Before I’m back home — Reflecting on my Social Sabbatical Experience
I have a few days of vacation left after my SAP Social Sabbatical, before I return to my “normal” life (yes I specifically mean normal, because the last four weeks felt nothing like normality – in the best possible way) and I feel like I’ve just started to process everything that’s happened. My Spanish is still broken at best, but now it’s broken with a Porteño accent and some Uruguayan slang sprinkled in 🫠.
Our final full day in Uruguay was truly jam-packed. Each team held their final presentations in the morning, after which I got a ride into the office from Sonia with Jana and Greg, where we handed over our deliverables to the rest of the Manos del Uruguay marketing and communications team and exchanged a heartfelt goodbye with gifts.
As if all of that wasn’t enough to process for one day, as the evening approached, I just about had time to pack before heading for dinner and drinks one final time. As expected, everyone was incredibly sentimental and caught off-guard by the fact that our four weeks together were coming to an end tonight. There was an exchange of extensive hugs, laughs, tears and the kindest words I’ve ever heard spoken to me by people who were merely my co-workers weeks ago, who have now grown to become incredible friends of mine. I’m beggining to have a deeper appreciation and understanding for how I’ve heard alumnis of this program spoke of it in superlatives in the weeks leading up to my Social Sabbatical.
Knowing that some memories tend to fade sooner rather than later, I thought now would be a good time to jot my thoughts down and bring you closer to the places, people and the little things I’ve just experienced in Uruguay. I figured a good place to start would be to take another look at my list of expectations I had just before I landed and see how off I was with them.
Expectation 1: Returning to frequent in-person collaboration will be incredibly rewarding and will probably take some acclimatising to
Actually I was pretty off about this one, whilst in-person collaboration was indeed incredibly rewarding, it didn’t take much adjusting. That might have been due to the team building exercises at the beginning of the assignment, or because I found that my soft skills weren’t rusty even after two years of working largely remote, so it didn’t feel like a big lift to get into the groove of things at first.
At the same time, I was very cognisant of just how different the nature of collaboration during the Social Sabbatical is when compared to my day job. I had daily access to my users (Manos), operated in an environment with significantly more unknowns and because roles were not as clearly defined, that meant leaning on each other and constantly communicating to stay productive. So I think it’s fair to say that the novelty of the situation meant collaboration was more exciting than it was draining.
Interestingly, I found that I wasn’t paying as much attention to body language and social cues in a work-context which might have been the result of one too many no-camera meetings 😅. As time passed and my team and I reached the end of our assignment I caught myself longing for the odd home office day. So whilst there wasn’t an adjustment period in the beginning, my body and mind were acknowledging that five days in the office are more intense (don’t ask me how I coped when that was the norm pre-covid, I’m still trying to figure that out myself).
Expectation 2: In advance of the program, our team got along very well, although I think we’re bound to be in at least one situation where a conflict arises
I was surprised by just how few conflicts there were in the group… and here I thought I was being conservative with my “at least one” phrasing. Turns out there really only was one minor conflict within my sub-team and none which grew in size beyond other individual sub-teams. There were even sub-teams where there were no conflicts to speak of at all. I’m still positively shocked by my personal experience of my Social sabbatical group. As you can see from the skeptical tone of this particular expectation, I was already assuming that things will inevitably get messy given the circumstances. However I felt truly blessed to witness the way in which twelve strangers from all around the world came together in an unknown environment, lived in close confines for a month and spent practically every day together without a major or minor catastrophe.
So it’s either that I was incredibly lucky with my group (which is the version I’ll prefer to believe for now) or (and this is my toxic skepticism talking) everyone was extremely well behaved and able to internalise their anger, frustration or grief for a month instead of letting it out on others to keep the peace.
Expectation 3: At times l’Il feel completely out of my depth, but that’s still far away from total helplessness
Well the first sentence is definitely an understatement! There weren’t just times I felt out of my depth, I would say that was a common experience I grappled with daily. Over time though I found myself realizing that that’s not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes I would say I even enjoyed being out of my depth, because it gave me the opportunity to learn so many new things I otherwise wouldn’t have dared to was I not out of my comfort zone.
One of the deliverables my sub-team handed over to Manos del Uruguay was a social media content strategy. The irony here being, which at some point was also pointed out by Sonia at Manos is that none of the three of us had an Instagram account, yet we were the ones advising Sonia about the Instagram presence of the accounts she manages. So I found myself back on an app that I had deleted my account from mere months before, re-learning which types of content perform well for fashion brands and analysing the profiles of competitors. Doing so led me to use Instagram from a completely different angle – that akin to a digital marketer and brand manager, diving into analytics dashboards, engagement rates and various other statistics rather than doom-scrolling and forgetting that I’ve been looking at reels for the past two hours. The excitement from having found a concrete, productive use-case for this app sparked energy and curiosity, that in the end led to new insights for the Manos team, which is something I only could contribute to by being out of my depth – and in this case shape-shifting to a different persona.
Luckily I had two great colleagues with a different skillset to me that could pick up tasks that were out of my depth but not out of theirs. When there were times though when something was so far out of reach that there simply wasn’t time or enough added value to teach yourself something new, we were always met with a relieving degree of understanding from our partner organisation, even if it meant cutting our scope of work. I learned in those moments, that there’s no shame in admitting you can’t do something or that a “no” leads to less collateral damage than a “yes”, which felt incredibly liberating rather than disappointing.
So overall, I was pretty on-point with how I thought I would act in my “out-of-my-depth” moments, but I vastly underestimated their regularity.
The people
I think its time I share more about the main (and side!) characters of my Social Sabbatical assignment, a bunch I’ve gotten to know very well (in some cases too well 😉) over the past four weeks and for whom I’ve reserved a special place in my heart. So everyone’s getting a little paragraph, now that I’ve had some time to think and reflect more about you lovely people.
Greg — Boy am I grateful that I found someone who does in fact overthink more than I do and takes even longer to decide almost everything. I will miss your polls, your cute attempts at data-driven decision making, but most of all our joint lunches or trips to Fresh Market (the closest supermarket to our hotel), where luckily for me the decisions about what to eat for lunch were made more swiftly than usual. Thank you for showing me that there is always a more eloquent, polite and overall Canadian way of saying literally anything than what I can come up with.
Jana — As there were two chronic overthinkers in our team your calm and assured approach to working with Manos represented the important injection of confidence that things will turn out fine by the end of the project… and of course you were right. Also massive respect for walking to and from the office every day, as I mentioned in a previous post I still could never.
Mandy — Although your cue “oh Mandyyy” was established in our joint frustration of your flight cancellation. I’m glad you ran with it and had a tendency to break out into song whenever someone spoke a familiar lyric. That if anything was typical of your ability to bring the good vibes , your easy going energy — and pretty much everything else from medicine, cleaning equipment and sunscreen which rightfully earned you the nickname of “Mother Mandy”. With that context established, thanks for making sure I’ll always carry a piece of our time in Montevideo with me, even if that is your menthol stick you gave me once you realised I had a blocked nose… I don’t think I want any other kind of souvenir to be honest.
Nik — So if Mandy was our mother, you were definetly the one exhibiting major dad energy in all the best ways possible (you know, the kind of dad you can actually talk to). Whether that was trying new billiard trickshots, the dad noises you made whenever you got up or sat down from somewhere and finally your jokes. Your passion for music is truly unmatched, and boy am I glad it was so extensive that you had some left for singing Austrian Pop, a genre I had long thought was too obscure that I’d ever find someone who shares that interest.
Mikee — The true definition of calm and collected, that is unless lightbulbs aren’t matching. Jokes aside, I was truly impressed by how diplomatically you responded in situations where it would have been understandeable if you didn’t. Thank you for bringing the incredible snacks from the Phillipines, a small part of me died when I saw that the last mango “empanada” was gone.
Sohail — What a genuinely kind, lovely and dare I say romantic human you are. You always had those little moments during our assignment where there was a certain interaction with others that lead me to think and sometimes say “protect this man at all costs”. So that’s the one side of you, however, once the clock hits past 10 PM, expect the first person to ask whether we should go dancing to be Sohail. Thank you for always showing me a good time, and convincing me I should have it too (taking the hostel room key to the “club” in Cabo Polionio and asking us to come pick it up was very clever 🕺).
Laura — The human embodiment of a big, warming ray of sunshine that did our group a world of good. I’m only starting to comprehend what your compliments about my outfits before I had my first morning coffee did to my confidence, but I’m so glad somebody understood my “look good, feel good” approach to life. Our shared sense of humour and “Germanness” really made me feel at home. There were so many occasions where I merely had to look across the room and know we were both thinking the same thing and found it a little too funny.
Tim — Thank you for showing me just how passionate and purpose driven one can be about working with our host organisations. You were constantly thinking about how you could help Franca in our conversations and asking for my perspective. Your dry (and very Dutch) comedic deliveries were on another level such that it took me a few seconds to process whether you’re actually being serious!
Theresa — Our queen of strategy AND execution when it came to our weekend trips. I hope doing all that didn’t remind you too much of your day job, or at least that we weren’t as demanding during the process. You had this innate and much appreciated ability to put into words what the room was thinking, even if it meant expressing the kinds of things I’m too much of a people pleaser to say myself.
Florina — I will definitely approach you in the future for straight-cut life advice! Florina you truly are an inspiration as far as energy, joy and the right attitude to life are concerned. You were always the first to arrive and the last to leave and somehow always in the best mood doing it (please do tell me your secrets!). If you ever feel like you’ve had a productive morning, Florina will join you at the breakfast table to share that she’s already been at the beach, swam, went to a pilates class and is planning to hit the gym twice today (upper body in the morning and legs in the evening of course), all with the biggest grin. Finally, you deserve an honorable mention to being named the mother of the group, when I found out you set up multiple alarms to match the wake-up times of everyone’s flight back home, to make sure we did indeed wake up.
Shez — Yet another incredibly eloquent man along with Greg! Anything you shared during our team meetings was always a joy to listen to and I recall vividly, that your eyes had this remarkable glow, whenever you excitedly shared a story from your partner organisation: CECONEU with us.
The people at Manos del Uruguay
Sonia — You were a large reason why Manos felt like home after four weeks. Your rides to the office, your genuine concern when Greg had a blocked nose, your strong but appreciated opinions about almost anything and your WhatsApp messages, that sometimes were an answer to a question, but mostly — and for our trio’s collective entertainment — not 😂. Thank you for giving us a window into what it means to be Uruguayan and the passionate wearer of many hats in a non-profit. In my previous post I mentioned how I aspire to her level of charisma and overall coolness and to that I can say, I might not be at that level, but I’m proud to have earned myself the nickname “Dulce”, which roughly translates to sweetie.
Rodolfo — Although you represented the male minority at Manos, you were a caring, sincere and reflected representative of the mainly female artisans Manos seeks to provide work and development opportunities to. The extent in which you were eagerly involved with our project goes to show just how important it was for you to ensure what we delivered would contribute to a lasting social impact all whilst sprinkling in some humour when the time was right. I will forever appreciate the way you showed us that work culture in Uruguay is as much (if not more) about telling the right stories than it is about data-driven decision-making.
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Ana — The quiet, dilligent presence at Manos. Jana and Greg can confirm that whenever we had a short-notice ask, we knew it would be addressed the quickest by you.
The places
There were a few places that either felt essentially Uruguayan or were a hallmark of my personal experience of my time in the country. So many of the below places reminded me just how important it is to slow down and give yourself a break. To put it in Greg’s words: those of the group with heart rate trackers shared interesting data points that supported my observation.
La Rambla — I grew to appreciate the concept of a beachside promenade with this degree of versatility. Let me explain: most locals will tell you that they don’t prefer to swim in Montevideo, just because of how it’s mostly river water that isn’t the clearest from the Rio de la Plata, which I thought at first was a bummer. That was until I realised the beach was the perfect place for so many other great things. During those four weeks it became a place to drink Mate, have a long evening/nighttime walk, enjoy a sunset picknick in the grass with an optional group therapy or a place to play volleyball. What a luxury it was to be within walking distance of such a place!
Parilla Dinners — Perhaps my favourite part of Uruguayan culture is your approach to dinners. They start late (restaurants open at 19:00 and only really start filling up at 20:00), should take several hours and at no point would a Uruguayan remind you of the fact that they have to get up early in the morning (even if they do) or would a waiter give you the impression that they’re in a rush to bring you your food or hand you the bill. That makes it the perfect place to catch up with everyone and make sense of whatever happened during the day.
I was especially fond of Parillas, a more casual take on a steakhouse with lots of outside seating in summer and usually a pretty basic menu of sides and freshly grilled cuts of beef. Although usually consisting of a few ingredients and routinely dressed only with olive oil and balsamico, I will miss the unmatched freshness of those salads accompanying a medium-rare Picaña.
Manos Office(s) — What was at first an overstimulating place, soon became more familiar and at the end of the engagement, one that I found grew on me as a workplace with so much life and character. Whether it was seeing the the largest meeting room being used for the purpose of quality inspection or piles of yarn skeins in shelves or the one time we witnessed just how quickly a working space can transform into a communal lunch area once 12:00 rolls around. Working at Manos’ offices was yet another experience shaped by versatility — we even got to witness a photo shoot (which was one of the few places I felt underdressed 💅).
Breakfast Rooms — The use of plural is important here, because it reminded me of the collective dismay that the change of breakfast room at our hotel caused within our group during the one week it was in effect. Looking back, that dismay came from a place of love for the routine assicated with our usual breakfast spot. Sharing the same table, the same freshly-squeezed orange juice with the same people, checking in with each other about the same things was one of the few constants in an environment where routines beyond mornings and breakfast were nothing short of a miracle. I think also because of that reason I found myself surprisingly okay with the idea of having mostly the same breakfast options for a month.
The little things — quite literally
Apart from all the photos and intangibles I’ll take back home, I found myself dearly holding on to as much memorabilia as I can. Usually I’m not big on owning a lot of things, but I think in this case it gives me a lot of comfort knowing that although most of the people I deeply connected with are now far away, I still can have something with me that reminds me of them (hopefully I phrased that in a non-creepy, but wholesome way):
Greg — tigermilch songs in my playlist.
Sohail — Congratulations, your beautiful snack jar now houses my magnesium pills.
Mandy — the Menthol stick of course.
Nik — your Austrian pop recommendations, specifically “Der Kaffee ist Fertig” is a true banger that also made its way into my playlist.
Manos Team— the card you attached to my gift with a string of your wool attached (I’ll obviously keep and use your espresso cups too don’t worry 😅).
Claudia – your lovely magnet farewell gift and accompanying message.
Montevideo Uber Drivers — I may have shazamed some of your bachata and reggaeton classics.
What was “life-changing” about my Social Sabbatical?
In the lead up to the trip as part of the pre-work, I had heard the words “life-changing” on several occasions, to the extent that it eventually felt like a buzz-word. That phrase set an expectation about the Social Sabbatical, that I at the time I thought was unnatainable. It felt like an incredibly heavy word to be tossing at a group of twelve and expecting it to apply to them, but I think all this time, I just had the wrong definition that could never have applied to me. I have to give Laura credit for making me aware of this train of thought: Anything whether it’s big or small has the potential to be life-changing, because it simply means that something in your life has changed as a result of your time in Uruguay.
I spent too much time during my Social Sabbatical waiting and expecting a certain event of personal enlightenment to occur instead of looking inwards and simply asking myself how this experience has changed any big or small thing about my outlook on life. That way, the word suddenly felt less heavy and I was able to find lots of things that I would now consider life-changing by my definition. Here are a few of my favourites in order of increasing sincerity:
- Dulce de leche in any dessert
- Freshly squeezed Orange juice for breakfast (I’m strongly considering buying a juicer when I’m back home)
- The realisation to always bring your true and charismatic self to those around you (even if at times it’s ugly). You’ll find people who appreciate it and those are the keepers.
In the immediate future, I want to be very cautious to try and apply any life lessons to my “normal” life from Uruguay beyond those that relate to how I want to engage and connect with people. I think attempting to do that would demonstrate being blind to the fact of just how extraordinary and unlike anything else this experience was. How often within the span of an adult life can you transplant twelve people from their normality, thier friends and families to a completely different place, have them share an accomodation and work on something that’s completely different to their day-to-day? Beside the sheer gratitude I have for having been able to experience all of the above, here’s the life-changing thing #4 I’m taking home:
4. Stop thinking about how you’re sad that it’s over. Be happy that you got to experience something as rare and pure as this.
Putting that down in words feels like the natural conclusion to having been so in my head about this experience during the past few weeks and months. It may not be a very deep thought, but I don’t think it has to be, as long as it feels real and in some dimension is ✨ life-changing ✨.
And just like that… it seems I’ve got another plane to catch back home ✈️.
