The Unbearable Lightness Of Being... A Volunteer

It’s not what I imagined.

Offering two years of my life to work in a developing country is a leap into the unknown. Admittedly I volunteered previously in Rwanda, and spent time in relatively poor places – India, Morocco, Uruguay, Kenya, er Glasgow.

But this is different – I’m living and working long term, where even crustily bearded travelers fear to tramp. It’s my toughest challenge yet.

Arriving in my dusty, wild-west village in the extreme north of Cambodia exactly a year ago, I admit my heart sank. No view of the majestic Mekong for me. No dolphins, elephants, tigers – not even any hills.

In fact the list of negatives was lengthy - no busses or tarmac road, no mains water or electric, no newspapers, telly or world service radio, no pubs or restaurants, no cheese or tofu (and certainly no chocolate or wine).

No home comforts either – I entered my bare house with no idea where to buy furniture or cooking utensils, no fridge, flushing toilet or hot water, no idea how to ask for anything. No other westerner for 50 kilometres. Nobody to help me.

And after a year, you know what I now think? Now I know I have a seriously easy life!

Here in my village I’ve come to realise that my house is way posher than everyone else’s. Not only have I two bedrooms and a balcony, I have a kitchen and bathroom all to myself (the village’s person to toilet ratio must approach 10:1, if they have one at all).

As the hot season intensified I cracked, ditched my perfectly good coldbox and bought a fridge – a fridge! Maybe not so clever without reliable electricity. I didn’t realise it was the first ever fridge here, draining both the village generator and my modest allowance. But boy, an ice cold water on a hot Cambodian afternoon – worth every riel, and every stare.

I soon braved the 300 kilometre round trip to bring a mini oven on the back of my wobbly moto. Emboldened, I went further and bought my most incongruous luxury. I’m gazing lovingly at it right now – my beautiful, ludicrously extravagant Apple desktop. Once you go Mac you never go back. But in rural Cambodia? Truly, I have an embarrassment of riches.

All of this in what I now recognize as a truly beautiful green and red landscape. Living with super-friendly people. In complete safety. Every morning I’m greeted by gentle sun and smiling children as I stroll to work across the temple lake. No cars. No pollution. None of that silly western stress you get all excited about.

And that’s all without leaving the village! But leave I do, thanks to my generous income (if I stay here and eat rice I can easily save from my $10 daily allowance) and munificent holiday calendar (a whopping 26 public holidays – wouldn’t you like to celebrate Meak Bochea and Visak Bochea days?; and why wouldn’t you mark the birthday of the king - and his mum, and his dad?).

At this point I basically become a tourist. I’ve witnessed the wonders of Angkor a dozen times already. I spent last Christmas on a Thai island, Khmer new year in southern Laos, and the latest festival exploring northern Vietnam. Other weekends I party in Phnom Penh’s swanky Club 182 or sip tea in Siem Reap’s Hotel de la Paix. It’s a hard life being a volunteer!

Of course it’s not quite so easy. Cambodia may be mocked as ‘volunteering lite’, but there are cultural challenges lurking everywhere – I recently listed unseen hierarchies, inbuilt fatalism, unfathomable body language, infuriating passivity, unspoken judgments…

And it’s easy to overlook the sacrifices volunteers give to be here. Several put careers at risk or gentle retirements on hold to come and help. All of us compromise our health and safety, not least by risking some pretty nasty illnesses. Avoid meat and you might evade worms, but everyone here gets some kind of unpleasant gastro condition. And we all get bitten, if not by snakes or scorpions then certainly by mosquitoes, with their pincer of nighttime malaria or daytime dengue fever.

So it’s not all easy. And we all need a break, to relax and recharge the batteries.

But as I sip my Singapore Sling and lazily enjoy my Kundera novel in the Foreign Correspondent’s Club I can’t help wondering guiltily just how exactly this is helping the poor people of Cambodia. I call it the unbearable lightness of being a volunteer.