GLOBAL VOLUNTEERS GIVES NEW MEANING TO THE ACTIVISTVolunteers Get A Body & Soul Workout around the WorldIt�s 1 a.m. in Jamaica, and Courtney Granger is already waking up.� It�s a bit disorienting to wake up in dense jungle. She�s on the steep slope of a trail a few miles below Blue Mountain Peak, the highest point in the Caribbean. A few miles below is a tiny village called Hagley Gap, ten miles inland by road from Kingston. There, Granger has spent the week carrying buckets of water up, hauling cinder blocks, fetching gravel, mixing cement, pouring concrete and digging -- lots of digging -- all under the unrelenting blaze of a tropical sun. Granger is on vacation. As she sits in the darkness, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she is glad to be here, high above the myriad of shops, hotels and bars lighting up the coastline some 5,000 feet below. The tourist�s Mecca is not for her, at least not this time. She has taken the path less traveled, landing on Jamaican shores as a short-term volunteer, a situation that worked with her student schedule at the University of Delaware, and with her mentally and physically active lifestyle�. �When you go as a tourist you experience the Americanized way of travel,� she explains. �You go and stay at a hotel and spend your time on beaches where there aren't really many native people. It seems like almost a plastic reality. When you live and work in a community, it's a totally different thing.� Granger lived and worked with the locals, ate their food, and adopted their routines as a member of a team of volunteers, coordinated by a nonprofit organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota called Global Volunteers. �It definitely changed my life in many ways -- how I look at people in my own culture and myself.� Locals live modestly in tin-roofed shanties and scrape a living farming coffee and fruit.� There are no phones in Hagley Gap, no running water and few cars. It�s a rustic, rather isolated village near the end of a battered switchback road. No one jogs or works out when the daily routine involves carrying drinking water from the stream in buckets and perhaps a 10K hike up a mountain and further miles back down to the market with a load of bananas. Chopping firewood takes care of the upper body. Women routinely fetch water, clean house, harvest produce and walk many miles in the process with a 15-pound child slung on their backs. Try that on for strengthening. On this morning, not only will Granger see the country in a different light, she'll see it from 7,402 feet up -- on the summit of Blue Mountain Peak. Their new friends from Hagley Gap invited her and other volunteers on the trek. They began the hike the previous night before stopping for a few hours sleep. It�s 2 a.m. now, and they're ready to move on. The hike is a strenuous one, but no rock-climbing acrobatics or dangerous passes are involved. It's just before dawn in Jamaica. Beyond the city stirrings on the coast, back into the silent interior, Blue Mountain Peak pokes out above the morning mist. Courtney Granger and the other Hagley Gap workers rest on the summit and gaze at the distant horizon as it slowly comes to life. They have reached the top in the same way they've worked, lived and shared for the past week: together. This is just one of the many experiences that results from trips coordinated by Global Volunteers. Whether it�s hiking the Samaria Gorge on the island of Crete or going on a little firewood and water expedition from Mtera, Tanzania, there�s a growing trend to use �activist� in holistic terms. In other words, working out doesn�t have to be a selfish pursuit. Exercising the heart and mind is not exclusive of the body. In fact, there seems to be a synergistic effect. Active people with a few weeks of vacation time are finding that traveling as a volunteer helps them learn the ways of another culture, nourishes their souls with the unmatched feeling of having done some good in the world. Even better, it works major muscle groups in no uncertain terms, usually discovered by the second morning of the work project. Global Volunteers, which coordinates �volunteer vacations� in 21 countries and sites within the U.S., sends teams of volunteers only at the invitation of a local community. Volunteers work one-on-one with local people on projects the community targets. They�re not experts; they�re not there to �fix� anything, only to help out and do what they�re told. Even this basic lesson is rigorous exercise for many �take charge� Americans. �Whatever our tasks are, we work under local direction as 'servant-learners,�� says Burnham Philbrook, the Minnesota lawyer who founded Global Volunteers in 1984.� �We are not regarded as experts, nor do we make any assumptions about how we should help them.� Projects vary according to the needs of the community, but those looking to flex their muscles or get an aerobic workout on the job will dig (literally) construction projects in Tanzania, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Ecuador, Ireland, the Cook Islands and Ghana. Walking to the work site, hauling bags of sand, mixing concrete, laying bricks, tearing down old walls, framing buildings, roofing and pushing wheelbarrows are all in a day�s work. But all work and no play make Jill a dull girl. After six hours of doing the Hokey Pokey with students at the English language camp on Crete, volunteers bolt for a lung-stretching hike in the steep, rocky hillsides, dotted with olive groves. Rewards to the mountaintop trekker include crystal-clear views of the blue Mediterranean and of the challenges of life in this rugged terrain. Volunteers in Xian, China are often up at dawn, starting the day the Chinese way, with the slow, controlled movements of Tai Chi performed en masse in the street. Volunteers find awareness of the body is a doorway to the mind. Walk the walk. Expect to two-wheel it in Vietnam. Bicycles are the mode of transport in Vietnam. Sure, it works the quads and is a great aerobic exercise (not many pudgy Vietnamese out there), but it�s a way of putting on the Vietnamese culture. The biking visitor is approachable, on common ground. Soccer is very popular in the remote Iringa District of central Tanzania, though there are some differences from the American version (that�s where cultural acceptance comes in). Namely, the field is probably just that, a tall-grassy area with holes and termite mounds, errant goats and perhaps a cloth or hide ball. Some of the players will not have shoes, but this does not dampen their enthusiasm. As players sweep back and forth across the field, differences fade. Everyone�s heart is pounding. There are only forwards and midfielders and defenders. Everyone on the scoring team is jubilant. Like Dr. Seuss�s Grinch, hearts grow two sizes through this kind of activity. Exercising your heart, your mind and your body at once is not as difficult as it sounds.� Thousands of active people every year pursue holistic health by volunteering. Interested individuals can call Global Volunteers at 800-487-1074 for details. Check out the web site at http://www.globalvolunteers.org Edited by Kerry Cohen |
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