The end of our time here in Zambia is fast approaching. We have just less than six weeks at our placements, one last gasp holiday, and then we’ll be on the plane back to Heathrow.
I’ve been on the downhill slope to Blighty for longer than Helen, as I’ve had two solo trips back to the UK in as many months for job interviews. In the first – for a large international development charity based in the centre of London – someone with ten years more experience than me beat me to it. I was disappointed at the time, but there was also relief; while it would have been in the area (international development) I’m most interested in, there was little in the role I hadn’t done before. Then, a month later, a far more inspiring job for another charity, one I’d never really considered, came out of left field, and before I knew it I’d had a phone interview and they were paying for me to fly back to the UK for a face-to-face one. Hours and hours of preparation came good in the second interview and they offered me the job.
The more I see of the RSPB – the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds – the more I like them. I’ll be their first Procurement Manager, tasked with improving procurement practice and saving them money. The money saved goes ultimately towards their aim of preserving threatened natural environments, a cause I’m happy to support. As for birds, well, with the possible exception of pigeons they seem like a good thing, and if nasty corporates, or poachers, or whoever want to wipe them out then I’m all for protecting them (with or without the Queen’s help). So, indirectly, my job involves protecting our feathered friends; to borrow someone else’s joke, I’ll have to sign up to Twitter so I can tweet about it…
So we go back to the UK with one job between us, which will make life easier financially, as well as focussing attention on possible places we could at some point buy a house. The job is based not too far from where we used to live, near a number of our friends. Longstanding friends are one thing we’ve definitely missed here, so it will be great to have some on our doorstep.
There are lots of other positive things about life in the UK that I for one am looking forward to. Heating, for example; it is seriously cold in Zambia just now, at least overnight, and I’m sitting typing this with scarf, body-warmer and thermals on! To be able to flick a switch and warm up a room or whole house is something greatly to be desired! TV too; there’s been so much happening in the news while we’ve been away and we’ve largely missed it all, except for reports on the World Service and within Guardian Weekly. But most of all, for me anyway, I’m looking forward to a decent day’s work. Helen has been stretched and satisfied with her work for some time now, but I’ve been operating at a say 20% of what I could be doing pretty much since I arrived in Zambia. This has still resulted in some positive things being done, and my employers seem happy, but most of the time I am a long way from being stretched. Six months back in the rat race and I may be wistfully dreaming about the days where I could more or less come and go as I like and still do everything that needed to be done, but right now a demanding job and a collective Protestant Work Ethic is a very attractive prospect!
At the same time, of course, there are plenty of things it will be very hard to leave here. We have some good friends, and I’ll particularly miss the guys from Nomakanjani. There’s a friendliness and ease between Zambians that highlights how abnormal typical English reserve really is. (On my last trip back to the UK I spent some time on the Tube, where no one, except the foreigners, even looks at each other, let alone speak, and people bend over backwards to have minimal physical contact). There’s the extraordinary wildlife and the stark beauty of the African bush a few hours’ drive away. Last Sunday, for example, Helen and I were in a hide in Kafue National Park, overlooking a plain of scrub and trees that probably hadn’t changed for thousands of years, watching as three elephants majestically walked by. And lastly, hard to define, but there’s a freedom, an unpredictability, an openness to life here, or least life as a volunteer, that is largely missing in the 9-to-5, regulated and comfortable life in the UK.
But it is that life, comfortable and regulated though it is, to which we must shortly return. Not quite yet – a couple of months to go – but we’re now at the beginning of the end.
Posted by danandhelen 
