(no subject)

[yiskah]

I have no idea what to post about on LJ at the moment (everything seems to involve too much background and context), and am having a slow Friday (day-off plans foiled by ill couchsurfer, though I may go out shortly to read a book in a cafe or similar), so I am going to do this meme. I always assume that everyone knows everything about me, but maybe you don't.

The problem with LJ: We all think we are so close, but really we know nothing about one another. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you.

Have at it!

Hm, I will even make this post public, so that you can ASK ANONYMOUSLY if you want. Don't be evil though.

Comments

[whatsagirlgotta.livejournal.com]

I think there's probably a bunch of things I don't know, but I suppose I'd be interested in knowing what kicked off the wanderlust or why you got interested in the PhD and Sudan? I mean I know you are, but I'm wondering what the process was!

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Advance warning: this is going to get long.

No idea where the wanderlust comes from, but as long as I can remember I have always wanted to travel. My dad was in the merchant navy and then had filmed in various exciting locations so maybe my desire to travel came from him. Most of my holidays as a kid were shuttling back and forth between the UK and Australia, or going to wherever my dad was doing a play at the time, but my 10th birthday present from my parents was going on a Trafalgar tour of Western Europe (we moved to Sydney a few days after my 10th birthday, so I guess they thought it would be my last chance to see Europe for a while). We went through Amsterdam, Koln, Munchen, Salzburg, Venice, Luzern and Paris (I think that's it) in about ten days, and I absolutely loved it - my parents' attitude was that it was a taster to give me an idea of where I wanted to go back to later. As I got older my ideas branched out from Western Europe - I went to Egypt and Thailand with my parents, and to Indonesia and Singapore with my choir. I also got the idea that it would be pretty cool to live in different countries, and did a three-month exchange to Germany when I was fifteen (I was big into languages at school and thought I would study them at university, which all stemmed from that Trafalgar tour, where I idolised the tour guide and wanted to grow up to do her job and she said I'd have to learn languages), and around the same time I started to get really interested (in a pretty naive way) in the developing world and had fantasies of going and Helping Africa.

So then I moved back to the UK on my own when I was 17, and went backpacking for the first time (six weeks around Western Europe, small potatoes) and then went to university, switched from philosophy to anthropology, which just intensified the wanderlust, and then realised that I had all these long holidays and I couldn't afford to go back to Sydney every time, and so it was in my interests to figure out cheap travel opportunities. So I went to Israel in my first Easter break, spent a month on kibbutz and then 10 days travelling around Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and in the summer I worked in a pub in Scotland for two months and then spent a month backpacking around Eastern Europe on the proceeds, and then I spent one xmas back in Sydney and then the summer holidays between my second and third years I spent a month living with a local family and teaching English in Kyrgyzstan, and then ten weeks backpacking around Southern Africa (blowing all the money I was supposed to be living off in my final year, oops), and it was EPIC and amazing. I loved Central Asia but I really fell in love with Africa.

[whatsagirlgotta.livejournal.com]

Ah, this is all excellent and interesting to hear, perhaps because I always thought I'd have grand foreign adventures when I was young and y'know never really did!

part 2!

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Anyway, I had always been fascinated by conflict and the results of conflict, and had a vague sense that I was interested in refugees, and then when I was in South Africa I ended up staying for a week or so in Mpumalanga, near the Mozambican border, with a friend of a friend who was working on a repatriation project with Mozambican refugees, and I guess something clicked, and I was suddenly fascinated with forced migration and post-conflict reconstruction because, I guess, I believe it's something that has to be managed incredibly well to stop a continuous cycle of conflict and migration, and I don't think it really is managed that well as it currently stands. So I went back to university for my third year and didn't really know what I wanted to do and had plans to go to Canada for a year and have a think and figure things out but then Mark and I got together and that scuppered those plans. I started applying for Masters' in development, but had left it too late to start next academic year, so I had a year in hand, and decided that, given that I was so interested in post-conflict reconstruction and forced migration it might be a good idea for me to go and live in a country that was dealing with those issues to get a better understanding. So I got a TEFL qualification so that I would be employable, and narrowed down my geographical interest to the Caucasus, as I didn't want (and couldn't afford) to go to far away from Europe, and I joined a mailing list and sent out my CV to see if anyone wanted to hire me. I was offered a job teaching at a university in Azerbaijan, and so I went off to teach there for a semester, and in my spare time I volunteered with an NGO that was working with refugees and it was great.

So then I came back and I did my Masters' (and wrote my dissertation on internally displaced people in Azerbaijan) and applied for the fast stream because I was hoping to get into DfID, but ended up in the Home Office instead, and over the next few years I did quite a bit of travel to the US and Europe but nowhere further afield. Then I moved to Nottingham and wrote my first novel and failed to sell it for ages, and then realised I was quite miserable in Nottingham and had been thinking for years about doing a PhD in forced migration and so I decided that before I did the PhD I should get some move overseas experience. I'd always wanted to go back to Africa since I'd first been there as a student, and then I found out about the Sudan Volunteer Project in a guide to taking a year out, and did some research and found out that Sudan is basically mecca for people interested in forced migration, especially internal migration, and so I applied to the programme and got accepted and came out here. In the meantime I'd stuck in PhD applications with a fairly vague 'um, it's about refugees...in Sudan'-type research proposal, and when I got here I started trying to firm up my ideas. Initially I thought it would be about internally displaced southern Sudanese in the Khartoum, but then I moved to the south myself and decided that actually it was going to be about refugee returns to south Sudan in the context of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

So then I came back and started the PhD and then didn't have the time or the money to continue it, and now here we are. I would LOVE to finish it one day but realistically I don't think it's going to happen; I'm unlikely to get funding and even if I do, the further I get into my 30s the less appealing it is to think about taking three years plus out of earning for something that's unlikely to end up being a career (as I've never seen myself as an academic). Still, I do think I may well do a PhD (likely part-time) in something, someday, so we will see.

Sorry for the MASSIVE LENGTH of this comment!

Re: part 2!

[whatsagirlgotta.livejournal.com]

Eee I am loving this, do not apologise for length. I think its actually v v interesting, since I had no idea of the background or thought (and real) processed behind any of this. I'm almost always very interested in the working if you see what I mean. Its really easy to think that everyone automatically knows what they want and how to do it, when its actually a process.