The task was simple; Don’t reinvent the wheel.

It’s easier said than done, but this is what I attempted to do when I began working with the Community Development Resource Association (CDRA) in Cape Town to help conceptualize an online community.

Poetry is a medium that helps me make meaning of my experiences, my thoughts and feelings, which is something we are called to do continuously as development practitioners. It’s a tool I often privately call upon when faced with the inevitable doubts, and triumphs, and heartaches of this work.

Harare, 2002. The word came. Cash is in the banks. The three colleagues I was standing near at the time and I quickly jumped in the car to get downtown to Standard Chartered as soon as possible.

It was my first “real job” in the development sector after graduate school. I knew enough to know how little I knew, and little else.