Anticipation

Neither am I as expressive as Colin, nor am I as succinct as Nicole in my blogging. Nevertheless, I’ve always enjoyed writing and poetry, despite becoming an engineer now, and I had actually written my personal statement to Bucknell in verse. Please note that I am in a habit of usually writing long sentences. Erika, I will remember to bring ear plugs.

Even after graduating, I still feel very much part of Bucknell since I returned to campus almost a month ago and this is very much home for me now since the past 4 years. My parents came from India for graduation and we traveled around the country for 26 days. I went to New York, DC, Lewisburg, Atlanta, Houston, Vegas, San Francisco and Yosemite National Park. Coincidentally, 26 is the same number of days I get to spend in Uganda and the vicinity. But both these travels will be diametrically opposite.

Most of us don’t desire too much uncertainty in life, and I usually fall into that category. But inspite of all the planning our entire group put in over the past year, a lot remains to be determined. Indians have always had an interesting connection since Idi Amin’s days, when he asked all the Indians to vacate the country within 90 days, and I’ve been reading a lot about that. Nicole, I am ready to make the plunge and attempt to create change as well, and hopefully our families will learn to be okay with that. I wish I was able to make it to DC for ‘How it ends’, but I wasn’t able to because of my small business consulting job. Although to make up for that, I did bump into Meghan a couple of weeks ago at a friend’s Masters Thesis defense, and it was an ‘Oh Heyy’ moment for sure.

I see Muyambi and Kevin every now and then on campus when we sit together to make plans for the applications and the survey, and operationalizing this project has been more difficult than I had imagined. We discuss how we want people to pay back these loans, and whether the bicyles will benefit them enough for them to pay it all back because we want this project to be sustainable. Strangely, even though a monthly repayment amount of 5000 Ugandan shillings is only a number to us on an application form we are designing, it might mean the world to the man or woman at the receiving end of this loan. I’m really glad to be putting in time and effort into the application forms and survey, because finally things are coming together for me. I will probably doing similar work for the next year or so, because I am headed to work for a microfinance research organization in India (Center for Microfinance) doing project management and field work for them right after Sophia and I finish exploring central and eastern Africa.

Janice, Dee Ann, John, and Professor Wooden have been fantastic with their comments and help. Even though this is entirely a student project, their assistance has been invaluable.

All the people leaving in a couple of days – good luck!! Can’t wait to see you all

-Abhay Agarwal