Health is always more important than work. Family is always more important than work. I’ve always understood it intellectually. Today it really hit home. My father has all the pre-cursor indicators of liver cancer, unless the treatment for hepatitis C, which has a 50% success rate, works. He’s probably going to go through with the treatment – a year of weekly injections that is going to make him feel sick all the time. We had a long internet chat today. […]
Someone should do a study on why farmers are side-selling in our scheme (and probably other schemes). Please. I would help fund your research to lessen my every day growing headache. (I’ll write more about what is happening soon.)
Super hungry, no time for breakfast, what to do? Find grilled maize of course. (Or grilled cassava, or African chapati, or cow pea samosas, or…) “400 shillings for that small maize?! I can get twice the size of that normally…” first thing in the morning, mzungu prices. It’s going to be a long day. Munching on my small grilled maize (finally for a price of 300 shillings) on the back of a bodaboda, it suddenly struck me that this maize was probably […]
My field staff, while I was chugging along on a motorbike squeezed between her and the driver, asked how Canadian agriculture was like. “Where I live, it’s more varied, with different kinds of vegetables, berries. In the prairies, it’s almost all wheat and canola,” I struggled to summarize Canadian agriculture. “Oh! The prairies! I remember studying that in high school geography,” she seemed to be very excited that she recognized what I was talking about. . When did I ever […]
I’m not a farmer. As ashamed as I am to admit that, I really don’t have much practical experience in farming, or really, even taking care of a garden on my own. My plants inside my house have mostly struggled valiantly to survive in the past. I might not be the opposite of a green thumb, but I’m pretty close, probably. Although I’ve spent most of my higher education learning about, and advocating for, different forms of sustainable agriculture, it […]
I’m 23. The first time I ever helped plan an event was in grade 7, at 12. For some reason, I was elected class committee vice-chairperson. In Hong Kong, such positions are thrown around like a hot potato – who wants to take responsibility? I have vague memories of what our class committee actually did; probably just the staples of the Christmas party and decorating the class bulletin board. Crappy and disorganized, I’m sure we were. In grade 9, again, […]
Work really isn’t about work. It’s about managing human relationships. Now why do they pretend work is only work in school all through my education? I’m in a bit of a crazy situation at work right now. It’s all about how to get through this with a good balance in my human relationships.
I realised that I really need to record my experiences working here better. I came here because I wanted to gain working experience before going to grad school. I don’t learn from my experiences unless I reflect on and record them. Therefore, I need to reflect and record more to achieve what I set out to do… But sometimes, I just get home so tired that writing a 5 minutes, nay, 2 minutes entry seems too much.
I had my own “field cred” moment today. We invited someone from the headquarters of the trading company we work with/are a part of to do some training for our farmers the past few days. He’s one of the biggest heads in the country. He’s also super nice and supportive of our part of the company’s work. Unlike certain people at the office where I work at. The past two days, I think I surprised him quite a bit when […]
I’ve been feeling so tired these days. Work is, of course, long hours as everything’s still in a semi-but-better mess. I come home from work, muster the energy to make dinner (mostly by the sheer fact that I love cooking and it’s the best way for me to de-stress), pass out involuntarily on the bed after eating, wake up for a few minutes in the wee hours of the night to brush my teeth etc, and sleep until morning, dangerously […]
