Far be it for us to put into your head or mouth the things that you may find difficult, but here we share our personal experience and the experiences of past interns to give you a sense of what might pop up. Most challenges exist in two states, external being inflicted on you and then your inner discourse as you manage everything that you experience. It’s the second one that’s the toughie! Remember also that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts; any one of these challenges may seem quite manageable, but if you get hit by a few or all of them at the same time you’re going to need to find a way to cope with that.

Weather

It gets stinking hot in the summer; 40 degrees Celsius would be considered a cooler day. The sun is going to thrash you, and you’ll have to learn a completely new way of managing how and when you go outside.

New ways of doing old things

It’s the small things that can be the greatest challenge. At home you are used to knowing how, when and where to get a glass of water, or go the the toilet, or by some bananas, or where to sit or how to talk; all the trivial little things you’ve been doing for decades. When you get to Bakhel, it’s the small things like that that suddenly change. First you need to find out how to do each one, and then do it daily like that for months. When your body is used to acting in a certain way and then has to change, it can take some getting used to. In some ways, it’s like being a child again, learning how to do all the little things in like.

Culture

This one’s fairly obvious. New place, new people, a new way of doing things. You may think that how you approach something at home works, try it here, see it fail, and then thing it’s because of this or that or the other here that it didn’t work. It may be that, or it may be you not understanding how to do what you want to do in a different context.

Being a little isolated

You’re hot, hungry and exhausted and just want to crash out with a beer. Erm… no. We’re a long way from a decent cold one, and a long way from a lot of other things too. We think that’s a good thing ; one of the reasons we chose to work where we do is because it’s the remote areas that get overlooked in development. It’s much easier to attract great people to a city where they can day-trip to the villages to do their thing rather than it is to get someone to only pop to the city once a month or less, away from all their creature comforts. We’re not trying to do things the easy way but do what’s needed where it’s needed, but that does require being happy to get on with what you’ve got and not crave to other things in other places.

Your own assumptions

What one knows, what one thinks one knows and what one understands through reflection can be very different things. An intern needs to be willing to accept that everything they’ve been taught about something might be completely wrong.