Ereny Elea Hanna Zarif is from Egypt. She is an international UN Volunteer Electoral Field Coordination Specialist with United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM). She started her UN Volunteer assignment during the pandemic. For Ereny, volunteering is a way for her to be in solidarity with people from the same continent.
Covid hit. Everything shut down. I had a job in Egypt but wanted an international perspective, so I started looking for opportunities, and then one day I landed in Somalia.
It was April 2021 and amidst the ongoing unrest in the country around that time, I thought to myself – my international volunteer experience is going to end before it begins. A feeling of risk started to settle in. I made sure that my runaway bag was ready.
Rewinding to when I was an undergraduate student at the American University in Cairo. I became the first and only student to complete the Community Development specialization.
Fast forward 10 years, I completed my Master's and gained many professional experiences.
I decided to take myself out of my comfort zone. I resigned from my job in Cairo to become a UN Volunteer. I officially started with the Mission in Somalia in October 2020 from home because of the pandemic lockdown during COVID-19.
Online onboarding with many acronyms and security briefings that I could not resonate with until I found my way to my ‘container’.
You might wonder what is living in a container like – it’s like living in a Tuna can, you have no space to move about, it’s small, actually it’s tiny! What a journey! I have to say that this has been life-changing for me.
From Somali counterparts to international partners, from police to contractors, and the military, my assignment offers me very unique encounters.
It’s amazing the kind of people-to-people connections I have had. That is what volunteering is all about. People!
As a reporting officer, I coordinated the UN electoral task force that supported a peaceful transition of power in 2022. After that, I switched from reporting to field coordination to liaise with the UN electoral field offices in Somalia.
Over the past three years, my volunteer assignment has allowed me to make valuable contributions in a challenging duty station.
I am an Egyptian volunteering in Somalia and thus in solidarity with people from my continent through volunteering.
One of the most beautiful advantages of this assignment is living by the lovely Somali coastline, which is fantastic in many ways – and the best jogging track ever!
Ereny Elea Hanna Zarif (left) international UN Volunteer Electoral Field Coordination Specialist with UNSOM during a meeting with the Transitional Puntland Electoral Commission (TPEC) on the progress of the voter registration process in Puntland, Somalia. @ TPEC Facebook, 2023.