Now that I am officially in the
home stretch of my stay in Kenya, I am thinking about the future. MY future. It takes about 8 months for graduates in my field to find a
job, and I cannot imagine going the next eight months being unemployed. I get too much fulfillment from having
a job I love to just sit around and bake cookies all day (though I do love
baking cookies and will love the extra time to spend with family and friends
back home).
The search will be a struggle,
though. I really want to return to
Kenya, but there are few job prospects here for my particular interests, and
getting work in development as an American is tricky because East African
organizations are really moving towards employing local people. This is great and they way it should
be, but… I really chose a great time to want to do development in Kenya,
huh?
I really want to do work on
language advocacy here (there are 50+ languages and dialects in the region, and
few children are allowed to use their mother tongue in school and later on in
work), but most of the work in Kenya is focused on health, HIV/AIDS,
livelihoods, FGM, etc. I sometimes
feel like my field is so niche that I have to start my own organization. But then who will pay me? Yes, my work is centered on social
justice, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to make enough money to go out to
nice restaurants and buy every one of MAC’s new lipsticks.
I am also interested in doing
research, so I have been seeking out research grants to possibly go to the
coast and research land rights in the face of the LAPSSET project (a large
corridor being built right down the coast through a lot of people’s land). I am also interested in land rights, so
I would love to find an org interested in supporting that kind of research. I officially end my internship on the last day of March, so
after that it is ON. I’m
researching and contacting people now, but my new full time job will be… finding
a job. Wish me luck.
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