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Thoughts Before Leaving For Honduras
“What can you do in only a week?”
[After boarding my flight tonight, I am going to be in Honduras until next Monday with a group of thirty-plus volunteers from Global Medical Brigades flying down to provide basic health care, supplies, and education to Honduran villagers.]
I got asked this question after talking excitedly about participating in GMB’s efforts. Volunteering abroad has been something that I’ve been interested in doing for a while, in part to contribute to worthwhile causes, but mainly to learn. I look at these experiences as great learning opportunities, and so when I got asked that question, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty, thinking that maybe I wasn’t doing enough. Instead of staying one week, I should stay ten. Or twenty. Or, hell, just stay for years.
I told one of my good friends about this question and its potency on me. Her response: “Everything we do has to be for ourselves first. If you can help someone else in the process, that’s even better.”
I went home thinking about the nature of volunteerism and when a volunteer can consider their contribution enough (or I suppose, not too deeply lacking). Most of the time, I feel as if it’s never enough. But at the same time, I have myself to work on as well.
Currently, I serve as a volunteer medic at the Berkeley Free Clinic one to two nights a week. I’ve joined groups to build houses in Mexico. I’ve served sandwiches on Skid Row. Each experience has taught me something about compassion and simplicity and giving and frustration and inequality and insufficience.
I am grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to participate in each; I’m glad I was a part of each.
This year, I am devoting 1 week to Honduran villagers and 51 to myself, but I hope that my contribution is still worthwhile.
