This initiative to fire up the blog again has been sparked by a visit to a fellow volunteer’s blog earlier tonight. I have less than 3 months left in Kosrae, year 1.
Over the past 7 months, it would be fair to say that a lot has happened for me on this pretty little island. I’ve seen more nature, logged more biking miles, and swallowed more salt water than I have in the past 23 years of living.
Perusing through other volunteer blogs and learning about all the great things that are happening around the world is inspiring, but causes me to second guess my own experience as a volunteer. Aside from making an adventure hungry 20-something like myself want to jump on a plane to whatever remote destination, I will admit that blog reading had previously playing a role in shaping my expectations of volunteering.
The incorrect trajectory went something along the lines of this: Apply for program -> Make a blog -> Post picture of oneself wearing local garb posed with naked children smiling at the camera -> have everyday be awesome, amazing, and life changing -> come back with hair in dreads preaching about the dire effects of western centric foreign policy and have a big enough adventure to write a book.
I’ll just tell you right now that I have zero pictures of me with any naked children, my hair is not in dreads, and I think any recent grad who wants to have a published memoir sitting on a Barnes & Noble shelf after 10 months of international volunteering is silly in this global age. It just doesn’t work that way. Here are some other things I’ve learned, or rather was reminded of, while being a volunteer.
Lesson #1: If the school didn’t have problems, then it wouldn’t need volunteers.
Lesson #2: Not getting paid does not equate to working fewer hours.
Lesson #3: Being inexperienced in the States will not make one more experienced in a foreign country.
Lesson #4: Organizational politics don’t go away, even in faraway places.
Lesson #5: Teenagers will be teenagers anywhere on the globe.
I feel really lucky to be in Kosrae. I don’t function at the constant level of spectacular, but the time spent here is unlike any other time in my life.
