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| Discussing the project with Feno at the UC Davis International House |
As the Spring Quarter at
Davis was coming to an end, I felt like my solar project was beginning to fall
apart. Until this point, all of my planning had been going rather smoothly, but
I had a feeling that the weeks leading up to my departure would be the most
stressful.
A week or two prior to
my final exams, Feno emailed me saying that other members of my host NGO were
concerned with the cost of importing solar products from the Canadian-based
KARIBU Solar Company. They said that while the political climate in Madagascar
had mostly stabilized since the last major instance of political unrest in
2009, the Malagasy economy still hadn't returned to what it was. Because of
this, if we stuck with our original plan to import solar products, the cost of
shipping would have likely exceeded the cost per unit of the good. We knew that
importing to a developing, island country would be very expensive, but this was
way more than we had expected.
At this point, I was not
sure what to do and it was difficult to plan with Feno because she had already
left California. So, I decided to reach out to my adviser Tometi Gbedema, and
my professors Kurt Kornbluth and Tu Jarvis because I did not want my project to
be a big failure.
Tometi told me not to
worry and reassured me that whatever I was capable of doing and whatever I
decided to change my project to would make a positive impact in Madagascar.
Tu also reassured me
that even though my original project plans were no longer what I intended to
do, I still had my plane tickets, an additional budget of about $800, and
plenty of time until my departure to come up with something great. Tu also
recommended that I reach out to Kurt for additional guidance.
Even though everyone was
telling me not to stress myself out, I was still very preoccupied with the
seemingly growing possibility of my project's failure. Kurt helped me to
reassess my situation by reassuring me that I would not be on my own in a
foreign country because I had a support system in Madagascar consisting of the
NGO and Feno. He also instructed me to redraft a purpose statement for my
project which got me back to thinking about what I could still do as opposed to
what had gone wrong.
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