Why you shouldn't confuse our blog with reality

Posted by: Dan (with moral support and editing by Helen)
 

A word on this blog: we're loving writing it. But, it’s a lot like Facebook – which is always filled with witty comment, shiny, happy faces and extraordinary experiences. Rather than “I went to work today”. And aren’t we all glad of that? It would certainly be duller if it were more true. We're aiming for a blog full of carefully crafted, articulate, witty, well-rounded nuggets of cultural observations (ha!). And, yes, also close-ups of lions in the Maasai Mara just to make you all jealous. Don’t get me wrong, we are doing those wonderful things, we are incredibly lucky to visit once-in-a-lifetime places of a weekend here in Kenya. But that, of course, is much less than half the story......

Welcome to a blog post answering the question: "Why don't you talk about work?"

During our "In-Country Training", we were fresh volunteers, all sitting beside our new Kenyan employers. A member of the training team stood up and said, "Do not expect your volunteer to do much in the first three months". What?! We all looked at each other slightly incredulously...

It's four months on, and last weekend I found myself standing in front of a new intake of volunteers, fresh off the plane, jet-lagged and eager, and repeating this same advice. Presentation title: "Practicalities of Working in Kenya". I urged them to spend the first months learning about their organisation, and crucially, building relationships. "Do not", I said, "try to hit the ground running".

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"But you don't talk about work!", said a UK friend the other day, referring to our blog. And this got me worried. I don't want my friends and family in the UK thinking this blog says it all, that it's an accurate picture of our full experience here. We also have to go to work.

We find it hard to articulate "work" here. Firstly, VSO urges volunteers to be cautious about blogging about their placements. Sage advice - after all, this is a very public space. I've never written a blog before, and it's certainly strange to think that I'm writing for my Mum, my UK friends, fellow volunteers here, and of course, our Kenyan colleagues sometimes read it too. I have no intention of offending anyone with off-hand remarks. It helps that I like my colleagues, and have no real cause for complaint. But I've heard stories of volunteers who have totally screwed things up for themselves by writing insensitively about work.

Secondly, it needs to be couched in terms. “Work” is the absolute obsession of the Western world. We’re all trained to be Type A, workaholic, deliver deliver deliver productivity monkeys. What’s the first question people ask when they meet? “So, what do you do?” Our work is at the heart of our identity, going far deeper than, probably, it should.

It’s not the same here. And I apologise for any grand generalisations here, particularly to any Kenyans who are reading this. I certainly mean no offense, and I don't mean that Kenyans are lazy.

But still, in my experience I think it's true to say that Kenyans are not about work. Mornings and meetings start with a long and lovely round of greetings: Habari? How are you? What news? How is your family? How is your home? Kenyan life much more frequently revolves around (1) family, and (2) Church. I’m starting to think they have a lot more perspective than the British do, and an understanding of Work:Life balance that I envy.

It’s worth remembering that office work is a comparatively new thing here. We’re working with colleagues who are often the first generation to go to university or work in an office rather than in a field or at a road-side stall. They don’t yet have the highly evolved middle class angst and social rituals that British offices do. And sometimes I’m loath to be the representative that suggests that offices are the way to go. I’d sometimes much prefer to be ploughing, hunting or cooking than vexing over office politics. I’m proudly better at making fires and cooking meat than I am at writing project documents or “managing stakeholders”.

And work here can be frustrating. Volunteers can be idealists, recruited to "change the world". But what does that mean? I know even some of our UK acquaintances have struggled with the concept that we're doing office work here. We're not digging wells or handing out food aid. I write emails here, I use flipcharts.

But despite this, things can be very different for a lot of volunteers here. Imagine yourself in an office in the UK:

• you often have no internet, no power, no running water
• the working day is flexible, no-one is watching you, managing you
• your work sometimes has little structure, often no team, and frequently no clear objectives
• 'a productive day at work' can mean chatting with your colleagues, and drinking chai all day.

It sounds wonderful, yes? Frustrating maybe, but a very easy year. But it's difficult. And we've flown a long way to share skills, create change, improve things. You start to even miss bureaucracy...

Bureaucracy is what happens when relationships break down

For many Kenyans, talking and relationships are far more important than producing a document to deadline, sending an email or perfecting a powerpoint presentation. Speed is not of the essence, and Kenyans enjoy reminding us that they have their own sense of time.

Our new work-mates act very differently from our previous colleagues. Often they'll agree with everything you say, even when they disagree fundamentally and have no intention of following through. Our Swahili teacher says "Kenyans are not honest", which doesn't mean they're liars, but in Swahili, there's almost no way of articulating negativity. The answer to any question is "nzuri" or "sawa sawa" (variations on "good" and "fine"). Our Kenyan acquaintances will say "nzuri" even when the truth is that they haven't slept, a family member is in hospital, or they're in a foul mood. Translated into a work setting, and it becomes a real struggle to get honest, constructive feedback and criticism. My training sessions are "brilliant", "very good" and "excellent". Which is nice, but it's hard to tell how true...

What else? It's common for volunteers to complain "my colleagues share all their gossip in Swahili", "they agree to meet you but never turn up", or "I've produced the work they've asked for, but it's shelved, seemingly forgotten". Again there are many reasons behind these behaviours and none of them is spite or insult, but it can be hard not to take it personally. It takes time for all us VSO volunteers to learn what its all about, some things were never covered in our training, and we'll never understand the way everything works.

We Westerners struggle with that, particularly in the emotional bubble of a year's volunteering. It can lead some volunteers to question the whole concept of “development work”, as it feels dysfunctional against our UK benchmark. Although I can think of one or two UK organisations I’ve worked at who were just as dysfunctional as any we see here. And I guess if our placements here were perfectly functioning and ordered, then we wouldn’t be in the developing world, a nation in progress - and these organizations wouldn’t need us?

These are not yet fully-formed thoughts, so apologies if they are crude, unclear or touch a nerve with anyone. But I wanted to try to explain, to some extent, why we don't "talk about work" that much on our blog. At least you can take away from this long, rambly philosophizing that this experience is weird. And hard to explain. And confusing.

Sure, it was always going to be weird because of the matatus, the weather, the language – the Kenyan-ness of it all. But I didn’t quite expect our emotional reactions and wild mood swings because of these work challenges. Working in Kenya has slowly, slowly, unraveled and taken apart our work ethics; questioned why we work the way we do, how we live our lives, and how we see ourselves. So how do we put this all back together again? And how will we have changed?


It certainly bakes the noodle, so to speak.