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GLOBAL VOLUNTEERS GIVES NEW MEANING TO THE ACTIVIST
Volunteers Get A Body & Soul Workout around the World
It’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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