Thursday, November 19, 2015

On Love



This post was supposed to be a happy one, full of intellectual waxing on travel philosophies or experiences. But when I returned to cell service from a two-night stay in the jungle, I learned that the world has, yet again, been filled with hate and violence. My first thoughts were for my college friends living there, who, to my deep gratitude, are all safe. While the attacks in Paris make my heart ache, what I am most ashamed of is the reactions of my own countrymen. I am ashamed of their fear and ignorance, and of the proposals that are eerily similar to the rejection of German refugees in 1939.  

In a small attempt to push back against the hate filling the world, I want to share with you the love I have tasted, heard, and felt from Muslims around the world. I take this as proof that humanity can be kind and good, and that goodness goes beyond our arbitrary divisions.  

I have tasted love...

…while hiking along the Lycine way in Turkey, along a particularly hot and steep road, after no breakfast and very little sleep. About halfway up the hill, a car stopped and gave each of us hiking a piece of bread. The driver continued on his way with a smile and a wave. 

…during Ramadan in Morocco, when I was always invited to i'ftar (the meal that breaks the sunup to sundown fast), even if I wasn't fasting. When the sundown call to prayer sounded, the every citizen of the country shared food with each other, expressing love and gratitude for their ability to eat. 

I have heard love... 

…on an 8-hour train ride from Marrakech to Fez, when a five year old kid helped me practice my Arabic vocabulary cards, and giggled at my accent. 

...in the friendship extended to me from an Iranian living in Turkey, who has been exiled from his homeland for speaking out against human rights violations in his country. After surviving nearly six months in prison, he received political asylum. If he returns to Iran, he faces prison or worse.

…on another long train ride, in India, from a 14-year-old girl who asked me about my family, and told me she wants to grow up to be an activist for the poor in her hometown of Kolkata. 

I have felt love... 

…when I got off on the wrong bus stop during a rainstorm in Bangalore, I stopped to ask for directions from a shop owner, who used his phone to call my hostel and gave me a hot cup of tea while I waited. 

…during my last three days in Morocco, I had less than $5 left to my name, and my roommate from Casablanca let me stay with her family. She made sure I had food and shelter when I had none. 

One of the sweetest people I know


…in a village in the high atlas of Morocco, where I befriended the young daughter of our hosts, exchanging languages and stories and games. 

Friends in the High Atlas of Morocco



And I shouldn't have to say this but... 

Every single person in those stories is Muslim, by choice or tradition. It shouldn't matter, and I find it worth mentioning only to point out that those hate-filled posts on Facebook, those protests at mosques, and that causal racism that, intended or not, is a slur against every person in this story. For every member of an extremist group, there are millions of people wanting to help. There are people losing their lives in the hands of extremists, a fact we choose to ignore in the west.

While I don't think any of these stories will change the hate and fear in human hearts, but I choose to share these and choose to contribute stories of love, not hate.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

On Voluntourism


Editors Note: The last post I wrote was my personal experience as a tourist-volunteer (aka "voluntourist"). While I know my experience is decidedly not universal, the topic is far too big to be covered in one post. Beyond my personal experience, here is a more general discussion of volunteering abroad.

“We need to help the poor people in [insert developing country here]!” is a refrain in our media and our culture. It is the mission of church groups, NGOs, and private citizens. With even the most rudimentary of an education, we are informed of our privilege in the west. We are shown photos of starving (always brown, but that's another topic) children and huts made of mud without electricity. People feel some need to help abroad, especially in places like India, where poverty, both total and abject, is shocking and openly displayed.

While this is not to disparage those who wish to do good in the world, the issues go beyond simply being poor and in need of rescue. They include access to healthcare, sanitation issues, education, and gender issues. Poverty is far more complex and deeply rooted than an outsider can realize, and some practices are so deeply engrained in a culture that even to the locals cannot understand them.

It is the fact that: there are some things we will never understand, that becomes the problem with short-term stints volunteering abroad. In one to four weeks, we are supposed to, without speaking the language, practicing the religion, or being citizens of a country, are supposed to come in a “save” people from their conditions? We think we know all the answers, that someone from the west can come and fix a community. But to say that we, who have been born into our privileges, have all the answers is at best naive and at worst downright harmful.

One of my hosts in the village poses with her 6 month old son.


Yes, there are ways to help – as a doctor, an English teacher, or a tradesperson, there are skills we in the west can contribute to a foreign society. But when our “program fees” go to line the pocket of other westerners, we are not contributing to a community. When we take on jobs (think construction work or ditch-digging) that are not in our skillset, and could probably be finished twice as quickly using local labor, we are not helping.  Instead, we are take a tour into someone else’s life and using a self-righteousness as a band-aid for our privilege-induced guilt. We are showing that our profile picture will never be the same –never mind the impact we have on that place.

Working in development is not a lark, or a way to show how ‘selfless’ we are. As a long-term career it is difficult, frustrating, a draining. As a short-term stint, it is often just a way to validate a stay, and go home satisfied with yourself for ‘doing something.’  

But without the understanding that the needs of a community are complex, diverse, and sometimes nearly impossible to meet, the key ingredient to successful and sustainable development is absent.

My challenge those well meaning vagabonders so award of their (our) privilege, is to keep the guilt in check, and ask hard questions about the impact you have in a community you intend to “serve.” A few to start:  

·      How will my time make an impact?
·      Is what I'm doing what a community needs? How do I know that? 
·      If I’m paying for this experience, where is that money going?
·      How is my stay impacting the local people (am I a drain on their resources)?
·      How will I be supported during this experience (translators, guides, fellow volunteers)?
·      Who are the major funders of this organization? What are their interests? 
·      What skills do I have that are truly beneficial to this community? 

These and many more should the foundation of any attempt to “help” in a developing country. As we move through the world, we should be mindful of our impact, aware of our surroundings, and leave our self-righteousness at home.  
Kids from a Rajistani village hug a baby buffalo

Thursday, November 5, 2015

On Immersion - My ten-day stint of voluntourism


The concept, from the cozy confines of my tree-house in Turkey, seemed simple. Arrive in India, receive help from a local to get settled, move to a rural village, spend a couple of weeks teaching  recycling to cute school kids. Simple, right? Wrong. This experience is still something I am trying to process, and has led to an entire other post about voluntourism.

As I found out, sometimes things are not as simple as they seem. While the organization I worked with, Silver Earth India, had the best intentions, the groundwork had simply not been done. The first issue was that I was expected to teach at school that was not in session 5 of the 10 days I was scheduled to be there, something I didn’t find out until the 4 days into my stay. While I understand that India has “more festivals than days of the year” I felt this should have been discussed with me when I arrived, not the day before school let out. 

My second day at the village school

And then there was the “job” itself. My task was supposed to teach and model trash disposal in a community that not only did not even have a local dump, let alone trash bins or garbage pickup. Furthermore, the community of approximately 100 families did not have running water or toilets, and many of the women (and I suspect men as well) were illiterate. So yes, recycling can be done, the use of plastic can be minimized, but in the grand scheme of things – shouldn’t toilets and education come first? It was hard to feel like teaching people to use a dumpster was the best use of my time, when many of the women there couldn’t read or write. The priorities were felt entirely wrong. 

Women of the village escorted me literally everywhere.


In addition to the trouble with the job itself, I was left by the program manager without a single person on site who spoke English, leaving me unable to communicate with my host family in any meaningful way. My living situation was in a shared room without toilets or running water. When I was not teaching, I was shuffled from one neighbors house to another like a zoo animal. While people were kind, I was as alien as well.. an alien. My desire to use toilet paper was a resounding scandal among the women (they clean with water and their left hand), and defecation was done in the open with no less than 2 other women around at all times. Showers were taken outside, topless but wearing a skirt (turns out, this can work, although the all-women audience made me self-conscious). People were far more interested in my travel pillow and my contact lenses than my teaching skills, and without the ability to communicate in words, I was left feeling dumb, helpless, and very much alone most of the time. 

Due to all of these things, I left the experience within a week. I did leave the village knowing a few words of Hindi (“I want to sleep” and “my stomach is not good” and “thank you for the food”), the kindness of the people who hosted me, and a HUGE and very real lesson about voluntourism (read more in the next entry). I learned that full and true immersion into a place where you don't speak the language is terrifying, mentally exhausting, and incredibly challenging. To overcome these challenges requires support, time, and ideally a community of others who are able to mentor you throughout the process. One cannot simply be thrown into a village and expect to “make people change.” 

My host-sister dried buffalo dung on the roof to make fuel for the fire


I don't disparage the ideals of the organization (trash is a huge problem in India), but I wish the program was set up to be more intentional, and that the impossibility of teaching without verbal communication could have been effectively addressed. I wish I had asked more questions before I arrived, and I know now what a serious undertaking something like this is. I ended up with my first ten days in India resulting in a good story, memories of kindness in an alien land, and intense, new-found gratitude for the simple and familiar comforts of things like pooping with privacy.