Blogging, not PR, tells the whole story of VSO volunteering

I can recall first bringing up VSO‘s inability to make use of the hundreds of worldwide blogs almost five years ago.

I was in a volunteer Conference in Hoi An and volunteers were being asked to provide details of their experience for publication to aid new volunteers and those signing up.

I knew most of my colleagues kept a blog and I suggested instead why just not put them on a list and they could be accessed and contacted as needed.

Probably just to appease me, a sheet of paper was handed round for us all to write our URLs on and then…nothing was ever done about it.

Later when they needed pictures for posters and websites this time I suggested utilising Flickr.  We could all be given log in details and could all upload pics and it would have the added value of us seeing what each was up to, enabling us to share pics with back home AND the programme office could have their pick of the best ones.

Again it was never acted upon.

Spool forward a few years and here we are in 2009 and there has been some blogging breakthroughs – in particular the visually uninspiring on-site official efforts.  However the gold mine of what must surely be hundreds and hundreds of blogs remain unmined.

I’m moved to blog this (yet) again because this week two blogs turned up in my RSS trawl.  One was only recently posted whereas the other is from a couple of years back (it was a new comment that made it pop up).

But they show the extremes of VSO life and indeed of expat life and they address probably the key issue for volunteers in determining what posting is best for them and what can be handled.

They are also a reminder that, in putting their faith in social media, organisations like VSO have to unlearn the PR lessons and decide that while they can continue to promote the good it isn’t unreasonable to acknowledge the bad.

Actually, for many people “the bad” is part of the experience.  Often it’s “the bad” that makes the experience.  Hopefully in the snippets below – from a Capital-based Canadian saying goodbye to a big city post in Sri Lanka – and a Brit suffering in rural Bangladesh – you will see what I mean:

Rural Brit:

The day was slightly tarnished though by being constantly harassed and stared at. I’m beginning to realise what it must be like to be a really famous footballer or film-star, because everywhere I go the whole street turns it head and watches me, whether I’m cycling, eating, being ripped off in the market, picking my nose.

Capital Canadian:

This weekend was lovely. On Friday night, VSO held a cocktail party to introduce the new country director, Patrick, to volunteers, partners, funders and friends of the organization. …The party was the perfect opportunity to say goodbye to the volunteers and partners … all in a nice social setting with food and free wine! After the VSO event, many of us headed to the Cricket Club…

Rural Brit:

In Srimangal a few months ago me and Georgia got followed on our bikes by six kids for almost two miles. We thought we’d try and bore them out, so stopped by the side of the road and just stood and said nothing for two minutes. They all stopped about a metre away from us and peered at us for two minutes as well. I get asked ‘Hi how are you? Your country? Your name? What you doing Bangladesh?’ about 20 times a day – genuinely – and so in Sylhet when me and Luke are out together the sight is rarer than a driver giving way.

Capital Canadian:

I headed over to Zoe’s, where she, Ann-Sofie and I drank wine and got ready for a charity fashion show and ball that night. Colombo has lots of balls, none of which I’ve ever attended because the tickets cost five days’ allowance for me. Zoe and Ann-So bought me a ticket to this one though as a goodbye gift, and they brought a bunch of their dresses for me to try (it never occurred to me to pack a fancy dress for this experience). The night was an absolute blast from start to finish and I’m so glad I got to do it. The fashion show was good, the food was yummy and we got gift bags to take home.

Rural Brit:

The main reason for going… was to have a little farewell party for Luke. He was going to get another six-month working visa to stay here, before going to America to work there in July, but totally unexpectedly, his visa wasn’t renewed and he had to leave Bangladesh on Monday. This now means that I’m the only non-Asian person and native English-speaker in an area of at least 12,600 sq km, probably more, and thus will now be even more famous in Sylhet, where tourists can now come and see a white man. There are two Japanese development workers here until May, but as far as I know, that’s it. Everyone else who permanently lives here is ethnically Bengali.

When I was organising my VSO placement, the one thing I specifically said to my placement advisor was that wherever I was going, I didn’t care how beautiful it was, I didn’t want to be on my own.

Capital Canadian:

On Sunday… we went for a hangover breakfast at Park Street Mews. It was delicious. The bacon was actually salty! …In the late afternoon, I went for my second good-bye do: high tea at the Galle Face Hotel. I had thrown out an invitation to the VSOs and a couple of other low-income friends and, much to my delight, several people accepted. In all, there were eight of us and it was just one of those times when everyone clicks. It was a really lovely afternoon of getting to know each other (or getting to know each other better), enjoying a gorgeous all-you-can-eat meal and talking at length about scones (apparently the proper pronunciation is “skons”.) It made me sad that I wouldn’t get to spend more time with these folks.

Rural Brit:

In our global world 21st century world though, I’m aware that this is an anthropological privilege to be able to be somewhere that still hasn’t been distorted and or ruined by ‘Western’ culture and standards of living. That doesn’t mean that I like it, because I enjoy sharing experiences with people face to face, not just in writing, but I certainly appreciate it and am going to try and make the best of what is a rare situation. I’ve no choice, after all.

Capital Canadian:

In the evening, Zoe, Ann-So, Naomi and I went for goodbye number three: a goodbye dinner at Summer garden. They’d never been there before (it’s low rent, but good) and they were happy I’d introduced them to the place. We all enjoyed ourselves again with lots of laughs. I will miss them. Zoe’s Australian, Ann-So is Swedish and Naomi is British. One of the sad things about saying goodbye here is you’re not likely to see people in this context again or, possibly, in any context together again.

Tomorrow (which is actually today, since the sun is now up) is going to be a busy one. Lots of last minute running around followed by my final goodbye: a drop-in drinks event at the Cricket Club. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone one last time.

It would be easy to make judgements about both volunteers  simply based on these snippets.  The truth is that, a quick look through their blogs, and you’ll find that neither had it easy.  Both faced challenges and both learnt a great deal and hopefully taught just as much.

I received an email from a prospective volunteer this week who asked me about my experiences as she weighed up a posting that had been suggested to her.  I said go for it but later learned she felt that  it wasn’t right and she was sufficiently clued up, because she had done her research, to make that call.

Recently I also received an email from a couple who were also headed out soon.  He was going to volunteer and she was going to find work.  Was that possible?  They weren’t married – would that be an issue?  Africa or Asia? Rural or capital city?

I advised them where I could and tried not to suggest one continent or one place over another – I just ran them through some of the challenges they may face in each.

I’m happy to do it – I feel like I have two incredible experiences with VSO and its the least I can do.

I believe that blogs are the best source of information if you want to find out about living anywhere – and it’s those moments when the blogger lets their guard down and tells it like it is where you learn the most. My experience with a steady trickle of volunteer emails suggests that the new recruits are already primarily looking to blogs for their pre departure briefings.

On a recent trip to VSO in London I met a number of the staff, none of which had ever been volunteers.  They simply weren’t qualified to advise in these areas.  Only volunteers are.

While for VSO promoting bloggers as a source of info is a leap of faith from the culture of PR, it mirrors what we want from our own grass roots partners in developing countries – transparency, honesty, reporting, dialogue etc etc.

And going back to that Rural Brit – he’s home now, with a job and all appears to be working out.  There’s no doubt he had a tough placement but he stuck it out.

I’ll leave you with his final words because he obviously took so much from the experience and the adversity and it put “the bad” in context.  No volunteer has a perfect life, but very very few have regrets:

Another tune that has been something of a soundtrack for me in Bangladesh is‘Factory’ by Martha Wainwright, a beautiful lilting lament that begins with the couplet “These are not my people I should never have come here”.

But I’ve found as the last year has gone on that whilst I could never say that I am Bangladeshi, there’s no reason to think that different people can’t take pleasure in the same life. I’m separated either through my education, upbringing, culture, wealth, health, spiritual or temporal beliefs from the vast majority of Bangladeshis, yet there’s much less of the artificial barriers and constraints that separate people in the West.

I’ve felt obviously completely distinct from Bangladeshis over the last year, but also strangely in solidarity with the country here, I think because there are so few places to hide. You get swept up and embraced whether you like it or not, but if you can manage to stop struggling, abandon your own lenses of perception and accept that those lenses are useless here – perception is irrelevant, the country has one layer, one screen that everyone is pressed against to make up the pixels of a bigger picture of Bangladesh. That envelops everybody; it’s a shared common space. It’s a very crowded space, uncomfortable at times, but its one layer.

COPAAP and Mezam Poly Clinic team photo

Taken to mark the leaving of American students Adam and Jane who’ve been with us this past month. Good luck to them – they did themselves proud.

“Suffering does not make you special”

An interesting series of exchanges took place yesterday thanks to Twitter and assorted blogs of a development ilk – there were some fascinating posts which I thought were well worth sharing.

It all started with VSO tweeting this post the content, of which, irritated me just a little.

It’s from a blog charting the adventures of VSOer Joesephine in Bangladesh and she tells the tale of finding herself in the upmarket Sonargen Hotel.

She says:

I couldn’t help but wonder at the kind of people who would use such a hotel. I mean, I know all the practical reasons of convenience and comfort, of course. But my brief perusal of the café menu informed me that a coke would set you back 115 taka, and a cup of tea 177. Although this might be cheaper than in England (that’s about £1.20 and £1.80), outside on the streets of Dhaka, coke is expensive, at maybe 40 taka, and tea is a snip at about 4 taka. Clearly only the very rich and the unhinged would come here. Perhaps there’s not much of a distinction between the two…

And also states:

I don’t want to be the kind of person who stays in such a bubble of luxury while outside there is both a lot more life and a lot more poverty. I’m guessing my ripped salwar, my dirty sandals and my chipped toenail polish are surely glaring signals that I’m not exactly five-star hotel material? But perhaps, the fact that I am a bideshi, that I come from the UK and can go back any time, (probably) get a decent job and live with the comfort of social security and an adequate salary my whole life sets me apart. Maybe – in fact probably – I am more like the people in the Sonargaon than those on the streets outside, and no amount of wishing will make it otherwise.

I can certainly recognise the sentiment and it probably reflects a small part of my thinking when I lived in Hanoi and there was that obvious rich/poor divide. Later I came to realise that the rich were in a better position than I was to help anyone and the chances are their investments would help more people than I ever would.

“Hotels bring money“. That’s development.

And I am not sure about that “ripped salwar” – VSO volunteers are never going to get killed with cash but we don’t live in rags either.

But possibly the most debate provoking bit is that last sentence: I am more like the people in the Sonargaon than those on the streets outside, and no amount of wishing will make it otherwise.

But why would you wish?

Alanna Shaikh offered up her take on the subject in the form of an old blog post.

It reads:

The thing is, though – pudgy happy Americans, drunken Brits, and overfed Germans are living the life that everyone on this planet wants. Those Darfurian refugees who shattered your heart would give both arms for the chance at a place to live, a gas hogging car, and as much McDonalds as they can eat. The actual purpose of development work is to help the whole world reach a point where they can live in blissful ignorance of poverty.

There is nothing noble about suffering. People don’t do it on purpose, and a difficult life does not automatically make you stronger, wiser, or morally superior. Mostly, it makes you hungry and miserable. And having met and cared about people who do suffer does not require you to despise those who don’t.

A sentiment that chimes with my own thoughts here on my own blog:

I will guard my privilege and my relative wealth and I will value it. The developing world is full of people striving for what I already have – I am not going to forget that nor give it up.

There is no romance in poverty. There really are “poor but happy” people but there are also awful lot of poor, worried, struggling, worn down and sick people.

I find westerners in developing countries pretending to be poor somewhat disrespectful and patronising.

I didn’t have to look far for another point of view on the same topic. In the comment box of Alanna’s blog was a link from the irritatingly talented Pyjama Samsara who always has a knack of presenting such debates in a very readable way.

On the subject of differences between her own country and living in the developing world she blogs:

Another aid worker friend of mine is based in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. This choice has puzzled me. Last week, I asked him why he chose to live in Jogja. “I don’t like living in Australia,” he says, “Australia is like one big bubble”. Most Australians, he thinks, don’t understand what it is like in the real world. In the real world where deprivation and vulnerability is real. Hunger is real. Poverty is real. Not the poverty that Australians think they suffer when interest rates rise and their monthly mortgage repayments increase. But grinding poverty where there is no more human dignity.

To demonstrate his point, we go to the supermarket. “Look at this bubble! Look at this climate-controlled bubble! And we don’t just have cheese, we have a whole aisle of cheese”, he gestures to the dairy section with its multitude of brightly-coloured vaccuum-packed goodness. Is it right that we have so many types of cheese when 8 million Ethiopians go hungry this year? What has made me entitled to a cheese smorgasbord, and not an Ethiopian?

It occurs to me that the reasons why my friend hates living in Australia are the same as why I love living in Australia. To me, Australia is a blissful privileged utopia full of innocent people who don’t know how the majority of the world lives. To most, their biggest worries are boredom and wealth accumulation. And my friend hates it because he sees this as wilful ignorance and conspicuous consumption.

Meanwhile the title from the post comes from a Twitter retweet from Teresa – an NGO worker in Senegal who writes her own blog. (Update she just told me that it’s Alanna’s title)

Can it ever be right to romanticise poverty when so many people are desperate to leave it behind? Is claiming to wish you were like those suffering poverty patronising and naive or just a demonstration of a level of empathy that fails most of us?

To be effective workers in this field should we deny ourselves luxuries or be especially grateful that we have what so many others are striving for?

Life changing?

Original idea suggested by Tim in Tamale‘s sister. His post on how VSO has changed him is here. Any other VSOers want to join in? My thoughts are below:

The easiest, most clichéd sentence I could write here is:

Doing VSO has made me a better person.

But I don’t think that is true.  It has made me a different person, but not necessarily a better one.

In fact in many ways it has made me less tolerant and more insular. But I guess it’s what you choose not to tolerate that makes the difference.

We’re back into cliché mode when I say I am less accepting of consumerism.  That said – when I get back to the UK I spend small fortunes in a shorter amount of time. I try and explain my own consumerism away by saying my spending is largely on necessities but I do still enjoy it.

My big expense is all things computers.  PC World is my Harvey Nicholls. But then again – my laptop is my world while I’m overseas.  My entertainment, my community, my ties with home and a storage media for the details in my life that I sometimes forget are quite incredible.

For someone who avidly watched the first two series of Big Brother (I know, I know) I hate it all now.  I hate the way that it has become treated as genuine news.  I hate the fact that BBC treats its middle class snooty version (The Apprentice) as if was serious TV – right down to that Newsnight-style after show programme.

It’s just telly – it has no right to sit in the news schedules alongside war and famine.  That doesn’t mean that I think the news should always be negative – quite the opposite, in fact.

For someone who has shed tears over my football team, I’m still a fan but I recognise both how unimportant it is and how little control I actually have.

And unimportance is the filter that everything now goes through.  Jordan and Peter Andre split up? Absolutely unimportant to anyone who’s never even met them – though even “quality paper” The Guardian sees fit to carry three separate articles on it.

Jade Goody dies.  Sad.  But not as sad as the millions of good nameless people who die everyday without a fraction of the coverage, treatment or care. I cringed writing that because it is so entirely obvious it makes me feel like self righteous prat just for typing it (but, hey – it’s true).

So, we’ve established that the notion of celebrity in general drives me up the wall.  Twitter my main source of social media interaction was invaded by celebs and I didn’t get it.  All of these incredible people I followed doing fantastic work across the world and giving freely of their time and they’re pandering to a celeb whose famous for saying rude words on a chat show.

In many ways I think I have become colder and less compassionate.  But I don’t have to feel a bond with a country or a race or a continent to recognise when it is getting screwed.  Charity images of poverty porn for fundraising purposes don’t work on me anymore.

But at other times my emotions are all over the place.  VSO warned us this would happen.  You lose your emotional support structure, they told us. Now, the tiniest news item can bring a lump to the throat – a song too.  The beauty of Mercury Rev’s Holes does it every time.  So does sentiment behind Debris by The Faces.

Proper jobs in between volunteer posts have been difficult.  I notice every penny being wasted.  I squirm when the inconsequential is discussed and discussed some more.  I want to say..enough..let’s just do it.  This isn’t important enough to dwell so long over.

Strangely I feel closer to my family despite spending so much of my time far away.  Despite writing regular emails from Vietnam it took me 18 months to really want to hook up Skype and actually speak to them. But absence did make the heart grow fonder.

My first niece was born when I was in the air on my way to my Vietnam VSO posting.  Now there are three more nieces and a nephew.  All born when I was out of the country. Considering how little time I have had to spend with them I miss them more than I ever thought I would.

And now that lump in the throat is coming back just writing that.

There are other areas that my views have changed.  I’m more radical and left wing in some ways and less tolerant and, dare I say it, right wing in others.

I no longer despise the likes of Starbucks.  Cameroon would be a better place with Starbucks and I don’t just mean I’d be able to get decent coffee. A Starbucks or any international chain here would be a sign that Cameroon was starting to beat corruption and it welcomed and could accommodate international investment.  It would also provide training and guaranteed wages – it would inspire other outlets with the quality of its food and service.

I now believe in capitalism albeit within a state where the socialist virtues of looking after the poor and treating the sick are also present. Strangely, after this experience, socialism makes total capitalist sense.  You want your people to make money – you have to invest in them.

“Smash capitalism” – “Down with money” – sorry, I’m out.

And, yes I am aware that I am probably bending the rules and definitions of both ideologies.

Hell, I even believe that “sweat shops” can be a good thing.  But I am also aware that where they work they only do so because people in the “developed world” have campaigned for good and decent employment practices.

We don’t have to smash everything and pull it entirely apart to make it better or make it work. But we do have to work together.

I believe in people.  Wherever I have worked – in Vietnam, Nicaragua and now, Cameroon I have been welcomed.  A fact that makes it even harder to stomach the pea brained morons who support the BNP in my own country.

While we’re at it – the UK seems so full of negative people complaining about their lot when they have so much.  Returning home last time I saw it with new eyes and started to imagine the processes, development and history that went into making it all work.

Not just the water from the taps and the power to the lights.  Not just the long, straight, flat roads or even the rubbish collections but also the beautifully tended flowers on the roundabouts, the sculptures and public art.  We’ve gone beyond just staying alive we want, demand and receive, much more – the little things that enrich our lives so much and yet we barely even notice them.

However, when it comes to undeveloped countries I am not sure I have any more answers than the next person. The only difference, compared to those who haven’t had this experience, is that I know I don’t know.

Someone recently pointed out Stephen Fry’s letter to his 16 year old self and I considered writing one too.  I thought about it for a while but give or take a little more self awareness I don’t really think I have changed that much or understand that much more.  Perhaps VSO does keep you young.  Or perhaps it’s just moving around that does that.  Perhaps it’s not having kids.

But the main change would be the “take me as I am” feeling.  I care a little less about others’ views of me.  Doing this had made me stronger and more independent – I am sure of that.

This serial volunteering life style has given me options that I never thought I would have in my life.

But, while choices are A Good Thing they don’t always make you happier.  Are the couple who make a sometimes difficult marriage work because divorce isn’t an option, more or less happy than the man and wife who separated?

Sometimes it feels I don’t have to make my life “work” I can just move on.  Whatever issues, difficulties or weaknesses I have I can simply blame them on my current host country and go looking for new pastures.

That can’t always be good.

To get back to the clichés – one that does stick is that I feel lucky.  I feel lucky all the time.  Born lucky.  White and western.

I am aware that I am lucky to experience even the bad parts of my life here.  The occasional mouse running into my bed isn’t the end of the world. The brain rottingly long and uncomfortable bus trips make me appreciate other forms of transport. The bad food, toilets, dust and basic lifestyle really is, as my Dad used to say, character building.

Maybe there is a small part of me that wishes I still cared about reality TV shows or was someone for whom happiness is a larger TV or something even more trivial – a new pair of shoes (isn’t it strange that we got so rich that shoes are now seen as a symbol of excess). You can’t close the box once you open it though. You’ve changed for better or for worse.

And to put it in context I’d love a new bigger telly.  But it’s really not that important.

Another snippet… I can’t fathom suits any more, especially ties.  They seem odd – even slightly sinister.

My hope is that the good parts I take from these experiences can be used in a way that really does eventually start to make me a “better person”.

But there’s also a part of me that thinks I have to protect that luckiness too.  I will guard my privilege and my relative wealth and I will value it.  The developing world is full of people striving for what I already have – I am not going to forget that nor give it up.

There is no romance in poverty. There really are “poor but happy” people but there are also awful lot of poor, worried, struggling, worn down and sick people.

I find westerners in developing countries pretending to be poor somewhat disrespectful and patronising.

Doing this has made think that, whatever is next, I don’t want to go back to fussiness and that inability of the developed work to filter out what really isn’t important.

I want to work where I can make tangible change. It doesn’t have to be a big change.  It doesn’t even have to be for a charity.  It just has to be identifiable and worthwhile.

I think the reason that I loved Vietnam was that it felt like a place that had such optimism and such little negativity.  Nothing kills a country like apathy – in many ways the UK and Cameroon both suffer from it for very contrasting reasons.

As ever though, when I write about VSO and I try to be honest, I worry that it comes across a little too negative.  It shouldn’t be.  Living overseas, particularly doing this kind of work, forces you to contemplate yourself, your background, your beliefs and what you hold as important.

Whatever the answers you come up with –it’s better than never contemplating at all.

Imagine if doing VSO was like national service – imagine if everyone had to live like this for a year.

Imagine how different the world would be.

On what it is to volunteer

I recall some serious discussion emanating from the in-country HQ during my first VSO posting about the “volunteer” title.

In short, the argument was that the title immediately demeaned the individual in many people’s eyes.

You’re working for free – therefore your input is devalued.

The V word meant that people overlooked the experiences that VSO recruitment demanded.  It overlooked what qualifications you had.  It also meant that in some cases employers didn’t feel that they had the right to demand standards of under performing staff – because they were just volunteers.

Of course the suggestion was – we weren’t volunteers we were consultants.  Potentially trading one label with a stack of baggage with another.

So the truth is we do get paid – although it tends to be referred to as an “allowance” rather than a wage.  But as I sit here right now typing this, my colleague who sits across the room, gets a quarter of what I do. And my allowance is just for food and bills – hers must also cover housing, health care and family commitments.

By local standards we have a good lifestyle but even in a town where the most luxurious item I can buy is a tin of tuna, I can only just about live on my wage.

Call ourselves consultants and there’s an immediate promotion in our standing. But don’t consultants just tell you what you should do whereas volunteers do it?

On one occasion at KOTO we had “real” consultants in.  I was, one of half a dozen volunteers each chosen for their expertise and experience.  In my case it was a dozen years in others it was over 30.  The consultants, however, couldn’t see past our titles – referring to us in a report as “well meaning amateurs”.

Guess how angry we were?  And of course what they meant was – there should be less of volunteers and way more expensive consultants like them.

Having said that,  what’s expected of a consultant rather than a volunteer perhaps best fits the VSO model.  Capacity building, sharing knowledge, not so much doing as showing people how it can be done.  Then again, the most effective volunteers I have met are the ones who’ll pitch in whatever the job.

I recall Michael of Blue Dragon in Hanoi saying that the best volunteers wouldn’t quibble at having to clear up sick if one the kids they work with was ill.  I’d certainly go with that.

Those KOTO consultants are not the first I have come across who were snobbish about the volunteer tag.  Another NGO worker I met referred to us as the “plankton of the NGO world”.  Even back home not enough is understood about VSO  and potential employers can come to conclusion that you’ve essentially just been travelling for the past two years – or worse – growing dreadlocks, being flaky and “finding yourself”.

Even VSO itself can often seem to forget just how stringent its recruitment is.  Next month we have been informed we will be paid 15 days late.  I’m not happy and have argued for a reasonable explanation.  It would never happen in the VSO London HQ so why should “volunteers” at the sharp end, surviving on a pittance, have to suffer it?

In the interests of balance I should say that we have been told we are entitled to a small loan to tide us through.  But would that ever happen in London?  Sorry, can’t pay you right now but, tell you what, we’ll bung you a few quid till we’re flush again.

Is it because we’re just volunteers that we don’t get the same rights? Three years into VSO work and I am yet to find a way of raising concerns with VSO head office.  There’s no 360 degree reviews here. We can be complained about – but we can’t complain.

Going back to the titles – maybe volunteer consultant is the best of both worlds.  The gravitas of the C word and humility of the V one.

On the reflection though I’m somewhat proud to be a volunteer.  Where VSO works, it works because it’s grass roots.  We don’t come with fancy titles nor SUVs.  We don’t furnish people with instructions and leave them to get on with it.

On the whole we are here for at least a year – though that is changing and much shorter posts are now becoming available

But maybe it’s time organisations and individuals were challenged to rethink their thoughts on what a volunteer is.