Looks like that's going to change in 2019. I joined a new team about a year ago. The team strategy and budget allows for me to get overseas about once a year. And an invitation came for January that I couldn't say no to.
I'm not going off the beaten trail this time. It's just a conference in Southeast Asia, in a city popular with expats. I've been asked to participate in an international forum on equipping folks to thrive in cross-cultural service. The agency leader who is organizing the event is also putting finishing touches on his PhD dissertation, which evidently covers 10 areas related to "on-boarding" new team members, and the event will be structured around that. I'm eager to see his research and expect that it covers ground I was not able to get to when working on my own, more limited Master's thesis a few years ago. (I don't think this guy even knows I did that.)
They asked me to lead a session about enculturation. I wouldn't consider myself an expert, but I am a decent curator and have a pretty good collection of tools and strategies that relate. Ethnography, especially, is something I have never felt that I could lay down entirely... even when so many others I worked with on this have stepped back and moved on to other things. Now I've got an excuse to blow off the dust on the material I've collected, make inquiries across the organization to find out more who's doing what and what the felt needs are, and offer what I've found to people who may be able to use it more than I do.
Even so, I didn't want to travel to the other side of the world just to do a one-hour presentation. (And soak up a couple days of content from others.) Not without at least looking for another way to leverage the plane ticket. So I plan to go a week early and participate in another event, this one a retreat for folks who work in a number of different countries. Although they are there for a break, people like me are welcome to go just to meet people and do a bit of networking....
I've put in a proposal for a pilot project doing oral history interviews. The vision is along the lines of StoryCorps: inviting people to bring a family member, friend, or colleague to preserve something of their story for posterity. If it were just a matter of building rapport and doing interviews, I'd be fine on my own, but the recording aspect is one thing too much for me. I'm going to need some technical assistance. So I've proposed bringing along my husband to manage the equipment and focus on the recording aspect. He's good at that kind of thing where I am not. He never had the host country on his list of places to visit one day, but he's game. And although he will have to take leave without pay to come, he doesn't anticipate any trouble getting the time off. (Working two part-time jobs without benefits does have ONE benefit: bosses tend to give you latitude to set your own schedule.)
I'm not sure the conference organizers are going to "buy" the project idea. I started with, "Can I come? Can I bring my husband?" and they said yes to that. They'd be glad to have us meet their people and hear their stories. But bringing in media equipment and trying to set up meetings with their people, with everything else going on, may be too much. I probably wouldn't have had the chutzpah to pursue this had not a friend, a leader in our organization, offered to cover the extra plane ticket, and my team in Florida approved my proposal. But once they did, I was emboldened to press ahead. I tweaked the proposal and sent it off to the field. Hoping to hear back shortly.
If they say no, I'll be left with an awkward decision. Do I just go over for the forum on equipping new members, and skip the retreat? Do I go for both and bring my husband along when I don't "need" his help? Or do I go for both events, leaving my husband alone for two weeks right after Christmas (and miss his milestone birthday!)? Guess I just have to lay all this down before God and others and wait for clarity.
