Hello my friends,
Thank you all so much for your kind words about my vote of thanks speech which I delivered at the Swear-In Ceremony last month. It was a fun experience for me to go up in front of everyone and speak in a different language.
I have been officially volunteering full-time in my community and surrounding villages for about the past month. I’m really enjoying the people that I get to interact with on a daily basis. They have been extremely kind and welcoming to me. Even though I trained and observed the organization that I will be working with for about a three-month period, I had no idea what to expect as I embarked into volunteering full-time.
In a subtle and natural manner, the Non-Government Organization (NGO), which I do work with, eased me into functioning as a regular member of their staff. During the first week, they strongly encouraged me to present my ideas in planning for upcoming events and activities. Also, they utilized my administrative skills by having me write up a project plan and a budget proposal for an upcoming event. One of the staff members informed me that the organization is going to use my plan and proposal as templates for all future projects. I felt very humbled when they notified me of this. The NGO completely revamped its mission and philosophy in the past few months so writing these “new” project plans and budget proposals is different for all the staff members. I did nothing special in writing the plan and proposal but it’s cool that they want to use my work as a guide for future endeavors.
I still get along really well with my point person at the NGO too. He’s become a very close friend to me. Rickey was born and raised in one of the hamlets of the Carib Reserve called Sineku which is within four miles of my village. He and I have a lot in common so it is really easy to work alongside each other. He’s taught me tons of information about Cricket, which is the most popular sport in the West Indies. I met his entire family at an event and they all exhibited immense kindness. His daughter looks just like one of my good friends from Madison, Ana Hoffman. When Rickey first introduced me to his daughter, I had to look at her twice as I actually thought that it was Ana for a brief moment.
I just became a vegetarian again for moral/spiritual reasons. Rickey thoroughly enjoys this fact that I do not eat animal protein because when we get free food at meetings or events he gets double the amount of meat. He told me that he’s my biggest supporter in abstaining from eating animals.
An interesting thing about the volunteer work I am doing is that I will have the opportunity to work with children and young adults from fourteen different communities on the east coast. Obviously, it will definitely be a challenge to get to know everyone’s names initially. However, I do have lots of life experience in getting to know large groups of people’s names. Whether I was coaching over 100 swimmers at West Side Swim Club in Madison or interning in the Guest Services department of the Houston Astros where I got to know over 250 part-time staff workers, I always have tried my best to get to know each person individually. This situation may be more challenging because I may not get to see all these people on a regular basis as I did at West Side Swim Club and at Houston.
Besides doing work in the office, I have really taken pleasure in the activities that I do with the NGO. On one of the weekends, I traveled to the only white-sand beach on the east coast for an event put on by the NGO for preschool children. The event was tons of fun as we ran games and activities for the children throughout the entire day. I played in the sand and ocean with many of the children which reminded me of the wonderful times I had working as a swim team coach/lifeguard at West Side Swim Club.
The NGO planned a four day leadership conference for young adults to attend. Their intentions with holding the sessions were to get the young adults to start thinking about being active leaders in their communities and to get people from separate communities to network with one another. My point person asked me if I would be comfortable in preparing and presenting the first two sessions on leadership and self-esteem. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity! I was thrilled that they wanted to use my knowledge and skills in making the conference a success. The young adults were comprised of people from the fourteen different villages in our region. Each presentation was scheduled to last between two and three hours long. The other two topics were team building and organizational structure which were led by professionals within the surrounding communities.
The sessions all went really well. I went in with the mentality to do my best in conveying the messages that I wanted to bring across and everything went smoothly. I had the intentions to assist the people in developing their own skills and knowledge about the topics being taught.
I personalized the topics with my own experiences that I presented which made the presentations go very well. For instance, I brought up one of my favorite books called The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz during the self-esteem session. Many of the students came up to me after the presentation asking more questions about the book. I brought a copy of the book with me to Dominica so I told them that they could borrow it.
I got to know some 16-25 year old guys from my community during this event too. On one day when I wasn’t presenting, I wore my LA Lakers shirt and dressed casually. As we waited in our village to be picked up by the transport, those guys and I spoke about the NBA and who we thought were going to win the championship. Being starved of talking American sports, I greatly enjoyed conversing about this topic. It was great to have this interest in common. Obviously, I talked some smack about their favorite teams.
One perfect moment from the sessions happened on the final day. The topic was organizational structure and one of the last things that the students had to do was get into groups and present a vision, mission statement, and objectives for their hypothetical youth groups. Even though I was not the presenter, I attempted to stay active. I walked around to each group to see how their projects were going. As I sat down with one of the groups, one of the guys from my village looked noticeably nervous. His group selected him to present their ideas in the front of the room. He asked me what my secret was to being a good public speaker. Understanding that I needed to play my role in the situation as an educator, I quickly told him that my secret was to make eye-contact and smile while presenting. He went up to the front of the room for his presentation and stared at me the entire time while smiling. His presentation ended in applause and I could just see his confidence levels boosting as he walked back to his seat. It almost makes me tear up just thinking about how simple conversations/words of advice have the potential to have an immense impact on someone’s life.
I’ve also done some volunteering at the primary school during the past few weeks. The primary school had two “free up” sports days to celebrate Easter. The teachers separated all the different students into teams which they called “houses” that they represented for the different events. They gave out medals to the winners of each event. On the first day, they had a cross country race through the village which I competed in against the children. The race was over three miles long so it was a great workout. The children and I had vastly different strategies. They would sprint for ten seconds and then walk for thirty seconds while I kept a nice and steady pace the entire time. Part of the race went up the steepest hill in my village which was quite treacherous. After the cross country race, the children then competed in cricket for the rest of the day. I skipped the first part of the cricket match as I walked to the Atlantic to cool off after the run.
They held another sports day which was tons of fun too. This time it was held at the playing field in Castle Bruce and the children competed in sprint track races. I ran against the grade six boys in the 100 meter sprint and got absolutely worked by one kid.
I got to know the children really well on these two days. We all really enjoyed hanging out during these events. I’m not sure what it is about me but for some reason children universally consider me a “natural” jungle gym. The students from my village are no exception as many of them constantly wanted to jump on me or get picked up. The kids really enjoy it so it’s all good with me. It reminded me of when I was teaching swim lessons at the pool and the kids would play a game called “attack Joey” where they would all chase after me in the water. When they would eventually get to me, they would then droop all over me until I went underneath so they felt like they brought me down. It’s interesting how even though I’m with children from a different culture that they exhibit the same behaviors around me.
Easter weekend was solid too. On Good Friday, I hiked just about an entire marathon. I walked over 20 miles from around 5AM to almost 7PM. I hiked the Waitukubuli Trail segment six through the Carib Territory with a youth group from Sineku. We all met up in Sineku at 6AM which is about four miles from where I live so I left my house around 5AM to get together with them. The trail was really intense while passing through the rainforest but had breathtaking views of the Atlantic Ocean. The waters in the Carib Territory are always rough so it is for sure not safe to swim in the Atlantic there but they are really neat to look at. I also got to walk by the Les Escalier Tete Chien rock formation again.
We walked about half of segment six and then went to the Concord River which was about three to four miles inland from the trail. We hung out at the river for about three hours. Many different sized boulders were hanging over the water that the people were using to jump off of as diving board substitutes. I climbed up and then launched myself off of a twenty-five foot boulder into the river. It was semi-safe because there was about a ten meter by ten meter area where the water depth was well over ten feet that people aim at when they jump off. All the people from our group watched me because it was my first time doing it. I was anxious as I leapt for the deep water pockets.
My Easter Sunday was pretty relaxed. I went to church with my host-family from 10AM to 2:30PM on Easter…yeah super-long. Afterwards, I went home to recuperate from the 4 ½ hour affair and I made some lunch. I called my mom to wish her a Happy Easter too. It was nice to speak with her!
I had a phenomenal Monday after Easter. I woke up around 5AM and went on a long jog. My legs felt as fresh as ever because I had taken both Saturday and Sunday off from exercising following the “marathon” hike from Friday. After running and stretching, I hand washed my clothes for about an hour. I felt so productive as it wasn’t even 8:30AM and I had already done all these things.
Around noon, I walked to the sports field where I knew a community-wide sports day was happening. They had buses of people shipped from the entire east coast of the island to come to the Castle Bruce sports field. Music blared out of speakers while food was being sold at the shelter next to the field. On the way there, three boys I knew from the primary school walked with me as we were heading to the same event. Right as I got there, the event organizers were just about to start the races. A primary school boy and I finished in third place in the “wheel barrel” race where I held onto his legs while he propelled forward using his arms.
After watching some other races, I got in a conversation with a secondary school boy about ultimate frisbee. He had never heard of the game but said he enjoyed throwing around a “flying saucer” (what they call a frisbee down here). I quickly ran home to pick up my disc for us to play. As we started throwing to each other in the middle of the field, many other kids of all ages came over to us and asked if they could join. We had a group of about fifteen to twenty people throwing the disc around at any given time. It was so much fun. I taught many of the kids the correct way to throw the disc so that they would enjoy the experience more. We all played catch for almost two hours! It was so wonderful to recognize many children from school on the field.
I got in on some cricket action after throwing around the disc! It was my first time playing cricket. A bunch of the 12-15 year old boys were playing on the field and they badly wanted me to join which I, of course, was excited about. I must say, they were quite impressed with how fast I “bowled” to them.
After about 45 minutes of cricket, I was feeling pretty tired. The day was cloudless and the sun was shining bright. As I walked home around 3PM, I passed along the ocean. Individuals packed the beach and the music thundered through the air near the shoreline. Apparently, if people weren’t at the playing field, they were on the beach hanging out. Recognizing people I knew on the beach quickly revitalized me and made me want to join them. I ran home, applied sunscreen, put on the swim suit, and walked back to the beach. I figured even though I was hot, the cool water would feel great. I hung out with a bunch of secondary school kids out in the deeper waters where we had a good time letting the waves break on us. Also, I played with a ton of primary school children near the shore. They were impressed with my abilities to squirt water from my hands. After being in the sun for most of the day, I was exhausted and went to bed before 9PM.
For those of you who know a bit about the island of Dominica, I am planning on hiking the boiling lake trail this coming week. It leads to the second largest boiling lake on the entire planet. The hike is supposed to be the most grueling and intense one on this island. At one point during the boiling lake trek, there is a place called the “valley of desolation.” I suppose I will get to see why the land is so “desolate” in that area. I’m quite excited to embark on this quest.
I miss you all but I am having a wonderful time. Thanks again for your support and I hope all is well wherever you may be!
Until the next time,
Joe
No comments:
Post a Comment