Inspiration from fellow SMs

Posted by Ali

As you could probably tell from yesterday's post, I've been feeling a bit morose lately. I can't stress enough how much I LOVE living in Africa. But other things have been starting to get to me, namely work. Now that Simon's here, I'm supposed to be transitioning from solely doing grant writing to getting into more of the PR side of things. But, surprisingly, I'm finding myself resisting that move. I've gotten accustomed to grant writing and now the idea of starting out fresh in something completely new scares me. I didn't know how to do grant writing at all before I got here, but I learned. And in university I didn't spent too much time in PR classes. So now I'm scared that I won't be able to do it well enough or my stories and work won't be good enough. I'm also worried that we won't get the two proposals we're working on now completed in time, but I'm also supposed to start designing some items for the albino advocacy campaigns in our new project. So I've been stressing out a little bit about how that will work.

And, to top it off, today I was sick all day. I woke up at 6 a.m. wondering why I felt weird and then realized why just in time. I ended up stayed in bed all day (other than to head back to the bathroom or get some charcoal from my drawer). I did start feeling better after about 6 p.m. and actually had a couple of dry slices of bread and some apple juice for supper. During my time in bed today, I mostly slept, but then in the early afternoon and again in the evening, I got out my computer and started catching up on reading blogs that I had got behind on because of going on safari last weekend. After reading my friends blogs I started reading blog posts from my fellow SMs who are posted all over the world. I read Chris's blog. I read Olivia's blog. I read Krista's blog. And then I read Hanna's blog. Her latest post hit me hard. She had been coming back from a medical trip down a Peruvian river when masked thieves with shotguns stopped their boat and took all their stuff.

After reading that I stopped and thought about why I'm here. I'm not here just to travel. I'm not here just to meet new people. I'm not here to simply have fun. I'm here because God wants me here. So I don't have to worry about anything. He's got everything under control, just like he did for Hanna and her coworkers. I now feel peace about work and I'm so glad because tomorrow I think I'll be well enough to get back to my office and continue where I left off. With God's help, of course.