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5 Things I Learned While Volunteering Abroad
For the past 2.5 years, I have been travelling to a number of countries as a volunteer. After coming to Morocco for the first time in 2017, then travelling to Uganda in 2018, I started reminiscing the trips I had done in the past. I wondered, what is it exactly that I gained from these? What have I taken back home with me from each country? What are the things that I learned while volunteering? I realised that I cannot help everyone When you are surrounded by poverty, you can feel powerless. Imagine being in a Ugandan slum seeing children sniff gasoline out of plastic bottles to get their high. Imagine teaching women English and French, but knowing you cannot stay longer than a month because you have responsibilities back home, even though you would want to stay for years. Imagine having to keep politely saying no to those who ask for a bit of money, because if…
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Mosaic of Voices
One of the greatest parts of volunteering internationally is the variety of people I meet every day. Last Saturday, Emilie, a fellow volunteer, and I, went to a poetry event to support our friend Merna who read her poems on that evening. Merna kindly agreed to share her heartfelt and touching poem with me to further share it with the readers of Years of Change. This mosaic of voices weaves together segments of poems written by different participants in the Stories of Arrival: Refugee and Immigrant Youth Voices Poetry Project from the past eight years. Project founder, co-director and teaching poet, Merna Ann Hecht, wanted to create a piece that would speak to our present time of forced migrations, to honor the voices of young refugees and immigrants and to remind people that while every individual story matters, there are shared elements to each person’s migration story–the having to leave home in order to survive–these young voices tell that story. Merna is…
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Athens: The First Days
As I described it in the previous post, my trip to Athens started off quite peculiarly. This post will take you through a day-by-day journal of my first few days in Athens. Thursday, November 1st. It’s 3 AM. You’d think I’d have a hard time waking up or being motivated to leave, but quite the contrary. I take a taxi, arrive at 4:15 AM and at 4:30 I’m sitting at the cafe passed the gates with my laptop out. Similarly to working in a hotel, there’s something motivating about being in an airport this early in the morning. It’s almost like the rest of the world is asleep, so being awake makes you twice as productive. I write a couple more articles, polish the documents I’m sending my supervisor in Morocco, and soon enough it’s time to board the plane. I arrive in Athens at 10 AM. Getting out of the aeroplane to 27 degrees and the blazing sun instantly…
