Leaving so soon?
Despite the fact I’ve been really busy recently and have got a lot of work done, it still only feels like 5 minutes since I arrived in Ethiopia, yet I only have around 3 months left on my contract. The fact that I’ll be leaving soon was made more pronounced by my attendance at the VSO Leavers Workshop in Addis earlier this week. I’ve just over 3 months to go until my end of service, but I’m sure this time will fly past, so I need to start making preparations for what I do once I come back, jobs, house & catching up with everyone.
Out of around 12 people on the workshop I’d seen most people before, but only knew a couple by name, so felt very strange that I’d been here for over a year now and I still don’t know all the volunteers. The distance and remoteness of some placements, plus the fact I rarely visit Addis probably explains this.
Now that people at work realise I’m leaving, suddenly I’m told, “you can’t leave, we need you to do X, Y or Z”, despite that fact they could have asked me to do X, Y or Z at any point over the last 15 months rather than wait until now! I’m still unsure how sustainable my work here has been, as I’m here all the time it’s very easy for people to not take responsibility to do things for themselves. I still find that I spend much of my time chasing people to do simple tasks.
Anyway, best get back to X, Y or Z…
