This is my third time volunteering with Hands On on their disaster relief projects and one thing has become clear to me in this time: I’m not interested in being a leader. I’ve successfully sidestepped any responsibility or leadership roles since Bangladesh back in January 2008. As you become a regular volunteer though, you inevitably get on the radar of the people who run the show and sticking to the grunt work I love so much and avoiding leading projects becomes harder and harder.

But when I was asked last week to co-lead a team on a satellite project, I couldn’t scam my way out of it. I accepted and spent last week living in a temporary village made up of people displaced by landslides. Their entire village has been wiped out and a whole bunch of displaced people are waiting for construction to finish on their new homes in wooden longhouses. They’re expected to be there for up to two years and Hands On were brought in by an Indonesian NGO called People in Need to help set up a guttering system to catch the rain so that people here will have water. A Czech NGO are also going to be setting up latrines and we will be participating in that program too once it gets going.

The community was great. We had plenty of helpers, many who seemed to be over 100, and most who could saw like… well, something that saws really well. Our team had six volunteers from HODR and we were helped by three guys from People in Need who let us do our own thing and figure things out as we went. We’re expecting to play a big role in the rain water program so being able to work things out on our own and figure out the best way to do things will help down the road when we’re doing it all ourselves.

Our team was great, the work was slow but fun and the only thing I can think of complaining about is the lack of toilets and having to slog it down a slippery hill in the pouring rain anytime the moment took me. Did I mention I have been having a dodgy tummy lately? I will let you work out for yourselves how much of an ordeal the toilet situation was for me but, thinking about it now, the whole thing was pretty funny.

The other thing to complain about is the massive amounts of durian located in this part of the world. The things were dropping from the trees. Motorbike were loaded up with them and parked on the paths. The market stalls in town seemed to sell nothing but this terrible excuse for food. The locals offered us a durian about 10 times per day and some of them found their way into our room on occasion. They are foul, horrible things. They don’t smell as bad as I expected them to but the insides look like fetuses, the outside is spiky and painful and the taste and texture is gag-inducing after only a small bite. But eating durian was something I had on my list and I’m happy to check it off and never, ever let that evil fruit darken my doorstep again.

Escaping the durian was easier said that done, though. After spending two days working on the rain catchment systems we waited on the third day for the latrine project people to show up. They were supposed to show up the previous day but didn’t and now, they had stood us up again. They eventually arrived at 1pm on Thursday but they had no materials and weren’t ready for us to get some work done. We had been calling home for a pickup for the two hour journey back to our base since 10am but the phone networks were inconveniently down for four hours that day. So we sat around on day three avoiding offers of durian, peeing in the woods, chatting, and admiring our new rain gutters. After about 10 minutes of that we were bored and were desperate to leave but we were stranded.

By about 6pm we were on our way home having had a great first two days, a frustrating third day and in need of showers and a good meal. Overall it was a great experience and I’m looking forward to heading back from time to time over the coming months. I’m still not too into the whole leadership thing but somebody needs to take these roles on and it’s about time I step up for once.

Down with durian!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS