After much organisation with Maidstone council, I finally had my street collection permit for Saturday 20th August 2011. So, it was finally time to hit the streets of Maidstone armed with collection buckets, VSO balloons, leaflets and my VSO charity sign for advertisement.
It was quite daunting as id never done anything like this before, but once a few members of the public came and spoke to me about the charity and offered their donations, all my fears disappeared. It was a great experience overall. It gave me a chance to speak to locals about what I was doing and they often shared stories of friends doing similar work, or offered their best wishes for the coming months.
I have to say my only enemies for the day were myself, managing to fall down the stairs with my collection bucket in the middle of McDonalds! And the wasps, who seemed to love my green Global xchange t-shirt and orange balloons SO MUCH that they kindly attacked me all day! I vaguely recall dropping my signpost at one point about to do a runner down the high street away from one over friendly so and so!
But what an enjoyable day overall! AND most importantly, I was incredibly pleased to have raised £82.21 for VSO!!! Thankyou Maidstone town centre!!! And a big thanks to Alan and my folks for supporting me on the day :)
So there I was back in my old hometown of London, but more than ever, looking like a tourist with my map to find the training venue! Thought I did quite well, but didn’t realise the biggest challenge would be getting in the gate! After walking round the estate next to it thinking “there must be an easier way in!” i realised I was being a complete doughnut when I saw a girl simply buzz herself through. Whoops! I'll just skip in behind then!
I’ll never forget approaching reception and seeing a sea of faces all drinking and socialising to my left- “oh dear lord, is that the other GX volunteers? There’s so many! And great, I’m late, weldone Eden!” Those initial fears were soon put to rest though when I realised what a lovely bunch they all were. Everyone was extremely friendly and just excited to know who you were, what you do, where your from- and more importantly….‘Are you going to the same destination as me!?’
‘Mingle mingle mingle’ was our first icebreaker game that night. We had to wander round the garden mumbling ‘mingle mingle mingle mingle mingle’ (felt like a complete numpty at that point may I add!) and when a number was called out, we'd have to get into groups of that size and find three things we all had in common. Aside from being volunteers, it was surprisingly difficult. People were from all different backgrounds, were from all areas of the country (infact, a few had travelled to UK especially), some had been to university, some had volunteered overseas for extended periods, others had never been abroad. These icebreakers continued all weekend and became a nice way that we all bonded and became friends. It was a really nice part of the weekend to break up the more serious parts of the training about international development, cultural awareness, the millennium goals and health and safety whilst overseas.
Our culture can sound incredibly peculiar too!
So heres a couple of descriptions we were given about a culture. The idea was to guess what culture or group of people they may be about.
“They have a ritual involving the use of certain garments, only worn in certain seasons. The robing and disrobing of this garment and the timing of this, has a great cultural significance in the hospitality ritual.”
For some reason I guessed Mongolia, but no this is us in the UK!
“Almost the entire population is addicted to a plant substance which they drink with water and other animal or plant substances. They speak openly about this addiction apparently without shame, and have evolved certain rituals around its use.”
Again, I guessed a group from the Amazon. But its actually the UK with our tea drinking obsession!
Getting the balance of learning and doing
We carried out a little role play where half of the group acted as villagers in a foreign country, pretending to was their clothes, nurse their child and just sitting watching passers-by. The other half of the group came in as volunteers asking probing questions about the culture, trying to learn more about them. This method can come across incredibly pushy, nosey and unfriendly making people feel uncomfortable in their own home. We can learn more from participant observation, something we actually learnt from Malinowski's in social anthropology. Participant observation is a mode of being in the social world which allows us to ‘do’ and ‘learn.’ We can gain a close and intimate familiarity with a given group of individuals (such as a religious, occupational, or sub cultural group, or a particular community) and their practices through an intensive involvement with people in their natural environment, usually over an extended period of time.
Don’t touch cute furry animals!
Our Health and safety talk about getting diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, Giardiasis, hepatitis A and B and Rabis in all honesty freaked a lot of us out. Particularly the description of how Rabbis sets in! So even though I'm the biggest animal lover, I will be avoiding all cute furry animals and will not accept pharmacists answer of “Sorry, the suppliers are all out of the Rabies vaccine!” I will track it down!
My favorite moments of the GX weekend
My personal favourite moments of the weekend were the ‘Oliver’ style dinners, where we all sat on long bench tables having our supper. I half expected someone to say ‘Please sir can we have some more’- but if they did, it was only because the food was so damn good! I thought the bunk beds in our rooms were a nice touch. I’ve always wanted a sister to share my room with being mainly on my own so having Chantal, Angelina and Clara as roomies for the weekend was great! The secret friend idea by the GX coordinators was brilliant. We all had to pick a name out of the hat and that person became our secret friend whom we had to do nice things for over the weekend. At that point we were all sat in a circle facing one another and didn’t yet know each others names. So, there was a moment it seemed everyone was looking at their named paper and squinting to read everybody’s name badges to work out who theirs was! I decided to deliver a milky bar to my secret friends room and leg it just incase they were in. Still have no clue who mine was, as a few nice things were done over the weekend, all equally lovely, but I did enjoy that Cadburys dairy milk!
The final task we did over the weekend, was to write on a sticky note a piece of advice we may give to another volunteer whilst they are on their 6 month placement, which we dropped in a bucket, mixed up and then selected a note back out to read to the group. The piece I read out was to get our family to write us a letter before we leave and take with us, so that when times get hard while we are away, we can read it and feel comforted. I had written “Don’t worry, when times get hard, speak to your GX family, we all here to support one another, and are experiencing it together.” But my personal favorite that was read out was “Don’t worry, you wont catch rabbis!”
Final thoughts
The GX training was rewarding in so many ways. For me, it put what I learnt on my degree into practise, its probably helped develop my communication skills in group settings, emphasised how rewarding it can be to share experiences with others, and be more confident in telling people about myself. And I’m sure there will be plenty more of this to come!
