Foreign volunteers – local community (them and us?)

Keep coming across the phenomenon of foreign volunteers who came/come to Sri Lanka with worthy intentions but who end up being part of a ‘them’ and ‘us’ culture. Feels a bit like that sometimes for me and Karen and it’s difficult to know what to do about it. Although we’re working in a local NGO and therefore working alongside Sri Lankans, it’s proved harder than I expected to feel ‘part of the team’.

Partly there is a language barrier and we’ve been doing weekly English lessons for the staff in the office to try and break that down a bit, which seems to be appreciated – people seem to be more confident about talking to us now and it’s helped to break the ice a bit, which is good. But there is also a cultural gap – there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of ‘social life’ here so it’s difficult to get to know people. It’s magnified by the fact that men and women seem to live very separate lives (unless they’re married) so the concept of going out as a group is alien. Speaking to a fellow volunteer based further inland was interesting – he’s regularly invited to drinking sessions with music and chat ‘with the lads’.

I also think our accommodation contributes to feeling like we’re not getting to know the real community – the guest house is lovely and it feels very much like home, but we’re definitely sheltered there and have a lot more in the way of home comforts (access to internet, satellite TV, hot water, personal space, varied meals etc) than we would if we were staying in a family home, or in self catering. Of course, it’s made settling in a whole lot easier than it might otherwise have been but it does feel a bit strange and not quite what I was expecting.

Avoiding illegal alien status

After a bit of a palaver getting an ‘entry visa’ before we came out here, we were meant to be converting this to a ‘residence visa’ (as advised by various sources). It turned out when we got here that we would need original birth certificates, degree certificates, maybe police reports and all sorts of other bits and pieces, and would have to get about 18 bits of paper signed by a multitude of government departments before we could get our visa. For a variety of reasons, which I won’t go into, the whole thing got left too late, at which point someone else advised us that we could simply get an extended visit visa, which would see us through the 3 months of our placements here. It all sounded like a much simpler process – and hurrah, that’s how it turned out.

An early start at the immigration department – we were there before 8am and managed to beat most of the crowds – meant we got our forms filled in, dodgy passport photos taken and forms signed, countersigned and approved – all within the space of 90 minutes. Apparently this is unheard of in the immigration department, where the typical experience seems to be of all day sessions of hanging around while officials go into impromptu meetings, forms disappear into a mysterious vacuum before being signed and churned back out, and people tell you to join queue A, queue A tells you to join queue B, queue B tells you to join queue C – etc etc, you get the picture!

Teaching English for real!

Has been great to start putting my TEFL learning to the test – doing real-life teaching in a completely different culture, with nobody telling you what level people are at or how to teach them, and very few resources to use is quite different from doing the training course! I won’t go into too much techy TEFL detail but I had a definite sense of achievement when I managed to teach some fairly tricky grammar points by successfully winging it!

Before I left Scotland, I’d applied for a job teaching Business English in Romania and ended up having the interview for that over Skype in an internet café here one evening. Was good experience to have the interview and much to my surprise, I got offered the job (really wasn’t expecting that!). Flattering and tempting but have decided to turn it down as not really sure I want to commit to a year in Romania – plus Kevin and I are continuing to look at various other options so until we’re a bit clearer about all of that, I will just hang fire and wait to see what happens next. Nice to be wanted though!

Pride

Had an uncomfortable experience on recent trip up to Hill Country. As we were driving back down towards Colombo, a teenage boy appeared at the roadside, waving a bunch of flowers at our van – trying to tempt our interest and get a sale. None of us was in the market for flowers so we just smiled and carried on.

A few minutes later, he appeared at the roadside again – the road was winding down through the hills and he had a short cut down from one part to another, so was able to catch up with the van. Again, we smiled and carried on – as we hadn’t suddenly decided that the very thing we needed was a bunch of flowers.

He was persistent though and the same thing happened a few minutes later, and then again another few minutes later. This time, one of our group decided to give him some money for his efforts so the van slowed down and he rolled down the window and tried to hand over a few rupees while saying ‘I don’t want the flowers but here’s some money for you’.

The boy wouldn’t take the money – either he wanted a sale and was offended at being given a donation, or he wanted a donation but was offended at the amount being offered (I suspect the former). Our group member then kind of threw the money at him and our driver sped up and off we went. It was a pretty uncomfortable sight and the boy was even more offended after this (not surprisingly). As we continued down the road, he popped up another couple of times after running like the wind down his short cuts and threw the money back at the van, making his point quite effectively.

The joy of planning

Well, a month in, and things are looking up at my NGO – slowly but surely, some objectives for the future are beginning to crystallise and I can almost smell the strategic plan forming! It’s been a difficult first month as patience is not my strong point and I’ve felt, at points, as though I’m wasting my time, but now I’m feeling much more motivated.

Heavens above…

Most amazing thunder and lightening the other night – woke up about 5am with a HUGE crashing and rumbling and sheet lightening flashing through my window. It was really sticky and close the day before so we’d known that rain was due, but the sheer force of the storm was breathtaking. Went out onto balcony in the pre-dawn light to see the rain and it was like standing underneath a waterfall, watching it crash down in front of me. Incredible. Even more incredible to get up a few hours later and find the streets almost completely dry again!