by: Ryan Jose “Cocoy” Ruiz III (HS 95, BSMT 00)
Next week I will be turning 29 years old and for the past 4 years I have been celebrating this far from my family, away from loved ones and out of my home. I left my full time work in the Philippines four years ago to try something different and experience something new. For a while afterwards, I felt a sense of relief. It has been an incredible year in countless ways and I feel privileged to have participated working for development as an MSF Expat Lab technician here in Ethiopia. It has been inspiring and rewarding, if also at times frustrating and maddening. But it has never, ever been dull! And I look forward to what may lie around the next bend of this ongoing, curvy, up and down road. In either way, its worth traveling beyond and without borders.
Writing my daily diary and journals during the past 6 months that I am here in Ethiopia has often been therapeutic, allowing me to vent indignation, tilt at windmills, and seek the comfort of shared minds among my colleagues. On this month, as special milestone again for me, for a year of working to share skills and change lives, however, I want to focus on the positives. As I reflect on my work in emergency now and volunteer ism, I realize that devotion to this field brings with it a world view that this is quite special, particularly within a culture so focused on economic gain.
Funny, it may seem, but these times are one of the longest and most productive times in my 27year history on earth! As I prepare my credentials to face the life ahead of me after my term of service, It is so nice, really nice to look back and write and how did my works as a volunteer impacted on me as a PERSON and in my PROFESSION. I came to realize that it is more important to chart what your experience does to you to further yourself as a person rather than what you had just got to get to further your profession. Indeed, personal ism is an integral part of professionalism in MSF volunteer service.
Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to make a difference with MSF!
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