The power of the first impression.

Karie and I made it to Toronto a few days ahead of my reporting date. I didn’t want to blog for the few days that Karie was around and since we started on July 4^th it has been very intense and “full”.  

My first impression (and Karie as well) was my arriving in Toronto and settling in the house. As mentioned, I arrived a few days prior my reporting and had a chance to drop by the house. The simplest way I can describe is” shocking”.  

The EWB house is situated just south of College and Slightly West of Bathurst in Toronto. It’s a humble neighbourhood very well situated; it is a 15 minutes’ walk to the University and lots of shops and watering holes along College Street. It’s a typical two storey narrow house. The upstairs has 3 bedrooms and the downstairs has a living room, dining room and a kitchen. It has retained its original layout and suffers from years of wear and tear. The house has all the basic necessities to accommodate modern living; running water, toilets and showers, refrigerator, clothes washers…and way too many people.

On the second floor one of the bedrooms has 1 bunk (2 people) and is occupied by 2 long term residents. The second bedroom has 2 bunks (4 people); the third one has 4 bunks (8 people) and there is a full bathroom. The basement has a washer / dryer a full bathroom and a bedroom.  

The 2 bunks room; it's very difficult to get a good photographic perspective since the room is so small to start with

Siera (left) and Marielle sorting things out in the 4 bunk room

There are a few postings on the walls explaining the rules of the house but no resident team leader or manager. It’s implied that it is first come first served, you grab a bunk wherever there’s one available. This should be simple if it were not for the fact that most bed still have the sheets of the previous residents and there  were so much stuff laying around that it’s not always clear which bunks were “free”. It appears that over time past residents have abandon stuff and personal items before leaving for their postings.  
Since I moved in, there were never less than 14 people living in the house at any one time.

The best bedroom in the house just happened to be outside of the house. Because of the unusual scorching heat I found it more comfortable sleeping on a air mattress in the backyard. I could enjoy a nice fresh breeze (well, later in the night anyhow) and wake up to the chirping of birds around 4:30 am.

The positive about this challenge is that after our first day of Sessions, all the new participants decided to have dinner together to address the situation. We cleaned the house as well as we could, got rid of the dozens of abandoned pairs of shoes and other items that were unclaimed by the present residents. We established a cleaning schedule and hoped that we could make the best of it.

There are a few things that we keep hearing from almost everyone at EWB. These include some of our team mates that have participated in oversee placements as Junior Fellows in the past or have work at the EWB office as volunteers and have lived in the house. The first one is that training as a whole is to challenge us and taking us out of our comfort zone. The second is that it’s part of EWB’s culture of sharing and being open and creating a space for idea to develop and personal growth.

I personally don’t subscribe to this notion. There are better ways to create team solidarity than piling people on top of each other in 30 plus degree temperatures. We should be looking at some alternatives.

I want to apologize for not posting as much as I should have. I have a few posts on the go and hopefully I can catch up in the next few days before flying off to Accra. Some good stuff is coming up; life in the neighbourhood, the great training we have been subjected to, my teammates and more on the role I’ll be playing.