Bad Volunteer Staff Member? Bad Person? Only Human?

This kind of work encompasses my whole life unless I fight to wall off little pieces to keep outside of the 'me' that works in development.

Some of that is because of EWB's ethos of volunteer sending ("Being a development worker is not a nine-to-five job – it is a lifestyle"), but I can't help but wonder how much of it is universal to the expatriate experience itself and especially in development work (dare I say, done well?*).

When you travel halfway across the world, the trip sort of necessitates you building a new slice of life (nearly halfway, anyway - I figured it out one day and the actual halfway mark for me is actually a bit closer to Sri Lanka). You've left your friends, family, and context on one side of the ocean, and now have to find new friends, family and context on the other. It's a great adventure to do it, but the stakes are high and whatever costs incurred are invariably more at other peoples' expense than mine.

I'm here to live, to understand and to "have a positive impact:" there are tensions between these three things; not the least of which is having the humility to question whether or not I'll ever be able to figure out what a positive impact even is, the understanding that, whatever it is, I probably won't manage it on this contract, and the motivation to try anyway. One of the other tensions is that, in order to ever come anywhere close to achieving 'understanding' of the cultural contexts and pragmatic considerations of living and working here Malawi, it's important to experience Malawian life and culture firsthand (to use one of the more distasteful turns of phrase floating around in development, it's "necessary to achieve a firsthand understanding of the livelihoods of the intended beneficiaries").
By the same token, I want to make friends, have a house, and learn how to cook so that I can live: all these things involve behaving like "intended beneficiaries" are regular people, figuring out what to do about being a relatively well-off traveling white person, and letting go of the need to 'understand' and 'achieve' for awhile so that I can just be.

And all that is just what I do in the evenings. We haven't actually touched on the 'job' yet, in the 9 to 5, contractual responsibilities sense of the word.

So then we have the job. We also have the bits of life that I wall off as mine: my addiction to technology, calls home, brief road trips to the city to shop and eat cheese. Even these things aren't clearly unrelated to my life as a development worker. Communicating home can be about 'raising awareness,' technology is a tool that helps me 'focus,' 'increase productivity,' and 'do outreach.' Even the road trips end up being about work - be it through taking some time away from the office to write down thoughts on development lessons I'm learning not directly related to my project or my partner, time meeting with other volunteers to share experiences and tools, or even accidentally stumbling into a staff meeting in a different city, it's rare for me to go 24 hours without doing something development-related.

I notice the all-encompassing nature of my life as an EWB Overseas Volunteer staffer most sharply when I'm away from that life.

Like now.

Right this moment, I'm sitting at Mabuya Camp (again, not still), writing this post. I've been away from my house in Nkhamenya for a little over a week now. My backpack is packed and sitting beside me, and it's early afternoon. I need to walk or catch a minibus to carry me from expat/tourist-soaked Mabuya to the bus depot, and from there commence the public transportation adventure that will take me back to Nkhamenya.

I don't want to go.

It's not that I don't want to go, exactly. The trip, though a bit stressful (wandering through the market with a backpack in the hot sun while being beset by the wonderful variety of vendors who populate the market) is fun, and usually involves exhilarating brushes with the unexpected. And the bus ride is usually a great space to think, read, and/or meet new people.

And I'm looking forward to being back in Nkhamenya. I've been away for just over a week, and am missing my friends (and, if I dare to admit it, my nsima, compliments of the Rise & Shine diner). There are a group of Pentecostal missionaries from the United States coming to visit the husband of my good friend Nelli, and I want to be there to see them and lend Nelli a hand during what's likely to be a chaotic, crazy-awesome couple of days. I'm also missing and being missed by several of the people in Nkhamenya that I've been lucky enough to call 'friend' (mbwezi) this past while. Three "where are you" phone calls and counting.

I miss sleeping in my own bed, and want to see how disastrous my yard has become without my tender lovin' care. I am not looking forward to hauling water from the borehole, but am looking forward to cooking something homemade with it and to sitting on my couch and walking around in my neighborhood - comforts that are seriously lacking while I'm staying in Lilongwe.

Stalling here is putting me a bit behind at work too. I've got an outstanding project with the Sponsorship Coordinator that I was hoping to work with him to finish by the end of the month and a couple of reports to write. Plus I need to meet with the Health Coordinator to catch up on how projects have been going this part week, get back around to giving a hand, and get the jump on making arrangements to visit another field office.

That being said, I'm still sitting here typing away instead of closing up my computer and starting my journey.

The reason? There are many; some are complex, some are obvious and some are likely subconscious. One is that I'm lazy about traveling in the sense that I dislike all the work that goes into leaving point A in order to get to point B. I'm also a lifelong procrastinator, and the fact that I have a lot of things to do in Nkhamenya is seriously affecting my interest in going, despite the fact that delaying isn't going to make doing my laundry any easier.

On some level, though, it's a relief to be away from my job and my domestic responsibilities. Vacations are always nice - unfortunately, I'm thoroughly unjustified in taking one. That's not what I'm here for, and I think it's a bit of a disservice to my employers and my partner, who are supporting me here on the basis of a shared understanding that I will be giving 110% to the work.

Other than the running water, however, I'm not actually 'vacationing' by delaying in Lilongwe. I'm using the time to meet with fellow volunteers about work stuff, get caught up on 'technical' background reading (which I try not to do when I'm at work and can't do at home owing to the lack of domestic electricity), and get everyone I can get my hands on with EWB onto twitter (outreach!). I'm also trying to use the time away from Nkhamenya to get some perspective on the time I've spent there so far; trying to figure out how I've been doing on balancing the tensions I mentioned above. It's my first time in Africa, my first job as a development worker, and I'm pretty sure I'm screwing important things up; being able to check in with people who have more experience is something I need to do to try (and likely fail, but at least try) to pick through how much of the failure and frustration I've experienced so far is a forgivable part of experiencing, how much requires immediate and severe course correction, and (most troublingly) how much of it isn't me at all, but has more to do with the complex dynamics of 'the big picture.' Successes I can talk about in Nkhamenya - failures are harder territory to navigate with people I've known for such a short span of time whose own jobs and lives are somehow bound up in the work we do.

But do I need to be here to do that? Why am I not trying harder to work through these things on my own in Nkhamenya, or to integrate far enough into local life to find people nearer to my Malawi work and life that can fill the roles that I'm currently giving to the characters and circumstances I meet when I go to Lilongwe?

I don't know if all this makes me a bad volunteer or a bad person who should be doing more and trying harder. All I know is that today I'm in Lilongwe even though it feels like I should be in Nkhamenya.

[UPDATE: My mom says 'only human.' Go figure. ;-)]