willingly un-friendly, but most are married with families, so
obviously that takes precedence over getting to know the new person, especially
with the number of people in and out of the mission on temporary duty assignments. Happily, though, one of the objectives I
wrote for the summer was to get a better handle on the challenges of expat
life, so I suppose I can mark that down as (partially) completed, even after
three weeks.
Yesterday, two of the other interns and I walked
over to the once-a-month craft market at the Dutch Reform Church in Kabulonga,
the same neighborhood in Lusaka where the Embassy is located. It was a pleasant walk through a rather
expat-laden, residential neighborhood.
Minus the 12-foot walls with electric fencing and/or glass shards, you
could almost imagine that you were walking through a golf-course community or
something akin to Trout Valley. Okay,
you’d have to really use your imagination, but still. We arrived to the church about 20 minutes
later to find pretty much every expat in Lusaka and what could have been a
street fair or flea market anywhere in the world, with the colorful addition of
bougeanvilleas. It was absolutely
perfect. The sun was shining, and the
vendors and I chatted it up while bargaining over their handiwork (which
included a lot of – very similar - wooden bowls, carvings, paper maché jewelry,
and, interestingly, some copper jewelry from the Copperbelt). My friends and I enjoyed some gelato and the
company of co-workers before heading back home.
Apologies for the lack of photos here or on
Facebook. The problem is that I can’t
take pictures either of the Embassy or inside the Embassy, and that’s obviously
where I’m spending the bulk of my time.
The extended-stay hotel thing where I’m staying looks a lot like one
would in America, relatively un-extraordinary in its African-ness.
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