I believe many volunteers around the world undertake these volunteer experiences hoping that we will "make a difference". I know I did, and I think Rebecca did also, but I will let her speak to that if she chooses. And it is indeed a nebulous concept. I know that I have never known what to "make a difference" would "look like". It is something I have sought since I was a teenager. I remember Mother Teresa, and looked up to her as someone I believed made a difference in the world, and I also knew I would never be another Mother Teresa-like role model. So I never followed that instinct in me to go out into the larger and unknown world and find the meaning for me of what it means to "make a difference", until now.
During my short time here, I have wondered if anything I do here will make a difference; am I providing something measurable?
I don't have an answer to this question at this time. I/we still struggle with the question of what to do at Hope Village. We really want to go there and spend time with the children helping them with their English, and we know that our time now is very limited (a very short 2 weeks). We look at the cost and weigh how much the money could benefit them, and would that make a more measurable contribution than our presence for 10 days? and what about the children we are teaching at Kilimanjaro Orphanage? Will we have contributed anything sustainable to their future? I have learned that while 4 weeks felt like a really long time when we were still back at home, it is very little time when you are here hoping to "make a difference" in the life of a child. How much English can we teach them in 4 weeks? Will anyone take our place when we leave, to continue the work we started?
And then there is the BIG question (and I wondered this even before we set foot in Tanzania): will we have done more harm than good? We develop a relationship with these amazing children who have already suffered so much, and then we leave them. What do they think? do they question why? do they wonder if THEY did something WRONG that causes people to leave them? Do they think that people abandon them because they are bad? I know from experience, and my training as a social worker, that children take the blame for things that happen to them, and internalize experiences as some how being their fault. I hate to think that "our" kids will wonder what they did that caused us to leave them. They have already lost parents, grandparents, and siblings, and their home. More questions with no answers.
On our first day at KOC we were asked if we wanted to "teach or be free". We didn't really understand the question and we certainly had no idea what being "free" meant, as we had no idea what there was to do besides teach. So we said we wanted to be free, thinking that meant we could be free to decide what we wanted to do each day. But on the second day, other volunteers showed up. We were already teaching, and they were assigned to clean the outdoor pit toilets and prepare food for lunch. If that was what it meant to be "free", we quickly decided we would teach. I questioned if that was the best use of a volunteer's time? They have 3 women there who do the cleaning and food preparation. If they have too many volunteers that they must assign some to chores, maybe volunteers should be placed elsewhere (they were later reassigned to another volunteer project, and they were not there with our NGO, Foot 2 Afrika). Hopefully the NGOs bring volunteers to the country who have a skill that can be utilized, something that when the volunteer leaves, something sustainable will be left behind. If it makes me a horrible person to say that cleaning toilets or cutting up fruit for lunch is not what I had in mind when I traveled half-way around the world, to "make a difference", then so be it, I am a horrible person, guilty as charged.
So it is difficult to know if what we do here will indeed make a difference. I know that if I return here, it will be for a longer time than one month. I am already trying to figure a way to extend, but my non-refundable air plane ticket makes that highly unlikely. But a month is a very short time when what you hope to do is influence a child's life, to prepare them for an uncertain future, to give them a basic understanding of the English language to better prepare them for Secondary school (where they will be required to learn in a language they were not taught in Primary school).
One person cannot save the world, or an entire country, and that has never been my goal, neither to save or change the people of Tanzania. That would be quite pretentious of me anyway, to think that I know better. But I do believe that, little by little, or inch by inch, the work of a few, or even of one, can have a ripple effect around the world. Perhaps if I touch one life, perhaps inspire or fuel a desire to learn, I will in fact, have "made a difference."
Asante sana.
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