“Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance. Tell yourself
enough vivid stories about the worst possible outcome of your work and you’ll
soon come to believe them. Worry is not preparation, and anxiety doesn’t make
you better.” – Seth Godin, V is for
Vulnerable, Life Outside the Comfort Zone.
I have been in Equatorial Guinea for the past ten days and
realized that I’ve been blogging about South Africa and Cape Town and my time
with Grassroot Soccer (GRS). So, now I am in Equatorial Guinea (EG), a small coastal
country underneath the horn of Africa composed of five islands off the coast of
Cameroon and the mainland tucked in between Cameroon and Gabon. The capital
city of Malabo is located on the largest of the five islands, Bioko, and the
most populated city of Bata is located on the mainland. Here's a link to google maps.
I am living and working in Malabo with a small NGO which
focuses on promoting youth volunteerism as well as women’s health, employment
and empowerment. Much of their work is rooted in HIV prevention and life skills training. Grassroot Soccer
partnered with the NGO about a year ago and trained a good number of coaches
(they are youth leaders or peer educators) to teach an HIV and malaria prevention
curriculum. Grassroot Soccer and their Partner NGOs tend to see a large amount
of success upon partnership. However, the situation in EG has been quite
different. GRS has seen an unusually low number of interventions. Hence, yours truly steps in to try and support
a wonderful group of dedicated individuals and an organization unlucky enough
to work in a country steeped in bureaucracy, pessimism and lack of trust.
My goal now is to make plans for a beach trip, be flexible in
work and have fun with my roommates, co-workers and neighbors. I just realized I
haven’t done a dinamica in almost ten days, since I’ve been here in EG and I’ve
yet to meet the team of coaches. I think I need to do a dinamica and laugh. To
date in Malabo I have seen a Gospel show, timed the national youth development
swim team at the Olympic center, been on national television and am living
without running water in the middle of the city (I woke up at 6am today to fill
up 30 gallons of rainwater in our storage tank which is a pink trashcan). Fun
has definitely been had and the only thing to really do about the water situation
is just laugh and hope the water comes tomorrow. I’m learning to get clean with
a liter of water, which is a skill I’m definitely putting on my resume! Definitely
feeling the balancing-act right now…
“Birl that log. Find your balance by losing it, and commit
to feet in motion until you’re birling and the log is spinning. The log isn’t
going to spin itself, you know. A spinning log is stable for a while, but not
forever. That’s why birling is worth watching.” – Seth Godin, V is for Vulnerable, Life Outside the
Comfort Zone.
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