Who Knew?

And so we begin with the revelations about how truly sheltered I am. We've just returned from a week of pre-departure training about all things medical, insurance, cultural and procedural. But with the exception of the astounding variety of worms we stand to contract just by leaving Australia, far and away the most eye opening thing for me was the realisation that there is a big, wide development industry out there. Of course, I knew that there were plenty of NGOs and an Australian government aid agency, but it hadn't really occurred to me that together all those sort of organisations make up a multi billion dollar sector all of their own. There's a whole section of highly educated, veteran professionals (including the five other magnificent folk heading to Nepal in the same deployment as Matt and I, pictureed here with Nepal's Ambassador to Australia and his lovely wife) who have made their career out of working in development. As I said, these are fairly elementary observations I guess, but they've just never entered my realm of consciousness. All this time, I thought I was one of a raggedy bunch of misfits (none of whom I know, but losely based on that arrogant yet strangely alluring doctor from the movie Beyond Borders) who make a sense of purpose outside of profit a primary job criteria. It's a real paradigm shift to think about myself as just one contender in the highly competitive development industry - it doesn't really improve my job prospects, but it has definitely sparked new ambitions!