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This morning, on my daily rickshaw ride to school, a familiar sensation sank from the front of my forehead down to the pit of my stomach. We were stuck between a rusty, dented bus brimming with passengers and darting golf-cart taxis, my rickshaw wallah was a middle-aged man with taut skin the color of coconut husks and draped in a graying dress shirt and lungi. He pedaled slowly, his over-sized tricycle pulling me along in a vacuum of car horns, men shouting, bicycle bells tinkling and an elderly man who stood on the road median and tossed up half a brick just to see it crumble when it crashed onto the pavement.
I breathed in deeply, sucking in polluted air to satisfy my lungs, and daydreamed eight hours ahead. “I can’t wait for 5:15,” I thought. Five-fifteen is when the school’s grey mini-van leaves its converted residential driveway to head to our home in the Panchliash neighborhood. I try to catch the 5PM shuttle everyday, but more often than not, I’m stuck in the 8PM ride instead. I hadn’t even arrived at work and I was already fantasizing about getting home.
It reminded me of when I used to sit in Los Angeles traffic heading south on the 101 to get to the TV studio lot where I was a New Media associate. I used to sit in my brand new jeweled maroon Toyota Corolla, bought with the salary I earned at the job that was an hour-long stop-and-go commute each way, and peered into the rear view mirror and through my dusty windshield to see where I was headed and what I had left behind. All I saw were cars, eeking forward, with human-like zombies behind the steering wheel.
This was where I was going, this was where I was stuck, and this is all there ever was.
“”Turn to the right, it was a wall,” The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. “Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there, trying to remember what it was I done and I ain’t recalled it to this day. Oncet in a while, I would think it was coming to me, but it never come.”
From Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
That sinking feeling that settled and rumbled inside my stomach was unwelcomed and unsettling. Had I really come to the other side of earth to wake up every morning wishing it was already the end of the day?
I’m fortunate though, because later this evening I will retreat back to the comfort that is beneath my dusty mosquito net. And months from now, I’ll be on a Boeing 747 rather than a rusty bicycle rickshaw. I get to go home.
But what will I leave behind? What about the people for whom this place is their home? What about that sinking that weighs my mind and body down? Will I carry it with me wherever I go, whatever I do? Will I ever be satisfied?
Is this where I am going? Is this where I am stuck? Is this all there ever will be?
Through happenstance, a friend of a friend contacted me discuss potential to find development work in these parts because she just completed a Master’s program in Gender, Development and Globalization. Holly owes a hefty sum, more than $50,000, in student loans and simply cannot afford to volunteer and needs to find work that will pay her a reasonable wage. This premise prompted a discussion about the inherent dilemma about volunteer work, something that is seldom explored within the NGO/volunteer community.
Holly was able to say precisely what I’ve been trying to articulate, but have never been able to put the ideas down so cogently as she had:
I certainly understand (and respect) your argument for volunteering, but after doing so for the bulk of my adult life (and happily so, in general) has left be somewhat embittered in many respects. Volunteering for the sake of volunteering is one thing, but NGOs systemically taking advantage of young workers and Interns desperate to get their foot in the door of their organization is another. I’ve been used, abused, and exploited by feminist organizations that I’d once respected. I’ve seen progressive orgs structured like old boy’s clubs, ageist and hierarchal management structures in women’s orgs that moralized against such policies, and nepotism abound in human rights orgs that espouse equal access to resources. That said, I will likely volunteer in some capacity for the rest of my life; my work simply needs to be financially valued as well in NGOs that can clearly afford to. It has nothing to do with greed or valuing a paycheck over pursuing my passion. For me they are one in the same.
You’re doing what you’re doing because of a passion for service (regardless of the “issue” you’re working on), but simultaneously are not feeling as valued as your gut tells you you should be.
Generally, it’s not about money, but because our world operates on a capitalist system we assign value based on how much something is worth in cash. Therefore when some organizations have volunteers (paid a living stipend) working alongside salaried employees (paid what they are worth) and you see a discrepancy in how they are treated based on the ingrained capitalist notions of worth- it’s bothersome to say the least.
I’m a volunteer for naive, altruistic reasons, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be respected for the work I perform.
Another 10-hour workday. Another $16. For the entire day.
Depending on how many hours we work over the weekend, on some workdays we may make as much as $20 because the hourly wage gets bumped up if we don’t work over the weekend too. (But that’s just wishful thinking.)
But when you’re a volunteer, these numbers mean jack, just like our stipend. The numbers are negligible–the hours, the stipend, the months in which we’ve suspended our lives back home. At least we’re away from the economic crisis that’s bringing our nation to its knees, right?
At least until this summer, when I go back.
My list of things I am not looking forward to upon my return to my glorious home country is short (and will likely expand one I settle back), and only consist of two concerns at the moment:
- the economy
- winter
“Why is the recession bad?” I may have expected this question from a student, but it was another teacher who asked me. I think she was confused because although we are going through a recession, she had yet to see the effects of it in your middle-class family.
“A recession means job losses. Lots of folks may lose their jobs.” I tried to explain the intricacies of our interlinking economy.
“But if you still have your job, you’re okay then, right?” Her folks are still employed in their white collar jobs.
“I guess. But for the people who don’t have jobs, they can’t make rent or pay their mortgages and stuff.” This was about a year ago, before the unemployment rates have shot up. I wasn’t aware of how severely interdependent the economy is. It isn’t just about if I have a job, or if my friends and family are still working. Regardless if its server at my favorite bar or the machine operator at the plastics manufacturing factory who loses their job, there are other jobs that are dependent on them being employed. If the server isn’t working, it’s because the bar is doing poor business, so maybe they have to cut the amount of beer and food they order. The beer supplier has to lay off folks because they’re not selling enough. The trucking company, that moves the beer from the factory to bars, has to lay off drivers because there aren’t enough deliveries to go around. Ad infinitum. It’s cyclical, and all these folks have to figure out how to pay for their shelter and foodstuff.
And this is the climate I’m returning to. Yipee.
The upside of unemployment when I return is that I’ll have plenty of time to ruminate about my soul-fulfilling/bank-account-emptying volunteer life abroad. Hurrah!
This is about 20,000 takas, which is the equivalent of $300 USD. Who says the dollar is weak?
Filed under: Big Bang, Music Junk, PDXcitement, Stuff I Miss, When I Grow Up
A few nights ago I had a dream, not the usual anxiety-ridden nightmares of standing in front of a class and having my lesson bomb into smithereens, nope this one was about work but didn’t make me grind my teeth so hard that I would wake up the next morning with a headache. Nah, this one was pleasant, in spite of the fact that it was retail.
I’ve been working since I was 16-years-old, my first job at a dry cleaners where it would get so hot and steamy that I’d come home with clumps of salt in my hair from sweating. There were also my forays into being a transcriptionist, movie extra, personal assistant in addition to all of my various stints into retail-dom. This was before I began my vague career, part of which sees me here in Bangladesh.
In all the things I’ve done to earn a living, my most favorite job has been at Green Noise Records. You really can’t beat rolling into work at noon to listen to records all day. In the dream I had the other night, it was just me standing behind the counter fiddling around on my Macbook and listening to some unpopular garage rock band, pricing records, reading magazines, generally just relaxing at work. Relaxing at work. Is that a paradox?
The best jobs are the ones where you don’t feel like it’s work.
Mrs. Cisneros’s second grade class planted the seed. It was 1988, George Bush (the first) was running against Michael Dukakis for a bedroom and office in the White House. We held an informal election in our small classroom after lunch at Margaret Duff elementary school and I eagerly raised my hand when Mrs. Cisneros called out Mr. Bush’s name, who won our class’s vote. Regardless of my party affiliation at age seven, I was emboldened with the magic of democracy- how 30-odd little hands could pick the next leader of the free world.
It made me believe.
Sounds like total hoo-ha, but it’s funny how unspoiled and so purely optimistic a kid can be. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would answer confidently, “The president.” As if there was any other choice. I wanted to be the first woman and/or Chinese-American chief executive. And it seemed possible.
Then I grew up.
I embodied all the synonyms for cynical (skeptical, disillusioned, jaded) and fit right in with other grown-up kids my age. We got drunk, recycled, ate fast food, gulped down fair trade coffee, drove around aimlessly, voted green, shouted curse words. But just below that hard shell laid that wide-eyed second grader.
Having the opportunity to live and travel abroad has given me a deep respect and appreciation for the red, white and blue. That palm-sized navy booklet is more than just pages filled with random stamps from developing nations- it’s my passport back to home and hope and all the imaginable achievements that I never thought I’d witness within my piddly lifetime. Just four years ago, the idea of people living on the moon within my lifetime seem more plausible than having a black American president- that’s how foreign the notion was to me.
And now I find myself, a first-generation American, having the honor of saying that another child of an immigrant, a person of color, is our country’s president. A man with a name of Barack Hussein Obama, no less.
And now the work begins and continues at the same time.
And now it seems possible all over again.
Filed under: Big Bang, Operation Engrish Prease, When I Grow Up, Writing Junk
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?
Two weeks ago, my students celebrated their one-year anticipatory departure date and I jokingly admonished them for their premature excitement. Which brings me to this date, August 1st. A year from now, I’ll be landing at the international terminal at LAX. Whoever is kind enough to pick me up will take me to In-N-Out as my first meal back to my beautiful, recession-marred, Obama-led, vapidly-consumerstic, comfortable United States of America.
Besides eating a grilled cheese sandwich at In-N-Out, I’m also planning on coming out of retirement for a few years. Ms. Adoyzie is getting old and she needs to earn money and receive health insurance coverage. I haven’t seen a proper doctor, dentist and optometrist in years.
I’d like to go on a date too, that’d be fun.
I don’t have lesson plans for classes next week, but I’ve already got things to do for a year from now:
1. In-N-Out
2. Job / Health Insurance
3. Dude(s)
My weak body has succumbed to the wrath of mucus, its coming from my lungs and nose. A restless uncomfortable hot/cold feeling has settled into my body and all I can do is to wheeze and sneeze.
As I’ve confined myself to my apartment, my bedroom, in an attempt to not infect anyone else- I continue to peruse nytimes.com to keep updated on the going-ons of my former home. The news is not good. Talk of a recession, an economy on the verge of being busted by the cops for partying carelessly too late into the night, is freaking me out.
I’d hate it if I were to return to the States a year from now and find that my quality of life in a developing nation was far better than anything I could hope for in Portland, Oregon or New York City. In any case, Katherine helped me to come up with my post-Bangladesh re$ume. Feel free to print it out and distribute it on my behalf so that I’ll have a nice cushy job waiting for me as I exit the international arrival terminal at LAX.
