The Foolishness of Volunteerism

Hola y gracias por visitar mi blog.

A series of small events started to wear on me little bit by the end of the week (a day-long fever, a mouse infestation, broken shower, power outage).

On a more significant note, I had a couple unwelcomed moments of feeling overwhelmed with the great need around me. While there are countless moments of joy here, there are other times when the complex social and economic issues of this country leave me feeling disenchanted.   I have noticed that there is a difference between traveling to the developing world and staying here long enough to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. My modest 3 month stay so far puts me somewhere between a traveling-gringa-tourist and a long-termer. I have been here long enough to see how foolish volunteer work can be. That quote I posted early on during my trip by Lila Watson has never been so relevant:

“If you have come here to help, you are wasting your time; but if you are here because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

For me, I think real change come from relationships. As I look back on the past 90 days, the relationships I have built with the kids at the Guarderia have had quite an impact on me. I can assure you that after all of my “public health talks,” field trips around town, tutoring sessions, safe stove projects, gringa-sounding ideas for change,  etc., the only impactful thing that I may have done is tried to entered in to their world and love them. Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, poet, and social activist wrote “A Letter to a Young Activist.”  His wise words give me hope.

“Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”

-adios

Carrie