One of the best lessons I ever got on the job (or at least one of the best lessons that was summed up for me into 3 words) was "always manage expectations". This applies not only to the expectations of others (making sure that they are realistic and that you are not just telling them what they want to hear only to have to disappoint them later) but also to your own expectations. Because let's face it, we all expect certain things from certain people in certain situations.
When you travel you tend to focus on your own expectations: What do I want to get out of this trip? What do I think I am going to learn? What do I want to achieve?
But here, on this trip, I'm learning a lot about what others expect from me as a tourist, an expat, a volunteer, and a friend.
A lot of these expectations you can manage - for example we have had no running water at home for the past month and a half. This could have been really frustrating except that this is Africa and you don't really come expecting to have consistent running water. Many shop owners in town expect me to be a tourist and so try to charge me crazily inflated prices. I've found that by throwing in some Kiswahili the moment I walk into a shop, I let them know that I have been around for a while and am not a tourist - this can help to manage their expectations of me. At work my coworkers expect me to have significant levels of computer knowledge - this kind of scared me at first because I wasn't entirely sure what they were expecting me to do. I recently taught a co-worker to use Window's Task Manager - he was suitably impressed with my knowledge and I was secretly relieved that it wasn't anything super complicated.
But what do you do when you can't manage expectations? Because sometimes, people come before you, or things happen before you come, that shape people's expectations of you before they even meet you. The reason so many people think I'm a rich tourist here is because 1. I'm a foreigner, and 2. There are so many rich (at least relatively speaking) tourists in town. I can't change either of these, all I can do is try to manage people's expectations of me by being as up front and honest with them as possible.
Recently, I was visiting villages in Zanzibar to put together community profiles for work. In general these visits involve a lengthy interview with village leaders and members of the local development committees to build a general profile of the village - demographics, water services, electricity, challenges, activities and projects, etc. and then short visits to some of the projects to see how they are progressing and to evaluate what further work needs to be done - so far I've looked at the construction of schools, the laying of pipes and the building of holding tanks for water projects (it was just a hole in the ground?), chicken rearing projects (I almost got stampeded by baby chickens), an animal husbandry project (the cows were super unimpressed by me) and electricity projects (I never thought I'd be so impressed by the construction of poles for electricity).
In one village, we had completed the interview and were visiting some of the projects. I was taking some pictures for the profile documents when in the distance we saw a group of women and children walking towards us. I asked my colleague what was going on and his answer was: "maybe they heard that there was a mzungu* in the village and they want to look at you - maybe they want you to take their picture" (this is quite common - when you go to villages that don't get a lot of foreign visitors you get a lot of people who just want to look at you - this kind of scrutiny is usually exhausting). So we waited for them to approach, which they did - coming to stand directly in front of me. I nervously greeted the older of the women and asked her if there was anything I could do for them. When she didn't reply I motioned to my camera and asked her if they wanted their picture taken. At that, she looked a bit confused and turned to speak to my colleague. Following a brief conversation between the two of them, my colleague motioned to me to come over and told me that they had heard that there was an mzungu in town and had assumed that I was a doctor. And that was why they had brought all of these kids to see me.
I have to admit that this was one of the more intense situations I'd found myself in since coming to Zanzibar. Based on limited information about and experience with foreigners these people had not only assumed that I was a doctor but had brought children with them that they expected me to look at. Not only had I in no way actively encouraged these expectations but now I was put in a position where I had to disappoint them. I was actually pretty upset, thinking that they had brought these sick children for me to look at and I couldn't help them at all. A friend later told me (and it's possible that he was just trying to make me feel better) that because a lot of villages in the area don't get visits from doctors very often, when the community hears that there is a doctor in the village they will bring children to see them for a check up - so it could be that the children weren't sick. But still.
Expectations can be hard - your own and those of other people. You try not to have unrealistic expectations and you try to make sure that you are honest about what people can expect from you...but sometimes you just can't. Sometimes you’re not given the opportunity to manage expectations and then, inevitably, someone is disappointed – most often yourself.
*Mzungu: foreigner, usually of general European descent.
