Pre-Arrival Reflections

June 19, 2012

I’ve spent the last few hours working on my final pre-arrival assignment for Think Impact, a reflection on our hopes, fears, and expectations for our experience. While I discussed some of my motivations professionally and personally for wanting to travel this summer in my last post, I thought I would also share candidly the things I’m worried about.

Disconnecting. I probably look at my phone 200 times a day, checking for new calls, texts, messages, etc.. I’m not kidding, and I know that means 8 times/hour. I am hyper-connected to my friends, family, the news, and everything electronic. I’m used to sending a picture or a note along as things happen in real time.  It will be very hard, but dare I say also very good, to be somewhere without electricity, water, or internet, and I am hoping that this will allow us to be fully present with our teams and communities for the next eight weeks.

Communicating. While my German and Spanish are admittedly pretty terrible, I know enough words that in most of the places I have traveled around the world that I have been able to read a menu and a map, understand the newspaper headlines, and greet and thank the people with whom I interact. Kinyarwanda is the most commonly spoken language in Rwanda, and I’m not certain that I can even correctly pronounce “good morning” (Mwaramutse) correctly let alone “thank you” (Murakoze). Our research here is based on our ability to converse with and understand our community members deeply, and I worry about our ability to communicate, to learn and appreciate the culture, and to build relationships without a shared, common language.

Trusting the Process.  I just had two years of this at Darden right, right? Well this is a different “Process.” I admit to being a compulsive planner, scheduler, and slave to Outlook, and I have neither planned nor scheduled anything for the next eight weeks. I have put my faith in Think Impact and the design thinking process. I know that this is a purposefully messy and complicated endeavor, and I am already practicing telling the planner in me that it’s ok if things don’t happen exactly on time or when I think they should.

We’re not all MBAs.  This means two things. One, I have to tone down the jargon and vocabulary that have come to dominate the conversations amongst my MBA friends. I have to learn to communicate with a more diverse set of colleagues with different assumptions, knowledge, and views of the world. Really we are lucky to have such diverse teams, and I am thankful for that. Second, Darden hard wired me to want to jump to “take action” quickly and deliberately even with imperfect information. I don’t know how quickly or deliberately anything will happen here. Neither of these things is necessarily bad, but they are things I am acutely aware of. They pose unique personal challenges of which I am already thinking about.

Impact. What are the motivations driving our work for each of us, and what kind of an impact will we be able to make in a relatively short period of time?  I’m very sensitive to the challenges of “doing development” well. Our flight is clearly filled with well-intentioned mission groups and aid workers, but how effective will any of us be?  I picked this program because I think it is has a sound methodology and is striving for the kind of long-standing relationships and collaborative, sustainable ventures that I believe in. I haven’t even thought about what kind of business we’ll be working on because I want to make sure the ideas are coming from the community members themselves. Still though this remains the hardest question for me both personally and intellectually.

I’m watching the plane tick closer and closer to our destination on the monitor on the seat in front of me, and I’m hoping we break through the clouds on our descent before the sun gets any lower in the sky so that I can get my first glimpse of Rwanda from the air. My next post will be on the ground in Kigali!