I write this sitting on the bus en route to New York City with the SAWIP 2012 team beaming all around me.

We have been for in America for one day short of two weeks and, at the risk of sounding overly sentimental, the time has been truly life changing so far. Yes, the clichés of being in a foreign city with amazing people apply, the program content is quite stimulating and even my internship at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is turning out to be much cooler than I anticipated (side note, I was quite ambitious in my expectations). Yet still, there is something more abstract and intangible that has been at the centre of what has made my SAWIP experience so enriching, so far. Before I get to what I think this special element might be, I’ll give some context of what our team has been up to over the past 13 days.

We arrived in Washington DC on Thursday, July 14th. I spent about 2.5 hours getting two cases of wine through customs, and was surprised at how friendly my host family still was, despite the long wait. In the first few days we did a walking tour of the DC monuments, had a classic barbeque with the SAWIP board of directors and attended a youth day celebration at the Ambassador’s residence where I had the pleasure of dining with Minister of Trade and Investment, Rob Davies. Our internships started on Monday. After a bit of a slow start I was delighted to find that I would actually be doing some real research, looking into alternative investment vehicles that HUD can use to get more “bang for their buck” in the US affordable housing market (insert excitement).

Every day after work we have themed discussions with prominent figures within their respective fields. The first week featured discussions on global health issues with a lady form the World Bank as well the head of health policy for advocacy agency ONE.org (of Bono fame). On the Wednesday we met the Irish WIP team for the first time at the Irish Embassy, and had the privilege of being addressed by Jake Sullivan, right hand man to Hillary Clinton and director of US foreign policy. I was lucky enough to get a chace to ask his thoughts on the ability of governments and their “systems of governance” to keep up with the impact that technology is having on the societies they govern. All his remarks were strictly off the record, so even though nothing he said was particularly controversial, I shall refrain from paraphrasing in fear of being tackled by a guy in a black suit. While writing this. On the bus. (looking around suspiciously).

Over the weekend we had another event with the WIP team, and also got to meet the (super-cool) NSL team from Palestine and Israel. Our Washington based community service project took us to a predominantly black neighborhood where we joined a community “health fair” in promoting free HIV testing. Tamsanqa and I decided to venture into the neighborhood on foot to get a feel for the way people lived, thought and were out there. After several impromptu conversations with kids of roughly our age, and we were both struck by the overwhelming sense of hopelessness that these youths demonstrated in their views. I admit that we weren’t exactly approaching them on equal grounds (my pale complexion seemed to be somewhat out-of-place), and our conversations were limited both in time and understanding – but the feeling was clear: these kids saw absolutely zero opportunity of getting out of their predestined life, confined to that (or similar) neighborhood. Having spent the week hanging out in places of real influence, being charmed by people with real power, this contrast seemed particularly stark in the land of opportunity.

In part 2 of this post I promise to actually get to my point – this being that the (almost extreme) diversity of our team has been, by far, the thing that has contributed most to my “development” as a human being over the past 13 days. I look forward to explaining this and telling you about the amazing event that we had at the Woodrow Wilson Centre last night to celebrate the legacy of Nelson Mandela. But first, however, I’m going to walk the 5 blocks up to Time Square with some of my favourite people in the US of A (and world for that matter).