Reality Checks
8:30am although it’s Saturday I cannot sleep in - I'm preoccupied, although I can't seem to put my finger on what exactly is bothering me. A few days ago i woke up to the thought that I can no longer remember the PIN number to my account in Switzerland. This is disturbing on a few counts, not the least of which is that the PIN is the only way I can access my outside cash reserves here in Rwanda. Not that there are any international ATMs in Rwanda but it had always been there as a safety net once I had gotten to somewhere more civilised like Uganda or Kenya.
Which reminds me: I never thought I'd reach a point on my life where I would consider going to Kampala or Nairobi as an escape to civilisation!
I think was disturbed me most about the PIN forgetting incident is that it somehow made escape more difficult, I couldn't just hop on a plane and arrive in Europe with the cushion of my saving at my disposal. My credit card is expiring on October and due to some pan-European changes to include chips in future cards, I could not get it renewed before I left. The prospect of having a new cards sent to me via post didn't seem like a good one either. But I still wasn't fully sure why all these things were bothering me.
Perhaps the restlessness was caused by something else....it was the first day in a long while that I didn't need to get up early and do things. These were usually dangerous days which gave me and time and space to think - something with usually ended badly.
The other day I received an email from a friend asking whether I was thinking of coming back for a Phd or if I was going to get a "real" job. It set me thinking....soon I would have to be making a decision about whether to stay on here or try to go back. Although the deadline for such a decision is almost 6 months away, it plays around in the back of my mind ready to surface at any time. Do I go back to an uncertain future in Europe or do I stay here and in doing so be a testament to inertia being the most powerful force in the universe?
This begs the questions, what is there to stay for? And what is there to go back to?
But I guess the most interesting question is, given that the career opportunities here are so much better and that I have a job and a house and reasonable life here, what makes the thought of staying a little unpalatable?
I am reminded of a conversation I had recently. Steve is from Manchester and has lived in Rwanda for nine years. An electrician by trade, he came to Rwanda shortly after the end of the war in order to escape academia. It appears he had been a lecturer in a technical college in Manchester for many years prior to coming here. He seems to work with many different clients but recently acquired to the means to indulge in his real passion: flying. It would seem all his money and energy are being sunk into revitalising a small airplane. It occurred to me that in Rwanda you needed some "other thing" to keep you going and perhaps that what I didn't have...or perhaps didn't yet have. When I was busy with work, things were ok but when that went slow things kinda just fell apart.
Steve and I were chatting the other day and he mentioned that there was a prevailing attitude among some of the Kigali elite, notably in the ministries, that any of westerners out here were here because they could not get jobs at home. Strangely enough this was a sentiment I had expressed in typical self-effacing manner when out to diner with a South African businessman who seemed impressed with my CV: that people like me were here because in some sense they couldn't make it back home. Dominic my flatmate disagrees, he came here because he is a trained barrister and the wages are higher, Steve concurs. One of the things Steve said was that you could reinvent yourself out here. I had noted that there were many more opportunities here than in Europe, I was been given work I wouldn't even be considered for in Europe. It was at that moment that I realised what had been bothering me - lack of competition. What does it mean to be successful in a country and a continent where most people don't finish primary school and you have two Masters?
I never have been the type who could take pleasure in being first in a one horse race. Better somehow to be mediocre in a sea of brilliance than shining brightly in a sea of mediocrity.
However going back carries its own risks, like that of finding an interesting job. This was one of the prime factors in why I came to Rwanda in the first place; I simply could not stand to hang around doing nothing for months and possibly ending up with a job I didn't like. Was I any more guaranteed of success when I went back this time? Also large part of the attraction of my life in Switzerland was the people I had come to know there but universities are essentially transitory places (unless you are a tenured professor) and a few years all those people will have moved on.
Monique is the receptionist in the offices of the national authority. I feel very at home there and the staff like me, from the cleaner to the CEO. One day as I was hanging out in Monique’s office reading the New Times* she turned to me and asked if I was going to stay with them and for a moment I thought she meant in the office, but she meant was I going to stay forever in Rwanda.
Well I wasn’t sure about that but it suddenly struck me that love or hate it, the very fact of having spent a year in Rwanda was going to stay with me forever...and become part of who I was. It was only much later I started to worry about the possible implications of that...it was the first time since I got here that I felt it might be hard to leave here, perhaps even harder than leaving Switzerland. I left friends back in Europe with the full intention of coming back and that was easier...the chances of me seeing Rwandan friends again are much slimmer.
*Rwanda’s national English language newspaper cum government propaganda publication.
Which reminds me: I never thought I'd reach a point on my life where I would consider going to Kampala or Nairobi as an escape to civilisation!
I think was disturbed me most about the PIN forgetting incident is that it somehow made escape more difficult, I couldn't just hop on a plane and arrive in Europe with the cushion of my saving at my disposal. My credit card is expiring on October and due to some pan-European changes to include chips in future cards, I could not get it renewed before I left. The prospect of having a new cards sent to me via post didn't seem like a good one either. But I still wasn't fully sure why all these things were bothering me.
Perhaps the restlessness was caused by something else....it was the first day in a long while that I didn't need to get up early and do things. These were usually dangerous days which gave me and time and space to think - something with usually ended badly.
The other day I received an email from a friend asking whether I was thinking of coming back for a Phd or if I was going to get a "real" job. It set me thinking....soon I would have to be making a decision about whether to stay on here or try to go back. Although the deadline for such a decision is almost 6 months away, it plays around in the back of my mind ready to surface at any time. Do I go back to an uncertain future in Europe or do I stay here and in doing so be a testament to inertia being the most powerful force in the universe?
This begs the questions, what is there to stay for? And what is there to go back to?
But I guess the most interesting question is, given that the career opportunities here are so much better and that I have a job and a house and reasonable life here, what makes the thought of staying a little unpalatable?
I am reminded of a conversation I had recently. Steve is from Manchester and has lived in Rwanda for nine years. An electrician by trade, he came to Rwanda shortly after the end of the war in order to escape academia. It appears he had been a lecturer in a technical college in Manchester for many years prior to coming here. He seems to work with many different clients but recently acquired to the means to indulge in his real passion: flying. It would seem all his money and energy are being sunk into revitalising a small airplane. It occurred to me that in Rwanda you needed some "other thing" to keep you going and perhaps that what I didn't have...or perhaps didn't yet have. When I was busy with work, things were ok but when that went slow things kinda just fell apart.
Steve and I were chatting the other day and he mentioned that there was a prevailing attitude among some of the Kigali elite, notably in the ministries, that any of westerners out here were here because they could not get jobs at home. Strangely enough this was a sentiment I had expressed in typical self-effacing manner when out to diner with a South African businessman who seemed impressed with my CV: that people like me were here because in some sense they couldn't make it back home. Dominic my flatmate disagrees, he came here because he is a trained barrister and the wages are higher, Steve concurs. One of the things Steve said was that you could reinvent yourself out here. I had noted that there were many more opportunities here than in Europe, I was been given work I wouldn't even be considered for in Europe. It was at that moment that I realised what had been bothering me - lack of competition. What does it mean to be successful in a country and a continent where most people don't finish primary school and you have two Masters?
I never have been the type who could take pleasure in being first in a one horse race. Better somehow to be mediocre in a sea of brilliance than shining brightly in a sea of mediocrity.
However going back carries its own risks, like that of finding an interesting job. This was one of the prime factors in why I came to Rwanda in the first place; I simply could not stand to hang around doing nothing for months and possibly ending up with a job I didn't like. Was I any more guaranteed of success when I went back this time? Also large part of the attraction of my life in Switzerland was the people I had come to know there but universities are essentially transitory places (unless you are a tenured professor) and a few years all those people will have moved on.
Monique is the receptionist in the offices of the national authority. I feel very at home there and the staff like me, from the cleaner to the CEO. One day as I was hanging out in Monique’s office reading the New Times* she turned to me and asked if I was going to stay with them and for a moment I thought she meant in the office, but she meant was I going to stay forever in Rwanda.
Well I wasn’t sure about that but it suddenly struck me that love or hate it, the very fact of having spent a year in Rwanda was going to stay with me forever...and become part of who I was. It was only much later I started to worry about the possible implications of that...it was the first time since I got here that I felt it might be hard to leave here, perhaps even harder than leaving Switzerland. I left friends back in Europe with the full intention of coming back and that was easier...the chances of me seeing Rwandan friends again are much slimmer.
*Rwanda’s national English language newspaper cum government propaganda publication.
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