Career Change and Coming Full Circle

I stopped writing my blog to focus on my MA degree in Gender and International Development. After a decade of food and drinks writing and of this blog, I wanted to have a more positive impact on the world than recommending nice nosh to privileged people. I went back to my international roots and was inspired to help prevent damaging development and find routes to universally positive outcomes (not aiming for economic growth) by one of the first trips I wrote about on here - my stay in Sierra Leone.

My final dissertation explored the clash between well-meaning but misguided development drives and traditional gendered practices in Sierra Leone, and how participatory action research can foster mutual understanding and reciprocal learning, and reconcile conflicting opinions.
So now that I've graduated I'm going back to West Africa, to Liberia then Sierra Leone, as a researcher on gender for Street Child's education projects. I'm leaving in a couple of days and I'll be away for three months, if my money lasts than long, so I'm now off on a different kind of adventure. I'm sure food and possibly drinks and accommodation will feature, but they will no longer be the core of this blog.

I'm so looking forward to meeting up with the people who participated in my dissertation research, and trying - with trepidation - to find people I met on my first trip...

No. 2 River Beach, Sierra Leone. I took this photo 10 years ago.