This is not a post about any hard ships I've faced here in Cambodia, or any frustrations I could possibly have after two months about our work and the prospects of success in our initiatives.
This is, however, a promise to the places I've left in Europe and in the US.
My work, after this stint (however long it turns out to be), is back in the West. I like to imagine it's not for selfish reasons, although I might circle back to that.
It's not because of lifestyle amenities; my parents raised me well I guess and I'm handling myself ok on a shoestring budget (more on cash here). But it's this: Making change means making waves that ripple through every stakeholder and all those even tangentially related. And sometimes those ripples raise eyebrows.
I believe that iLab is doing groundbreaking work in the development sector, and I am honoured to be a part of it. But there are other problems in education and community engagement that will not be met with as open arms by all as poverty alleviation and economic empowerment (for the most part) are. And living in South East Asia has made me that much more aware that the political context you find yourself in will, in these cases, very strongly affect your ability to affect change. Naive as that sounds, it's been easy living in the world of consumer products, medical devices, and services to keep the gaze strictly focused around the more immediate legal battles. It took a fairly random re-discovery of Howard Zinn's speech on civil obedience, and a conversation with Aung Ko Ko, of Myanmar's Proximity Designs, to remind me of what great opportunity a democratic existence truly provides.
It is a right to cherish, this ability to stand up and say, I believe my child deserves better, go out and find like-minded individuals and next thing you know run a new company and discover there were many parents, in fact, who believe the same. And that is a privilege I want to take advantage of. I want to be able to focus on working through the difficulties of the problem of education, without an added layer of complexity of having to consider the implications of my actions. Implications in this case meaning punitive retribution.
So yes, perhaps, selfish. But the other important reminder of the week: personal story matters. Cambodians here, Cambodians who are fiercely proud of their country and the progress they have made, make me excited to work alongside them on their behalf. But it is, at this point, on their behalf. My story here in Cambodia is a story of my learning and honing a process, it is not yet a story of my mission to change [insert here]. And as I have more time and more exposure to muse about the issues and ways to impact here, I will better tease out where my story aligns. I remember trying to explain this very concept to students at Stanford at Wellstone's first community organizing training... and here it is, resurfacing to teach me the very same lesson. Ultimately, I believe I'll return to either the US or to Europe to live out my personal story and the changes I want to see in this world.
