One of the best things about volunteering to help in a developing country is how much you can learn. Just because we’re here to give Bhutan the benefit of our years of experience and modern education, doesn’t mean that we’re better at everything than everyone here. I had this attitude when I was learning martial arts and it helped me progress much faster than I could have without it. Even as one of the top students, I found that the newer members all had something to teach me if I humbled myself enough to listen. It may be that the instructor was teaching them step 1 precisely and me step 4. But their focus on step 1 allowed them to see the mistakes I was making. Or they may just be naturally better at kicks.
It’s the same here. I became friends with Karma soon after I arrived. I was helping him with a collaboration project at the Department of IT. He left shortly after that and started up his own business. I began renting a desk in his office partly because I wanted to be more immersed in the culture and partly to help him with money at this tough time in his career. We’ve hoped to work together formally ever since then, but we’ve each been too focused on getting our own businesses going.
During the past year, I’ve watched his business grow at a rapid rate. Karma doesn’t come from an extremely wealthy family and he never studied at university, but he’s intelligent, creative, personable and ambitious. But what stands out to me is his ability to get business. He’s a natural salesman and I know I can learn a lot from him. I have been over the past year and am feeling guilty that I haven’t been able to give much back.
That was to change this weekend. Karma got a contract to set up a call centre and on Friday, 100 PCs arrived from India. I joined him at the new office to help set up the PCs and was shocked to find them all still in pieces. We needed to fill the cases with motherboards, processors, hard drives, memory and connect all the wires. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it would give me a chance to repay him for what he’s taught me. We spent a couple of hours carefully putting 1 PC together, documenting the process and planning a production line. We figured it would take 3 days to put them all together. I took Saturday off to spend with Marie. We’ve had little time alone together this year with all our guests and she left today for a month in France and India, so it was a rare moment for us.
I dropped her at the airport this morning and rushed back to help with the second lot of 30 PCs only to find the new office closed up. A quick call to Karma and I found out that they finished the lot in one day. And I’ve been no help at all.