Validation and Good Company

I remember talking with one of my good friends before about the idea of taking risks. I have always seen myself as a person who is rather risk-adverse. When I told this to my friend, he looked at me in disbelief. He contended that if I really looked at my profile from the past few years, traveling around the world and moving everywhere, that one would conclude that I’m actually rather open to taking risks. While this seems true, I still don’t agree. I don’t like risks, although I’m okay with calculated risks.

This project though, is actually a real risk. I say this because, at the end of this trip I will be as broke as I was before I got my first job working at a shoe store when I turned 16. I am not a person who likes to go through life without a little nest egg – even having a little savings is good enough for me; it’s like a security blanket that gives me a level of comfort and allows me to take calculated risks like moving to China or going to Europe. It’s actually sort of scary.

Thus, it’s really nice when I meet people along the way who validate my project and remind me that my gut feelings about the topics and themes I am interested in talking about are not just in my head, but perhaps are fairly universal for middle class folks around the world. I felt this way in Mombasa, where a good friend of Neema and her husband (Sally and Andrew) drove Young and I around the town and helped us find lodging and food. Given that I got strangely ill while in Mombasa, it was nice to have them there to fall back on. Even better though, was spending a long leisurely dinner with them the night before we left (which doubled as a nice birthday celebration for Young) where we talked about all sorts of interesting things.

Sally and Andrew are not originally from Mombasa although they have been there for almost six years now. They are both are involved in non-profit work; Andrew is a marine biologist, and Sally does environmental education for children. Since opportunities in Mombasa are much greater, especially for marine conservation work, then they are elsewhere in Kenya, it made sense for Sally and Andrew to move to Mombasa. It has not however, been an easy transition, especially with the heat and humidity in Mombasa. Both being from western Kenya, where it is much drier and less hot year-round, the climate transition for them has been rough – I asked Andrew how long it took for him to get used to Mombasa’s weather, and he looked back at me helplessly and said “I don’t think I have yet.”

Yet, they have settled into Mombasa and carved out a life for themselves there with their two kids, and they are quite happy with good future work prospects. They are however far from their families. Sally said they get to see their parents maybe once a year – the great distances, long travel times, and intense work schedules make it as hard for them to get back to their traditional homes as it might for me if I were living in Hong Kong. Sally is especially sad that her kids don’t get to spend more time with their grandparents, but accepts that it might just be a fact of modern life. Indeed it is, for it is the same story I hear from many middle-class, mobile young professionals around the world, and they are the same issues that I keep thinking about when trying to figure out what I want the next ten years of my life to look like.

Certainly I haven’t figured it out yet, but I do take solace in the fact that I am not alone. Not because misery loves company (it does, it does!) but because there are people out there who are figuring out how to make things work. It gives me hope that I can make things work also, and it gives me hope that if I can sit down and write about these things that I might actually end up with something that’s relevant for a lot of people.