In an episode of that brilliant TV show My Name is Earl, Earl and his brother Randy find themselves tied to a chair, calling for karma--the force they believe makes "good things happen to good people"--and wondering why it's failed them when they've been doing only good things. And that's when they get saved, by a motley bunch of immigrants wondering why Earl didn't come to class. "Look, Earl," Randy says, "It's Karma's Army. Made up of people from all the lands of all the worlds."
And that's how I feel, sometimes, signing up as a volunteer with VSO. I've been in-country in Guyana for almost two weeks now, and I've still adequately to explain to most people what it is I've left hearth and home and career for, or why I did it. (Or even where.)
So why am I here? Quite simply: the world is broken in some places, and everyone plays a part in fixing it, or breaking it up some more, or maybe standing around bellyaching about it. Most of us try to be good and to do good in our own contexts most days, which is about all that we can really expect from anyone. Now, I've always been curious about the wide and wonderful world out there, so I thought it only fair that I should serve in that same wide and wonderful world if I was going to be dragging my muddy boots all over it.
As luck would have it, VSO recruits in only two countries in Asia, and one of them is the Philippines. So, fast forward a year-and-some later, and here I am. In Guyana. Being a volunteer.
More on my own work later, but I'd like to talk a little bit more about the other VSOs here. If there's anything immediately rewarding about the experience, it's the sense of being part of an international effort to make things better on the ground. It does a lot for your belief in humanity as a whole when you see all kinds of people, of different nationalities, of different backgrounds and ages and races and personalities, all wanting to do something about the many kinds of brokenness, big and small, all over the world. There are many different motivations for doing volunteer work, and not all these reasons are altogether altruistic. And certainly not all volunteers are these great, noble persons with big, noble intentions all the time. (I mean, look at me, for instance.) But if there's one common answer to why these people are doing the work that they're doing, it's that they can. They can do it. so they do it.
The diversity of the other volunteers is pretty amazing. You've got people in their 20s, students putting in some time here while working on their university degrees, all the way to retirees in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s (that would be Mira Howard, 72, who volunteers with the Ministry of Education and who dances to Elvis like nobody's business). We've got teachers, medical professionals, development workers, and the odd person or two working on things like agriculture, research, or in my case, communication and media.
Let me make a few things clear. I'm not doing this because I feel a big, overriding urge to save the world. I certainly feel no guilt at doing well for myself, or for never going hungry, or for not being denied the opportunities the world has to offer. This isn't that. This is simply that I can do something with my time and my skills, and so I'd like to be able to share it outside of my usual world. And so here I am.
