The Training house:

In all honesty, I thought that I would intensely dislike having to live in cramped quarters with 9 other overseas volunteers for the entire duration of my Pre-departure training. I’m sure that part of this was due to the fact that I already lived in Toronto, and as a result, I didn’t see the point of sharing bunk beds with a whole bunch of other kids from across the country. Granted, I was told that this was an important means for building group cohesion, and that trust needed to be built between EWB and us overseas volunteers, blah, blah, blah, but seriously! ( Let's just say I wasn't entirely sold on the whole idea...) Despite all of my reservations, however, I made the decision to be positive and to make the best of the situation.

What I couldn’t predict, however, is how much I would actually enjoy the experience; I had absolutely no idea of what a pleasure it would be to live with the other 12 volunteers in a overfilled 2 bedroom house. Granted, there were elements of living in the house that I didn’t always enjoy, including the need to share 2 bathrooms with 15 other people (at our highest count), nor the constant state of quasi-messiness that abounded as a result of so many shoes, jackets, papers, and belongings all being stored together in the same place. Regardless of all of these daily irritations, however, my experience ended up being immensely positive.

You may be asking yourself why I experienced such as turnaround in sentiment. Well, the answer is actually quite simple. If I took anything away from living in that house, it is that beautiful things happen to you when you challenge yourself to live outside your comfort zone. When you challenge yourself to do things that may not necessarily fit within your usual means of thinking, acting, and reacting, you not only give yourself an opportunity to learn, but you also give yourself a chance to find your own strength. And while this happened on a fairly small scale in the house, it probably prepared us better for living overseas than any component of the actual training did.

Granted, the living situation in the house may not have required the other participants to stretch themselves as much as I was made to. Living in the training house required me to make some pretty substantial adjustments. As many of you know, I am a fastidious person. Thanks to my parents’ influence, I tend to like things neat. I also like my own space. I like structure, but I also like to be free to enter into that structure on my own terms. I don’t like being manoeuvred into situations, and I certainly don’t like being told what to do! (Old habits die hard, eh mom!) Funny thing is, is that I usually tend to these character traits when I’m most uncomfortable in situations – when things are new, when I’m feeling timid, when I’m lacking confidence, or when I’m scared. So why was it that I ended up giving up all of these old standards?

I suppose for a number of reasons… As I mentioned before, I made the decision that training would be a positive experience, so as much as there were things that were irritating to me, I decided to push myself, and to try and enjoy things that I might not have previously enjoyed. I allowed myself to fully embody the experience, and as a result, many of those little irritations just fell away into insignificance. Further, by allowing myself to be challenged, I ended up gaining so much more in return: a lovely new set of friends; a multitude of late-night giggle sessions; an ability to appreciate "organic" decision-making processes; a variety of collective and creatively-made meals; memories of late-night sing-songs, hacky-sack sessions, paper-shredding, and puddle-jumping; a left-brained perspective; a new view of my old town; and a renewed desire to continue learning about development and my place within it.

Pre-departure training was obviously not, however, just about living in the training house. Indeed, the training house was where (you guessed it!) we participated in a number of training sessions to prepare for our overseas placements. For me, it served the additional purpose of allowing me to get to know EWB and their approach. (Every organization approaches development in a slightly different way, which is probably why poverty still exists – no one can agree on how exactly the ‘problem’ should be framed, nor how it should be solved. This ambiguity is why working in development is such a challenge. There aren’t any easy answers, and no one can really say that their 'answer' is better than anyone elses.)

So what did we end up doing for almost a month? Besides heading to the organization’s annual conference and Annual General meeting for about a week (quite an EVENT – over 500 engineering students or full-fledged engineers brought together from across the country to learn more about development and how technology can be used to reduce the poverty of the South through sessions lead by EWB volunteers and practitioners/academics in the field), we stayed in the house and learned. We read a bunch of case studies, discussed a number of ideas and frameworks, disagreed on a fairly regular basis, took things a bit too personally, and finally after more discussion and constructive feedback, we came to a place of mutual respect. Even though it was not always a comfortable setting to learn in (not because the material was particularly difficult, but because the material will always be difficult), it nonetheless allowed for great learning to happen – more of it in the soft skills category than any other. After all, if we are able to live outside our comfort zone, create a safe place for learning, and challenge ourselves to listen to feedback and incorporate it into our personal practice and approach, we are much better prepared for the challenges of overseas work than any framework will ever provide us.