If only to realise
Not always perfect
But somehow deserving of time...'
Sarah Blasko, Always Worth It
I don't spend too much time on the blog talking about work, because most of the time I would much rather talk about other things I have been doing :-) However, work is the real reason I came here (possibly the last time I make a decision solely based on work...) and it deserves a little more time. I have gone from being an electrical engineer in a massive government owned company in Australia to a photovoltaic/electrical/whatever goes engineer in a small private company that works in development in Laos - a significant change!!!!
So what do I think about this change? In particular, what do I think about working in development?
- Development is a vocation, not a job. Even in your time away from work, you are thinking and talking about it - its hard to avoid considering that the vast majority of the foreigners working in Laos are here for exactly this reason. I've taken my previous separation between work and play for granted - I found now that they have merged, and that is a struggle for me. But in a way, it has to be like this - after all, we are trying to improve people's lives, and you really have to think about this very hard, because bad moves can have bad consequences. The World Bank thought they were doing a good thing in Bangladesh when they drilled thousands of wells - now people are dying of arsenic poisoning.
- Just like any job, development requires a special type of personality. You have to be willing for your job to be a vocation, for a start - you need to have the passion to be able to think and talk about development all the time. You need to be very patient and able to try things over and over again - after all, you could be introducing completely foreign ideas. You need to be able to plan and think about every action you take. A desire to lose yourself in a new culture and language helps too.
I don't think I am this type of person. I'm a terrible planner, I've discovered :-) I'm also not very good with learning new languages, and not good at focussing at anything for a long period of time. I also have things that I would like to achieve on a personal level, and I don't know how an involvement in development would allow for that - it really feels to me like its an all-or-nothing thing. But here comes a dilemma - if I have found something where I feel I can really contribute and improve people's lives, how can I walk away from that for the sake of my own personal desires? Hmmm.... - Development has just as many conflicts of opinion as anything else. There seems to be a split between the ideologies of non-government organisations (NGO's) and private companies, which is to be expected. I have found some people dismiss the private sector almost without question, because of the whole 'money' aspect - which infuriates me no end, because it seems like a very ignorant way to think. However I do think that when I arrived I was 'hooked' on my bosses philosophy to development - that the private sector is the only way to ensure sustainability (don't you love buzz words!) - maybe because he is such a forceful personality. In recent weeks, I am starting to see more of the NGO's point of view - that every move you make must be justified and recorded and evaluated and monitored (particularly in regard to my own water purification project). Is there a middle ground?
Sok dee,
Susan
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