The phone vibrated twice on my wooden bed-side stand before I woke up. Just like the many other times when I got woken up by a phone call or a knock at the door, I felt disoriented- I knew where I was but little else.
“Taiki, dude, have you seen the news today?” Dennis asked. It was 9 A.M. and I had decided to sleep in before tutoring one of my students at noon.
“No, dude, I haven’t. What’s up?” Surely, Dennis using the word “dude” would mean that whatever he was referring to was undoubtedly some inane “news” that happened in his video-gaming world- a world he hadn’t yet realized I was no longer a part of. What could one of my closest friends possibly bother me about next, at 9 in the morning? Nothing I had the time or effort to pretend to care about only one minute after I’d woken up, I thought.
“Dude, there’s been a huge earthquake in Japan,” he told me in a drab yet somehow relatively casual manner, “and now there’s this huge tsunami. It’s all over the news, man! And looks like loads of people have been killed.”
All of a sudden, everything goes quiet. I am enveloped in nothingness, as for a few seconds, my mind truly goes blank. I am at once floating in the opaque air around me while drowning in thick, suffocating quicksand. My eyes lose focus while also remaining unable to look away from one spot- that one tiny hole on my curtain in my childhood home, letting the mid-morning light peek in, flickering like some distant star. I was now fully awake.
“What?” I asked, the vulnerability in my voice truly palpable.
“Turn on CNN. It looks serious.” No “dude” this time; it must be serious.
Working abroad is an unforgettable and invaluable experience. The joys and pitfalls of discovering a new culture- while expanding your professional portfolio in an untested setting- is personally and socially uplifting. But what you can never be prepared for is when tragedy strikes back home. Or indeed, if something terrible happens in another country in which you have spent time, and in which you have built networks and relationships.
On March 11 2011, when the 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck, I was at home in Nairobi, having finished my first internship after graduating and filling in the work gap by tutoring family friends. I had many friends in Japan, an extended family and years of ancestry; ties that were laid out in full view when the tectonic plates shook under the Pacific Ocean that fateful day. But at the same time, I had never felt further away from my ancestral home.
The Japanese community in Kenya got together to throw a fundraiser for the victims of that day, and it succeeded in creating a sense of communitas– or togetherness- while also raising funds for relief efforts in Japan. Everyone pitched in to do something; even I helped run a stall to introduce people to the Japanese tea ceremony.
Then, just over a month ago, an armed terrorist group stormed into Westgate Mall in Nairobi, wreaking havoc and despair in their wake. For the second time in three years, the feeling of emptiness smothered me, as I was devoid of anything to say, let alone think, as these gunmen invaded a shopping centre a 10-minute drive from my home.
Over the following days, with friends and co-fellows in the city, and the accessibility of communicating to people across the world through Skype, Facebook and WhatsApp, I could feel supported- if not reassured.
Whether this year is the first time for fellows to experience being abroad for a long period of time, or even for those who are well-traveled and have grown accustomed to being at home for just two to three weeks per year, the relevance of the 106 person-wide fellowship and having a co-fellow goes beyond just professional development. And as such, so many aspects of this fellowship cannot be quantified in the form of a bullet point in a resume.
The feeling that envelops you when something tragic occurs is beyond words, and it can be made infinitely more painful if you go through it alone. I view the GHC network as a bountiful resource full of empathetic leaders who want to see and enact positive change on both a holistic and individual level. It’s the kind of network that is redefining what a ‘community’ is, as its size grows year on year. And with that, its reach expands exponentially around the globe, breathing a life of its own. But with life comes loss, and to persevere through our darkest hours requires strength and resilience.
Countless years of experience, infinite amounts of knowledge and a free-flowing supply of sensibility is at our fingertips, waiting with bated breath to lend a helping hand: not just to our co-fellows but to the beneficiaries of our placement organizations and to underserved populations.
The idea of catalyzing positive change on a global scale is profound and noble. But to effect change on such scale, I believe that the importance of personal positive change and interdependence within our close-knit network should not be readily ignored. While challenges are inevitable in the field of global health and social development, building alliances and forming trusted groups wherever we go and wherever we work are strategies we can adopt to cope and move forward in a positive way.