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Preparing for Madagascar by Alex Pell

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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