Three Weeks Left

It’s as though endings are never meant to be a neat cut off. Due to the end of the contract being close to Christmas it means by nature it’s going to be a rushed and chaotic finish, many people are away on workshops and trainings, other will be heading off for holidays before or at the time I end. It would be nice to say that everyone who has been part of the experience will be there at the finish, but I suspect the final bash will be a mix of those stragglers who still haven't headed home and those that need to be on Taro for work reasons. It has that end of year feel to things right now; I can almost see the last two years roll out before me when I stop to think about it, it’s a mix of satisfaction at the scale of the experience and sadness at it finishing.    

Three weeks out I am still in the dark as to what I will do next year there has been talk about various things; a position we developed to support the Provincial Government has been sent out to many NGO’s and agencies, oddly one group has come back offering to support a senior planner and another a town planner, both of which were never requested and I guess it also shows how much these groups are really paying attention to the needs of the Provincial Government. We are still wondering if the position will get eventually get supported....we will see. Another agency has mentioned coming back for a few weeks work as a consultant in January and early February to help with some planning work in Choiseul, It would be as a consultant and it would look good on the CV, but still needs to be confirmed. Thirdly, there is masters degree option. This may be a good option as it would assist me in working overseas and I have developed quite an interest in strengthening community planning as a way to improve environmental management. 

So for the next three weeks until I fly away it’s going to be busy old time. I have a number of reports my volunteer agency wants me to complete and I have a few small jobs to finish as part of my assignment, including some reporting templates so that the technical Planning Unit can better monitor implementation of the Medium Term Development Plan. I’m at a stage where I know I need to get really organised and get things done, for some reason I’m not in that headspace yet and I needed to be at least a couple of weeks ago.

      

        

         

The Countdown

Opening a diary that I bought earlier in the year with an advertisement in it with the heading Hello or Goodbye, has some resonance with where I find myself at the moment. I’m in some sort of transition limbo asking myself will it be goodbye to the Solomon’s for ever or will I be back. I don’t currently have the answer either way and the meter is running. Today is the 6^th of November and I am due to fly from Choiseul (possibly my last flight out for a while, possibly ever) to Honiara on the 10^th of December.

Walking around in the bush last week in south Choiseul got me thinking that there is still so much that I could do here and want to do here. Rolling through my mind was a quote that David Suzuki the Canadian environmentalist refers to in a documentary about his life, the person he quotes once said the two most powerful words a person can say are “I’m staying”, meaning once you decide to stay in a place it means that you have committed to that community and the people in it.

There are Internet forums which where people discuss the issues faced by the Province (to the point of being pretty repetitive), but corresponding action by people involved in these discussions moving with any real urgency out get out to the Province and their hands dirty seems to be somewhat non-existent. Somewhat oddly there are a number of trained lawyers and doctors from Choiseul, none of which appear to have any interest in working in Choiseul, yet there is a dire need for both of these. It appears these people are working in Honiara or overseas where I guess they consider the grass is greener. It’s a situation that’s pretty similar to what kiwis know of with continual migration of skilled people from New Zealand to Australia and other places overseas, in Choiseul though it’s substantially worse.

I guess this is where I feel that I have something more to offer, I want to stay, to help out and do what I can and yet there is no clear option to make the that decision myself. Staying or at least having the opportunity to return to Choiseul and the Solomon’s is what I would like to be able to do, but with NGO’s and donors moving glacially slow to provide any clear support for a proposed position put to them to support the Provincial Government and also no obvious leads on other jobs; knowing that I will be finishing as a volunteer at the end of this year is about the only certainty I have right now.