The Model and The Real World

Deze tekst schreef ik in oktober 2009, tijdens mijn functie van Activities Officer in het bestuur van de Leiden Model United Nations Foundation. Gedurende mijn tijd als delegate in februari 2009 op de Harvard National Model United Nations conferentie raakte ik geinspireerd om niet alleen de VN te simuleren, maar om mijn idealisme eens flink te testen in het veld.

The Model and the Real World

Conferences are fun. You go away for a few days, you work very hard and party harder. Inspired by all the discussions and debates you have had, you decide you would indeed really like to work for the UN. After all, you are the kind of person who cares about the world and international affairs, that’s why you signed up to be a delegate in the first place.

Taking part in MUN last year inspired me to try what it was like to work on a specific location, and see how inspired I would be after the whole thing was over. This summer I chose to work in Northern Ghana for two months on a voluntary basis. Nothing like the nice MUN surroundings: no beautiful hotels, conference rooms, or nice lunches with diplomats. I also missed the discussions on various topics.

I was supposed to give sexual health education lessons on high schools. One of the first things I have learned in Africa is that planning does not exactly work the same way as we are used to in Western Europe. It is a cliché – true – but it was one of those small things that keep you from doing all the things you would like to. My disappointment worked out well: from an observer, I grew into a field worker.

The job I have taken on me was to research to what extend the sexual rights of women were implemented in daily life, in the region where I worked. I concentrated on high school students: they receive a proper education and most of them have the ambition to aim higher in life, and have a better life than their mothers. However, most of the girls drop out before they graduate – a lot of girls get pregnant before they reach their eighteenth birthday. That those pregnancies are unwanted, we can tell by the numerous abortions that are carried out. Most of them are carried out by the girls themselves, unsafely and under poor conditions.

I haven’t done any soul searching in Africa. So, no, I haven’t learned anything about myself as such. What I have learned is that the hardship I have seen and the events I have experienced only confirmed I indeed want to work for the UN one day. Off course, there is always a crisis in your enthusiasm when you work on a location that is so far from the academia you are used to. The people who are the neediest do not always like to see you coming. Then, there is the difference of culture and the huge difference of class. By this I mean, that, if I had worked with Ghanaian students, my work as well as my opinion of Ghana would be so much different. It is easier to stay at the surface, or work with people who connect better with your way of thinking.

Also, I am not propagating voluntary work. Moreover, you can get quite negative about it, and I have seen so many things go wrong that my friend (who also worked in Ghana this summer) and I decided to organize a forum. It bore the title The sense and non sense of development aid. The point that I want to make is that there are many possibilities to put the model into practice in which you can develop your own interests. Or, see whether the field you would like to work in still appeals to you after you had a little bit of it in the world outside the model.