After just over four years of blogging about HIV and other development issues in East Africa and beyond, I need to move on. It has become too much for me to keep up with the reading and other things necessary to write such a blog. It has been an interesting experience, but I have become poor, not having had a paid job for five years. Volunteering can be great, but it has to stop eventually. And criticizing the HIV industry has probably not made me any more likely to get paid work in the field! Besides, I am no longer in East Africa.
I was offered a job as a grant proposal writer for an NGO in Cambodia called SISHA. So I arrived in Phnom Penh a week ago and started working on Tuesday. Writing grant proposals can be intense because there's a lot of work involved without any guarantee of getting the grant. There are more and more NGOs chasing after fewer and fewer funds. Also, huge grants tend to go to huge NGOs, small grants to small ones and none at all to ones that have never had grants before!
OK, that's an exaggeration, but it's hard to get going and hard to move up. And it's the easiest thing in the world to move down or stay resolutely in the same place, indefinitely. So I don't fancy trying to do that and then chase after the latest HIV research in my free time. I need to spend time working, getting fit, learning Khmer (or trying) and maybe some other things. More importantly, I am now a married man with my first child on the way in June or July. I hope to blog on Blogtivist from now on, where all my other blogs will be available. I'm sure I'll return to HIV in Kenya from time to time if I can. But I doubt if I'll ever again have the time needed to do as much writing and research as I did over the past four years.
Everything will remain available as long as Blogspot (owned by Google) keeps it available. I am grateful to all the people who have read and comment on posts, some of whom I have met face to face. I hope we all keep in touch. To those also blogging, I hope to hear from you and to continue to visit and comment on your posts from time to time. Maybe I'll see you on Blogtivist, you'll be welcome. THANK YOU!
I was offered a job as a grant proposal writer for an NGO in Cambodia called SISHA. So I arrived in Phnom Penh a week ago and started working on Tuesday. Writing grant proposals can be intense because there's a lot of work involved without any guarantee of getting the grant. There are more and more NGOs chasing after fewer and fewer funds. Also, huge grants tend to go to huge NGOs, small grants to small ones and none at all to ones that have never had grants before!
OK, that's an exaggeration, but it's hard to get going and hard to move up. And it's the easiest thing in the world to move down or stay resolutely in the same place, indefinitely. So I don't fancy trying to do that and then chase after the latest HIV research in my free time. I need to spend time working, getting fit, learning Khmer (or trying) and maybe some other things. More importantly, I am now a married man with my first child on the way in June or July. I hope to blog on Blogtivist from now on, where all my other blogs will be available. I'm sure I'll return to HIV in Kenya from time to time if I can. But I doubt if I'll ever again have the time needed to do as much writing and research as I did over the past four years.
Everything will remain available as long as Blogspot (owned by Google) keeps it available. I am grateful to all the people who have read and comment on posts, some of whom I have met face to face. I hope we all keep in touch. To those also blogging, I hope to hear from you and to continue to visit and comment on your posts from time to time. Maybe I'll see you on Blogtivist, you'll be welcome. THANK YOU!
