Roads in Mists

Helene and I have left Gram Vikas.

Our departure takes place exactly four months after we arrived, wide-​​eyed, on Gram Vikas’ lush campus at the beginning of winter. I won’t lie: we had hopes of staying here one year, so this is us cutting it short. It’s hard for me to reconcile my emotions on the subject, as I feel both relieved, anxious, happy, and defeated at the same time.

On Leaving Early

In the winter of 2002, as Helene and I were considering moving to Shanghai, I had a long, meaningful chat with my friend Mathieu, in an Irish pub in Montreal’s Côte-​​des-​​Neiges. I told him then about my fear of failing to adapt to China, of having to run away before I truly had a chance to call it home. And the words he told me then stuck with me to this day:

“Even if you end up only staying six weeks in China, you’ll be someone who has lived six weeks in China. Leaving won’t take that away from you.”

And so, here I am. I am someone who has lived for four months in rural Odisha, volunteering for a rural development NGO.

And that’s a huge success, and a life experience that will stick with me for years to come.

Keep Moving

There are other successes I can count on. Overall, my time at Gram Vikas was very positive and successful. I quickly found meaningful work within the organization, and we made fast friends with volunteers and colleagues from India and abroad. I wrote multiple grant applications for Gram Vikas, which will, in all likelihood, help Gram Vikas tremendously with the financing of their operations. I leave on a positive note, and I sense a gratitude for my contribution from many of my colleagues, including Gram Vikas’ founder and executive director, Joe Madiath.

But Helene was not so lucky. Through a series of unfortunate exchanges, she ended up without any possibility of helping Gram Vikas, and thus was stuck at home, with nothing to do while I toiled away in the office. And as the Gram Vikas campus is remote, with no easy means of getting to town and little in terms of entertainment value, she knew it couldn’t last. Frustrations mounted for me as well, and seeing my life partner in an unhappy position ground at me until we reached a breaking point. Coming to Gram Vikas was a joint adventure for us, and although I appreciated her patience while I was busy in the office, we had to come to the inevitable conclusion: this was not working out for us.

It was time to move on.

The Shifting Road

So here we are. Sunday morning, we bid farewell to this exciting, exhausting, frustrating, magical chapter of our life, and went off into the great unknown once more. Helene yearns to teach in South Korea again, her first home abroad; I figure I’ve dragged her to enough places that I owe her at least to follow her to a modern country like South Korea.

As for myself, I’m divided as to whether I want to pursue international development. A big part of me wants to, but I need time to distill and ponder this experience. Another part of me wants to shift gears and explore other options.

When I look back on my life, I see a straight road, with clear markers along the way, all pointing to the same destination. But whenever I look ahead, all I see is mist and curves.

Maybe one day I’ll look back on this time and find that the mists have cleared from this part of the road, leaving only a straight line. But for now, all I can do is walk forward in the fog, and keep my eyes peeled for the goal.

What About This Blog?

I’ll likely write some other posts, summing up my experience in international development, as well as some advice and thoughts that someone else out there might find useful. Then we’ll see where Helene and I want to take it.

Whatever happens, blogging will remain a constant in our lives. We’ll inform you of our plans when they emerge from the mists.

But for now, we are taking a well-​​deserved break in Puri. Out there is Kolkata and Manick’s bench, then a plane to Thailand, in search of Happy Places.

Beyond that, it’s all in the mist.

Picture Credits: Mist, by Manjeet Panda. All rights reserved.

In the Eye of the Storm

One… two… Is this thing on?

Three months since our last blog post… And to think I had such good intentions of diligently posting, chronicling our experience as we enter the development field. I saw myself tracking the stirrings of my global consciousness, following the transformations of my worldview as it happened in real time.

But here we are, three months later, and the page is still blank. The draft folder is empty.

Let’s catch up!

Yes, we’re in rural India right now.

It’s been two months and a half since we’ve arrived at the Gram Vikas campus; a lifetime, as the cliché goes. In retrospect, I don’t know very well what I expected out of this, but it’s fair to say I had no concept of what life would be like working for an NGO in rural Odisha. Before I came here, I was sitting in a little brick house in my mind, feeling the sturdiness of the walls I built for myself, firmly rooted in certainty. There, I planned how I would catch the sail winds, with a sense for manifest destiny.

Then a tornado came, smashed the house like a fist, and carried me away to another continent.

What it means in practical terms, I have yet to fully articulate, or even admit to myself. Once the shock of transplanting my life to India has passed, there remains the sense of a deep unease with the world, like the memory of an earthquake. Something about the world has changed, in a way profound and invisible. The surface remains untouched, but a great force stirs my mind in new directions. The mountain appears immobile still, but its depths have already given birth to relentless tremors. The fissures are cracking their way up to the surface.

Which way this will take me, no one knows.

I wish I could express my feelings in more concrete terms, but the more precise I try to be, the closer I stick to the skin of things. The bones of my experience lie deep within a well that I cannot explore with the full light of my consciousness.

But when I come up for air from the depths of this experience, this is what I see around me:

I see a peaceful campus at the fringe of rural Odisha, teeming with life and colors.

I see new friends in distant lands, with which I work, eat, laugh, commiserate, and explore this new life.

I see people from an ancient culture, yearning for the same as me, always the same: dignity, hope, respect.

I see luminous chaos and mud-​​stained joy in the labyrinths of the city.

I see the mist-​​hugged hills in the morning, and the saree–clad women gathering firewood, smiling and greeting me on my runs.

I see myself, most of all: teeth clenched, eyes wide, grinning at the world.

The Wind at Our Backs

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.“
—Attributed to Seneca the Younger,  1^st Century AD

I don’t believe in fate. Not really. But I believe in auspicious beginnings: those times when things align just so, and the world opens up before you.

This has led me to personally believe that what we call “destiny” is just the default option. If you struggle to change it, other opportunities open up. Some seem like insurmountable mountains, and you struggle your whole life to make them happen.

But sometimes, the wind blows at your back.

When Helene and I decided to move to China in 2003, we felt the wind blow into our sails. We had tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to find work in South Korea; but the moment we decided to go to China instead, everything came together. We visited Shanghai for the first time at the spring of 2003, and I landed a dream job at Ubisoft without breaking a sweat.

India is filling our sails once more.

It’s hard to explain India to those who have not gone. But to those who have, there is a common wisdom about the subcontinent: it warps reality. It obeys rules outside of causality and physics.

The second we decided that India was a sound choice for a first job in international development, things came together very quickly. Over emails and Skype, Joe Madiath of Gram Vikas immediately made us feel welcome to join him in Berhampur, and things just seemed to click.

Then, a month ago, out of the blue, an opportunity landed in my lap.

I’m working as a web development consultant for the next four weeks.

I wasn’t looking for a job per se, but the stars aligned somehow. The job is a challenge, both in its technical details and in the fact I have to enter the corporate world once more; but the result of this effort is a monetary “safety net” that goes a long way to alleviate our fears about moving to rural India.

In a very tangible sense, it feels as if the Universe is telling us: “Stop worrying about money and just do it. Go be awesome.”

That’s the thought that carries me through days in an office, even though I haven’t worked a desk job in two years.

Soon enough, it’ll be time to go be awesome.

Picture: Chilka Lake, Orissa by Kartik Anand–CC BY-​​NC-​​SA 2.0

We’re Moving to India!

I thought it’d take longer than this.

When Helene and I began working on this blog, we envisioned it as a chronicle of our efforts to enter the international development sector. I felt that there would be weeks, perhaps months of efforts leading up to a real opportunity to work in the field, and that this blog would detail these efforts so that others may learn for us.

But it turns out, India had other plans for our blog — and for us!

We’re leaving for India in October.

While we were busy finalizing Mango Blue, our efforts to find a good volunteer placement bore fruit. One opportunity really came through for us, and I’m confident enough about what I’ve learned to make the jump.

This means at the end of September, Helene and I will pack our bags, and once again board a plane. For the third time in my life (and the fourth for Helene), we will leave Canada to reinvent our lives abroad.

We’re going to work with Gram Vikas in Orissa.

Gram Vikas is an Indian NGO based near the city of Berhampur, in the eastern state of Orissa. They work with marginalized communities, many of them traditional tribes, to better their living conditions through education, health, and infrastructure development. Among the many things that drew me to this organization is their humble, hands-​​on approach to development: they go out there and get to work.

Gram Vikas is the brainchild of Joe Madiath, a man from Chennai who first came to Orissa in 1971, to help with disaster relief efforts following a cyclone that left nearly a million people homeless. From my email and Skype chats with him, Joe is a gentle, humble man, who is compelled to help his fellow human beings. Although the paths our lives have taken are very different, I hear an echo of his compassion in my own desire to work in international development.

Our roles with Gram Vikas have not been defined yet. We will go to Gram Vikas’ headquarters near Berhampur in October, and do whatever fulfills us and helps the most. For me, this will most likely mean helping out with management, leadership, and/​or communications. As for Helene, she has the opportunity to teach English, either in a community school nearby, or to English teachers in need of training.

My current mood: excited and terrified.

You’d think that following an expatriation to China, and two years of independent travel, picking up my life once more to move to India would be a piece of cake. It’s not. It’s daunting, even terrifying.

We traveled through India for two months last year, but throughout this time we mostly stuck to cities of a fairly respectable size. This time, we’re gonna travel to rural India, in one of India’s poorest states. It’s a lot to process.

But most of all, it’s absolutely thrilling. I look forward to returning to India, the country that captured my heart on our last journey.

After months of thinking, researching, and planning, the time is almost here to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

I can’t wait!

Picture: Gram Vikas office courtyard, © 2010 navasarama

The Road Begins!

Welcome to Mango Blue!

We are launching this blog as one of the first steps towards redefining our lives. But in a way, the road to change started many years ago for both of us.

In 1996, Helene left Montreal to teach English in South Korea. This experience left a deep impression on her, and she’s been hooked on travel — and teaching — ever since.

In 2003, driven by our mutual desire to live abroad, we both quit our jobs, sold most of our belongings, and moved to Shanghai. The three exciting years we lived there as expatriates turned our world upside down.

We returned to Canada in 2006, but in 2009 we both quit our jobs again, this time to travel the world. From September 2009 to June 2010, we visited Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, India, Qatar, Turkey, and Syria. Daniel also visited Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine.

After spending the summer of 2010 in Montreal, we left again in November, and traveled six months in Mexico. In Puerto Escondido, on the Oaxacan Pacific Coast, we slowed down and began to ponder our future.

And then we realized something:

It’s time for us to get involved.

We have seen too much of the world to remain passive any longer. We want to make use of our professional skills (project management for Daniel, language teaching for Helene) and apply them to fields where we can make a difference.

This blog, Mango Blue, is part of our efforts to join the field of international development. We hope that this blog will help us to:

• Meet like-​​minded people who work in international development, or are also trying to join;
• Share our future adventures, discoveries, successes, and setbacks, in the hope they will help and inspire others;
• Keep our friends and families up-​​to-​​date on our efforts, and help them understand what we’re trying to do, and why.

That being said, we’d love to hear from you, dear new readers:

Suggestions? Questions? Go ahead and say hello!