Sunday, tried to stay out of the heat,we had another friend (American) come to stay on her way through to Zanzibar. Good to chill. Um...what else..had a guy with glue sniffing fogged eyes getting angry that us 3 wouldn't look at his store..sigh. Ate street chicken...mm street chicken.
The wife and I love to catch up with other vollies. To see how our experiences compare. And its facinating to me how the stories I hear-despite our different backgrounds, places of work etc-do seem to follow a script:
1)-Volunteer comes in with good ideas about what they want to achieve
2)-Volunteer meets resistance, realise some members of the community/job staff have vested interests in keeping things the way they are
3) Volunteer hits rock bottom. They realises just how little the influential people who should care here actually do care about what you are both trying to achieve. Worse, a volunteer may uncover corruption, graft,crime, abuse and criminal neglect going on in your job/community...this is the pivotal moment where the volunteer's true character and the quality of their emotional support systems are revealed... can they detach? do they despair? drink into a stupor? get on with the job? or do they just want out? A person either give up at this point or resigns themselves to just doing what small gains they can and keeps pushing.
5)volunteer gets to the finish line that little bit older/wearier/wiser, hopefully having done a little bit of good.
I've heard variations on the above over and over. It doesn't apply to my experience of course though. Mine is more like:
-Manfred agrees to help train a friend do an exhibition bout with a massive Soviet boxer
-Soviet boxer kills friend in the ring
-Manfred swears revenge and undergoes a training montage (including mountain climbing) preparing for a do or die final battle with the Russian
No wait, that't the plot to Rocky 4....where was I?
ah...I'm just going to mentally run Rocky music through my head now...
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