The Perfect Volunteer

While volunteering in Sri Lanka, I heard stories of other volunteers who acted as if they knew better than their supervisors. Naturally, they did not have as good an experience as they could have and were considered to be intrusions by the organisations they were meant to be helping. I’m not suggesting that they were bad people – you have to be the right kind of person to give up your time and money for the volunteer experience – but good intentions only go so far.

I’ve led many camps preparing exchange students for their time living in another culture with a new family and I believe that the same traits are essential in a good volunteer. With all my experience, I still struggle when my expectations aren’t met, as anyone who’s read Dragon Bones would know, so I was very impressed by one young volunteer on this trip who who was as close as I’ve found to the perfect volunteer.

Within days of arriving on Sri Lanka he was eating with his fingers. He never complained about the food, as others who became homesick did. He respected his supervisors and colleagues at the hospital and in return they respected him, making extra effort to teach him what they were doing and eventually letting him take part in surgical operations that he was unqualified to join in his own country.

Without having any lessons, he knew a range of useful Sinhala phrases that allowed him to perform simple exchanges with locals in their own language. And he took his role seriously. When out at a rave party one night, a local came up to him and said ‘I know you. You operated on me last week.’ This volunteer believed that he had the reputation of the hospital in his hands at this point. In Sri Lanka, he said, doctors have the status of gods and their patients don’t want to know that they’re being treated by ordinary people who drink and dance, so he lied and told the local that he was just a tourist.

I’m not condoning lying. I am saying that I believe it’s our responsibility when we travel to adopt the local culture as much as possible and to respect their traditions and beliefs even when we don’t follow them.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *