Another Orbit ‘Round the Sun
Despite the fact that I am loathe to read the inevitable year-end retrospectives that dominate this time of year, 2016 was simply too incredible a year not to reflect on it a bit. After all, it marked pretty much the fifth year of living in India (the anniversary for such is actually in February 2017), I traveled to a handful of new countries in order to work in new contexts, and spent the last quarter of the year recovering from a serious injury resulting from an accident that necessitated weeks in a trauma center. There is much to be thankful for, not least of which the simple fact that I am alive to write this.
At the end of 2015, I started working on a project in the field of malnutrition with a major humanitarian aid and crisis response organization based in the United States. This kicked off with a research trip to Mali in western Africa, a country whose north is dominated by Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM). The resultant instability and security concerns led to some surreal briefings in which my colleagues and I were read the riot act on what to do and where not to go whilst in-country. We felt a lot of this was overkill, so took these more as suggestions than mandates (which allowed for a hilarious and extremely fun night at a local nightclub firmly on the “no go” list). A few weeks after returning to India, a hotel near where we stayed in Bamako, Mali’s capital, was attacked by AQIM extremists, resulting in the deaths of 20 innocent civilians. We decided then and there to be a little more diligent in following security protocols the next trip, which turned out to be only a few months later and to a far more dangerous location.
In January 2016 a colleague and I traveled to South Sudan to continue our work on the malnutrition project. We were initially supposed to stay for 6–8 weeks, but thankfully that was reduced to only 4. Now a month in a fun and exciting country can seemingly go by in the blink of an eye; a month in a war-torn country ever on the brink of a genocidal civil war can seem to go on ad infinitum. All told, we spent about a week in the capital city Juba and the rest of the month in remote villages near in the country’s northwest near the border of Sudan.
The work was incredibly fulfilling as we were developing and testing a system of tools for identifying and tracking severe acute malnutrition in children ages 6 months to 5 years at the household level. This work should help increase the number of patients receiving treatment and the speed in which they are treated. That said, and not surprisingly, the toll of experiencing that day-in and day-out for weeks was a heavy one.
En route back to India following this month in South Sudan, we stopped in Ethiopia for some much-needed rest and relaxation. Though several days were spent in Addis Ababa, the bulk of the trip was spent trekking through the Simien Mountains in the northeast of the country. Owing to its proximity to Eritrea, whom Ethiopia fought a war with from 1998–2000, this part of the country had been shut off for years from tourists. In fact, the area was still sketchy enough to necessitate bringing a security guard with us on the trek, replete with assault rifle. It didn’t matter though: we were so taxed from the South Sudan experience that it just felt great to hike and hike for hours and hours each day. The physical exertion was tremendous therapy.
Though unaware of it fully at the time, I was dealing with some post traumatic stress after the time in Africa and working with kids on the brink of death due to a lack of adequate nutrition. I was irritable and more that a bit pugnacious; arguing with colleagues and spending a lot of time alone, isolated. I wanted to take a break for a while and just be office-bound in India for a few months, but another project came up requiring me to head back to Africa.
In April and May I made trips totaling over 4 weeks to Tanzania, this time to work on a project around improving social emotional learning for primary school students in refugee camps. I was initially supposed to go to Niger for this, but a week before departure Boko Haram attacked the camp we were to work in with suicide bombers. The situation was deemed untenable for us as our time in camp would be limited to one or two days; that’s just too much travel and risk for such a minimal engagement time. Instead, I joined colleagues in Tanzania and worked in one of the world’s largest refugee camps.
We worked in a camp that’s home to over 125,000 people: half are from the Congo and the other half from Burundi. Some of the people from the latter have been in the camp for upwards of 20 years, whereas the former are recent residents having been there for less than a year, escaping the “unrest” (read: civil war) that broke out in 2015. We interviewed students, teachers, parents, community leaders, and NGO staff in the camp; each conversation was more desperate than the prior: we heard tales of children being raped, ethnic violence, and people witnessing the very worst horrors mankind is capable of perpetrating.
We stayed about an hour-and-a-half drive from the camp. It was an absolutely bizarre paradox in that we drove through some of the most naturally beautiful scenes in order to avail some of the most heinous human ones. The drive out to the camp each morning was quiet and full of apprehension; the drive back to the hotel each night was even quieter, and full of emotion and tears.
The education project culminated in a week-long workshop in Dar es Salaam, at a five star beachfront resort. We stayed in gorgeous ocean-facing bungalows and ate lavish meals whilst discussing the tragic human condition that dominated our previous visit to the country. It was yet another surreal experience in a year seemingly full of them.
As with the malnutrition project, our reward for enduring such challenging and emotionally fraught contexts was a vacation prior to returning to India. This time we opted to stay in country and headed for Zanzibar. The name alone is evocative and exotic, and the reality of it did not disappoint. A week on the white sand beaches there was a much welcome salve, and an outrageous counterpoint to the refugee camp; it’s difficult to imagine the two exist on the same planet let alone in the same country.
All told, I spent nearly 2.5 months out of the first 5 months of 2016 in various countries throughout Africa. Prior to 2015, the only country in the entire continent of Africa I’d visited was Egypt; in a 7 month stretch starting in October 2015 I visited Mali, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. For someone who associates the number of countries visited with success, it was a great haul despite the difficult nature of the work.
I wrapped up all of my client-facing projects by the end of June, and made my way back to the United States for what was meant to be a three-week visit in early August. As much as I love the chaotic nature of life abroad, the experiences it facilitates, and the challenging and fulfilling work my job affords me the opportunity to work on, I really look forward to getting home. It’s an annual event that provides a the only time I get each year to see my nieces and nephews, as well as the rest of my family, friends, and loved ones. I live for those days, and they recharge my batteries in a way that is hard to explain. It’s like the first breath you take after swimming underwater for a long time. It’s calming; still waters run deep after all.
Every year my entire family gets together for one week. We descend on my parents’ house in rural Western New York state in the U.S. They own several acres of land, and it abuts a large creek (or ‘crick’ if you’re from the area), so most of our time is spent outside. A favorite tradition is to have large bonfires each night, and on the first day of this year’s reunion we set out to do just that.
I’d assembled a fairly large teepee of logs for the bonfire, but it had rained so all of the wood was too wet to light. This led to an ill-fated decision to add a whole lot of gasoline to help motivate the wood to ignite. Whilst splashing several gallons of gasoline onto this woodpile, something ignited the gas. Perhaps ‘ignited’ is the wrong word; it was more of an explosion than anything. I was standing in the middle of a ball of fire that spread out a good 15-feet and shot into the air about 40-feet according to my siblings.
I was engulfed in flames and the skin from my legs and left arm melted right off. I was rushed to the local hospital but they lacked the facilities to treat the burns so I was sent by ambulance some 2 hours away to the nearest trauma unit. All told, I spent two weeks in a burn unit for care, and another 2 months convalescing at my parents’ house before I was in good enough shape to travel back to India.
During my time healing at home, I was unable to have visitors or really even leave the house other than for weekly treatment back at the burn unit. The repetitiveness of that isolation and the physical and emotional toll of the injuries was enough to drive one to distraction. I tried focusing my energy elsewhere to keep my mind occupied and wound up totally ensconcing myself in Adobe Illustrator, trying to learn how to be more creative. This evolved into writing and illustrating a children’s e-book based on a character called Lonely Cactus that emerged during these creative explorations.
Being injured so severely ruined a lot of plans I had made for the time in the U.S. A brother of mine turned 40 this year and my Mother turned 70, so we had planned events around both those milestones. Regrettably, these were put on hold thanks to my accident. I also missed out on the chance to meet up with a lot of friends and family. Given that I only make it back to America once a year, this is a real blow; I’ll have to wait until summer 2017, or later, to reconnect. Thankfully, though, I was healed enough to be Godfather to my friend Greg’s first baby, a beautiful little angel named Allie. It’s always best to focus on the good experiences than the bad ones, and this was certainly one of the best experiences of the year.
Upon finally returning to India, I tried settling back into life. It’s been challenging trying to return to a sense of normalcy after the burns, and after an extended period of time back in America. It usually takes a few weeks to readjust after being home, but this year feels different. On my flight back I watched the U.S. election results and tried wrapping my head around what an America, and world, with Donald Trump as president will look like. This rise of far right, ultra-nationalist thinking that has pervaded the world these past few years stands in stark contrast with the takeaways from the experiences I was fortunate to have in 2016, chief amongst these being that our perceived differences are far less than the reality and that we benefit far more from collaboration than we do divisiveness.
Every day seems to bring something new and exciting to life. Each morning that we are given is an opportunity to do something more and better with that day than the previous one. And as these days turn into weeks and months it is incredible to see what can be achieved in a year’s time. Here’s hoping 2017 is as rich and full of wonder as its predecessor.
Originally published at kevinshane.me on December 22, 2016.
