GPzMike Abroad

(somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 days if the math can be trusted)

I've lost count of the days. I've also not been posting very regularly. Shame on me.

For those of you in the know, that does not bode ill tidings on the horizon. Just busy and beginning to find a bit of a groove here. Groove's are boring and don't invite a whole lot of blog-worthy writing. I touch on this a bit more below.

This MHB I have returned once again to the quiet Hotel Cyvadier. April decided to accompany me at the last minute. As the person that 'does the board' she likely needed the break more than I did.

'Doing the board' entails talking to all the Team Leaders and Project Coordinators between 4:30 and 5:00 pm (while dinner is being dished out) to find out what work is being offered the following day, how many volunteers will be needed on each site or project, whether the site is am only, pm only, or all day fun (we don't return to base at lunch due to the length of the drive to/from base), factor in how many volunteers are in the compound, how many of said volunteers are able bodied, how many are arriving, how many are leaving, how many are going on a MHB, and finally how many are going to actually bother to sign up for work. Computing all that she then makes sure that the number of requested volunteers is roughly equal to the number of available volunteers. The idea being that there is the same number requested as available so that every volunteer has a job and every job has a volunteer. Then she has 30 minutes to set up the job board before the nightly meeting begins...oh, and eat her dinner.

Ah, the lovely world of theory. There's so much that can go wrong when trying to transmorgify (yeah, it's a made up word...I'm in Haiti...what'cha gonna do about it???) theory into action. There's folks that don't hunt April down to tell her their needs, folks that decide to get lazy for a day, folks that are coming in from the field with injuries or new illnesses, folks that don't want to sign up for the jobs that are available, jobs that crop up at the last minute as we suddenly see a need developing in the community, etc, etc, etc.

As you might imagine it's a very hectic and stressful position.

As April and I were talking today about those stresses I brought up my last meeting note. I stood up and said, "Perhaps I should not be on base during the day anymore: I'm really disheartened by the number of people that seem to be lazing about on facebook or somesuch whose magnet (our names are on magnets that we place on the job board) is not in sickbay". This is an area that April struggles with since she is the one that sets up the board. She approaches folks that are running on their own agenda. It's not fun sometimes.

How to deal with the problem? As a volunteer organization it's not like the boss can hold your next paycheck over your head or otherwise coerce someone to rejoin the workforce (something about glass houses comes to mind here...lol). There must be a better...softer...approach. Here's what occurred to me:

Perhaps everyone IS giving what they can emotionally, physically, and mentally. Perhaps each volunteer has a vastly differing capacity to give of their self and so while their contribution relative to those around them might seem less it's actually just as much given their capacity.

But here's the deal: we are volunteers in All Hands. No creature comforts, no white napkin meals, no pressurized hot/cold showers. No golf packages. We are all here knowing these things and so it seems exceedingly logical that we are all here not only to help but also to put ourself in a situation where we are forced to get outside our comfort zone. To stretch our limits, to push at the edges of our envelope and see what comes of it in the hopes that we will discover new things about ourselves.

And hence, it dawns on me, is the truth in the oft observed statement that volunteering can be an act that gives more to the volunteer than to the 'voluntee'.

From there it's easy to see the best solution to the original problem. We came here because there was the invitation to stretch ourselves. Once here it can be easy to lose sight of the original intent - especially for those that stay for longer than a few weeks. The pungency of this place begins to wear off. Our old demons begin to find their niche in this new market. Our old thought patterns can begin gaining a foothold and dragging at us.

Wake up! Keep a beginner's mind! Reconnect to your intention - recollect the original invitation open to you as volunteers with All Hands! Strive to give beyond the capacity you think you can give. Do it today. Do it right now. It is, after all, quite likely why you have interrupted your comfy lives and spent your hard earned dollars or yen or euros to come here.

If you have reached the edge of your endurance for this work and find yourself doing a bit of hiding instead of helping, or you are just plain old tired of pushing at your envelope, then perhaps it's time to move over and let someone else have the opportunity to take a crack at it. There's no shame in this: you've fulfilled your quest to find your limits and push, tear, and pry at them so that they might expand. You have succeeded at something that many people find very frightening! You can return to your home, your friends, your loved ones with head held high and the confidence that you have made a significant improvement in the world: both in Haiti and in your heart.

That's what I should stand and deliver as a meeting note.

The next item on the agenda: should I be here doing this? Should I be here and not in, say, New Orleans. Or somewhere more...deserving? I can't imagine how I would determine how deserving an area or country or people are for aide. One person I've talked with expressed it like this: "Look, we are here...what does it matter if we should be here? We want to be doing this for these people. Look around: there is certainly a need for what we are doing. So do it."

Now, there's a couple of troublesome points to that statement: Shouldn't we always be evaluating 'if we should be here'? But then that leads down the path of deserving vs not deserving. I suppose that means the question must be answered one way or another - it will not be denied attention.

Also, there is a lot of selfishness in that statement. "I'm gonna do it not because it's helping anyone or it's good for (xyz) but because I want to."

Is that a form of evil wrapped up with a pretty bow? It's such a short hop from that to dictatorship. "I know what's good for the people and by hook or by crook they will accept what I'm handing out." Not that I've met any dictators, but American Version of World History tells me that they are/were all poops.

Yet for all the obvious difficulties with the statement of my friend, there are some basically good concepts in there as well. There is without a doubt a terrible need for some support to get this region back on it's feet. Nobody can doubt it if they come here. Some of our Local Volunteers were living in tent city's (called IDP Camps (IDP: Internally Displaced Person)). The 3-4 feet of flooding that Tomas brought down on Leogane wiped them out: the last of their clothing is now gone. For one the tent just floated away and all they have is a pile of sticks from which to rebuild some sort of shelter.

So what if some folks in the world don't think we are doing any good by being of service to people in need? What would those people have us do? Leave the area and let the folks die in the streets from hunger, cholera, floodwaters, and earthquakes? Are these same naysayers really saying "Don't do it for THEM, do it for US!"? Wouldn't the world be a better place if we worked as though it was all US rather than THEM and US? I've asked it before and it seems appropriate to ask it again: where does US and THEM begin and end? Across the street? Across the mountains? Across the ocean? Across a language? A dialect? A type of slang?

Finally, I just don't see how it can be a bad thing to be here struggling against a problem that is going on in the world. We are here, at ground zero (to borrow a term), removing the rubble, building the schools, helping recreate some of the infrastructure that was lost. If it wasn't for people that got off their bums and dove in hell bent for leather then we wouldn't have many of the wonderful things we do have in the world. Motorcycles to bridges, silverware to velcro, freedom of speech to desegregation. They are all born of someone's passion and willingness to get down to the brass tacks despite the status quo. Is it possible to have something of such grandeur without first having someone with the passion to do it despite what roadblocks may be out there?

It's all very confusing and even now as I sit here I thought I'd gotten it all worked out in head, but instead of a clear and concise series of paragraphs I'm wallowing all over the page. Back to the land of confusion and uncertainty.

Finally, one last almost trivial item then I'll let you rest your eyeballs. I just went on break. I take my required 3-nights-off-base breaks beginning on Wednesday for a very specific reason: Sunday's are our one day off at the base. Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night...return late on Saturday...have Sunday off.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that this past Thursday was a Haitian holiday and the decision had been made at the base to move our day off from Sunday to Thursday! So Sunday is a work day. Why was this not hashed out well in advance of the day before the holiday? Was the holiday a sudden event? Nope, I checked...it's a day like our 4th of July celebrating an event that happened in the early 1800's...so the holiday was not suddenly sprung upon the All Hands leadership. I can't fathom why such a seemingly simple thing as setting out the days off for holidays can be so trying that a group of people with college degrees can't come up with a schedule somewhere further out than 12 hours before the events begin...and in the same breath take away one of my day's off, dagnabbit! ('cause as you know it's really all about ME!)

Anyone wanna field that one? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

:)
I'm out.