COLUMN
PERSPECTIVE MAY BE THE ANSWER...
At the age of 25, single, far from my family and full of expectations I went to live in Angola. I knew it would be a challenge, but having come from a developing country how tough could it be? Back then I thought I knew what poverty was. Expat life in Luanda was good, great restaurants, lovely people, nice hotels, big homes, but all of that seemed very luxurious after what I saw on my way to and from work on a daily basis. It was like I had had my eyes shut and they were now open to seeing beyond my world. Despite the enormous contrasts, there was an intriguing joy amongst the Angolan people. “How can that be?” I repeatedly asked myself. Had they experienced something even worse? I never found the answers, but I figured something powerful for the rest of my life: perspective. Maybe their conditions seen through my filters, my point of view and my judgement was worse than from theirs. The moment I let go of my convictions, I started to enjoy living in Africa and having short working trips around the region. Next thing I knew, I was making friends and truly having a great time over the weekends with a fun group of people at an amazing nearby beach in Luanda. The differences shortened and their cultural richness became so worth exploring to me that the year and a half flew by. After my assignment was over, that challenging reality became more of a source of endless lessons. One of them is that:
Light shines in different ways when looking at an issue from different angles…if there is no light in a given situation maybe you have just not looked at it from all perspectives.
Joana . Magazine 15 15