Amy Adoyzie

An open letter to fellow volunteers,

This is a letter for all fellow volunteers who, like myself, grew up in the relative comfort of a developed nation. This is for those of you who decided to forgo the luxuries and little things taken for granted, like 24-hour fast food drive-thrus and democracy, of your native country to fulfill an altruistic quest for the betterment of mankind. This one is to remind us of the privilege we have and the responsibilities that are inextricably attached to it.

But, to be frank, this is mostly so I can vent.

Because even if we all carry the same passports, we don’t carry the same stories. While we work overtime to exercise cultural sensitivity with the people we serve, sometimes we forget to offer that same courtesy to fellow volunteers. That’s why I’m asking (and its not just a personal favor to me because it could help you out) that you may extend your assumed ability to connect cross-culturally with your own colleagues.
Because even if you and I came from the same place geographically, we didn’t leave the same circumstances and history behind.
Because even if our shared home country celebrates diversity and promotes multiculturalism, people of color are still seen as the other back home and abroad.
Because even if you and I were born and raised in the same country, I wonder how often people ask you, “No, where are you really from?”

Now, take a moment, empathize. I know you have this ability, or else you wouldn’t be doing volunteer work, but this time try empathizing with the people with whom you share your offices. This is for future reference, because sometimes we have one those days.
Those days where seemingly nothing goes right, where you lament what you left behind and how there’s nothing to look forward to, where you just need to whine and vent because words are all you have. You have those days, I have those days. We need them.
We need them because they are superficial and hollow refuges where we can let sad and sorry sentences escape us and dissipate into the air the second they are spoken. Somehow letting those words and ideas float into the space of conversation makes us feel better. It’s a simple exercise that hurts no one and puts us at ease.

Give me that moment. Give me a few minutes to exhume this existential crisis that consumes me every now and again, to shed some light on my worth as a volunteer. Let me ask the question, “I wonder how much we make per hour?” Let me do the math and figure it out to be less than $2 an hour. Let me have this fleeting moment of inconsequential self-pity.
I know that I chose this, I wanted this, this was a path that I decided to walk down. I know this. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t have times where I ponder the ramifications of my career choices. Let me have these questions without making me feel like a whiny asshole. Let me have these uncomfortable questions and answers without you, trotting in on your high horse, dismissively saying, “Yeah, but, think about the cost of living.”

Think about the cost of living.
It’s simple to just think of the cost of living when you don’t have to worry about money, while you’re living abroad or after you’ve returned home. It’s easy to think about it because the act of thinking about it doesn’t make you nauseas with worry and you don’t drown in anxiety after realizing that you’re approaching 30-years-old with an empty savings account. It simple to think about the cost of living when you’re not haunted with tens of thousands of dollars of student loans that you had to defer because you’re too poor to pay them back presently. It’s painless to think about the cost of living when the people who brought you into this world do not have an acute awareness about the actual, sincere price of life- having survived a war, having to live through the inhumanity of others, having nothing.
When I think of the cost of living, I think about how disappointed my folks are. How they’ve struggled in working-class purgatory, devoting their lives to our future so that we wouldn’t have to toil in factories or food service industry jobs. How I had it, a firm grasp on the American Dream, an office job where my entry-level salary matched the salary that my father was finally earning after almost 20 years of being a machine operator. How I gave it up.
When I think of the cost of living, I think about how my folks picked a fight with me days before I left for Bangladesh. How they wouldn’t speak to me because they were insulted that I abandoned their dreams, thereby negating what they’ve worked for their entire lives. How it isn’t that my working-class folks don’t believe in altruism, they just can’t afford it because nothing in life is free but for some deranged reason I’ve chosen to work for very little money. How hurtful it must be when your kid insinuates that pay stubs are not the be all and end all of existence and you’ve spent the last 30 years breaking your back for those slips of paper.

You think I ought to consider the cost of living? You don’t think I already have?
Yep, the cost of living in Bangladesh is minimal. I’ve thought about it.
I’ve also thought about the cost I’ve incurred before arriving here, while here and after I leave. That cost is beyond dollars, yuans, takas and exchange rates.
That cost lies deep inside stories of the past that my parents won’t tell me and swells beneath their chests.
I’ve thought about it.
Have you?