Blog Updates /

After several hikes on the island’s modest peaks, potential dips in the ocean and runs in the hill-filled woods, I’ll surrender to a new city: Boston. I will be spending the weekend: one sister, one interview, one social event and one workshop.

Following this, and by then I will be looking forward to the return, I land in Entebbe and bus straight up to Gulu, Northern Uganda to start work with Battery Operated Systems for Community Outreach Uganda Relief Project. Otherwise known as BOSCO-Uganda.

Full circle. The first work I did in East Africa was in 2007 in Gulu, Northern Uganda. Along with two fantastic colleagues, we designed and implemented the first HIV/AIDS awareness program for Concordia Volunteer Abroad Program. It was really the basics of working in “development” abroad. We were coddled. We were sheltered. We knew absolutely nothing.

The program has since grown and continues to give people transforming opportunities abroad. It also gives me a reference point for how naive I was. More importantly, it makes me realize how lucky I was to slip my foot in that door and use that one experience to build enough momentum for a lifetime.

Instead of jetting out of Uganda right away, I embarked on a fantastic trip. The bumpy, dusty, 18 hour bus ride from Kampala to Nairobi; the infamous Lunatic Express across Kenya to Mombasa; the hostel in the Mombasa bus park and the candy-like temple where all noise dissipated into vividly painted figurines; the women in flowing red coantinos and hijabs selling milk in yellow pint-sized jerry cans on the way to Lamu; the hushed streets and boisterous donkeys of the island-without-car; the white beached island of Zanzibar and the underlying pain of tourism; meeting Budr, shaping a life-long friendship cemented in our ship sinking in the Indian Ocean; the magical island and my first milky way with cups of sugary tea and sleeping under blankets on the island spit’s; morning runs in Butare among golden dust and sunshine and women walking to the market; the genocide memorials; Lake Victoria and the realization that suns set faster in different parts of the world.

During these travels, I was entranced. It had been a while since I had really had time to leave Canada and observe another slice of the world. At the same time, those disparities everyone talks about became much clearer. Least I sound like a cliche, I was a bit shaken that first time coming home to the streets of Montreal. Seizing inspiration found during my work and travels, myself and a group of strong-willed volunteers founded In Their Shoes, an NGO to raise awareness of poverty and conflict abroad in Montreal high schools.

A friend cautioned me that I would have to stick around to see the NGO find feet strong enough to survive alone. However, there was/is so much to accomplish. I moved to Aarhus, Denmark and studied at the Danish School in Journalism. I wrote from Copenhagen during a peek in riots among marginalized communities, primarily Muslim. I spent time listening to the Somali diaspora in Aarhus – chewing the beloved quat in below-freezing temperatures – and in the Sandholm Refugee Camp in Copenhagen. The grievances of young people stuck between two worlds. I worked through meetings at the European Commission, learning how to digest the vague words of parliamentarians. Finally, the summer after Kosovo’s independence, I arrived in Prishtina to write about grassroots post-conflict reconciliation in Mitrovica, the city divided. Months before I had devoured any and every book about the Balkans, hungry for a sliver of what I might stumble upon.

And in 2008, I returned to Uganda to work with Women of Uganda Network, my first introduction to information and communication technology for development (ICT4D). The potential of cell-phones and radios in enabling the “grassroots” to make their own decisions, improve their crops, influence politics and community news. Sometimes I think we are dreaming large when it comes to the potential of ICT4D, particularly the mobile phone, in transforming development. At other times, it is clear: there is room for self-made innovation in technology and no better avenue for “capacity-building, self-empowerment.”

In 2009, I started this eight-month fellowship working with the Aga Khan Foundation (East Africa). While not always glamorous, I have been introduced to a whole other aspect of development: the large-scale, well-funded and hugely respected development organization. No more legitimacy struggle, the Aga Khan Foundation and the Aga Khan Development Network carry a lot of weight. Of course, being within this system taught me the pitfalls: procedures, rules, regulations & slow-functioning. What you hear about UN-like institutions is no rumor. Managing a massive organization is difficult and it often means that creativity and innovation take a hit.

And, full-circle back to Gulu. This time I’ll be living 6km out of town on church grounds. A bit uneerving for an atheist, it’s also a great experience to learn more Luo, shop for mangoes in the nearby markets and run a muddy road into town once a week. BOSCO has shown itself immensely helpful and it reminds me of the merits of working in a small group. Apparently I’ve already been nick-named CNN because my name is difficult to pronounce.

It was hard deciding to work with BOSCO. I’ve been supporting their work since I interviewed them in 2008, so I had no doubts about the caliber of what they are doing and the motivation behind it. However, at the same time, I was getting used to people noticing the Aga Khan Foundation label. It was refreshing to not start a conversation with a lengthy introduction to your work because the UN official doesn’t understand. However, while I had choices in the pipeline to avoid this, including an internship with the UNDP in Kosovo,  I am beyond satisfied with this decision. And for those who know me, it took a lot of mind-wrecking.

So, I’m back to a self-made title and job with many wide-reaching responsibilities. I’m excited about their work – ICT for post-conflict reconstruction. I have pitched their work to Oxford and was accepted based on a thesis focusing on this field. A time to kick-start research. A time to live in the now quiet Northern Uganda and not ponder the kidnappings, gun-shots and other ridiculous rumors (many true) that float Nairobi. I do not expect to be covering riots like theseany time soon (though I do hope to do some freelance writing and photography for local NGOs). Most importantly, a time for working ‘in the field ‘ in former internally displaced persons camps, on the grass in the church park, from the modest but well-equipped BOSCO offices. Nothing like change.

Of course, there’s one last thing to bring up. Being in “Africa.” All these blogs and stories and experts and people knowing everything from everything. It is embarrassing and often annoying to realize that I probably react and act the same way. I’ll take this opportunity then, to say, that if anything, I have been learning. I haven’t taught much, there’s not much I can teach, but have I ever been learning. Nothing teary or heart-wrenching, just life. There is nothing to romanticize, I would learn the same anywhere else in the world, absorbing from dozens of new faces, names and people. From new jobs and new villages, towns, cities. And, I am really looking forward to opportunities down the road that land me in the deserts outside Damascus (like my brother), or the streets of cities as dangerous as Mogadishu, or the frozen Northern Canadian territories, to continue learning.