Preface: For this piece of assessment I interviewed my friend, and fellow volunteer, Bernadette O'Sullivan over Skype. The piece was originally intended to be a video, however I had major difficulties with the Skype recording software and Skype itself. Therefore, I have presented a text interview, accompanied by photographs that enhance certain aspects of her story.
Bernadette undertook a three month volunteer placement in India's capital, New Delhi. She worked for an organisation called Swechha, a local youth run and youth focused NGO. Whilst here she took daily classes with disadvantaged children, many of whom lived in the local slum community, and assisted in the organisation of a charitable rock concert.
Question One: Why did you decide to go
on this trip?
“Honestly, I had no idea
what I was going to do. I decided to defer uni, I wanted to see the world and
volunteering seemed like a great experience. And the brochure looked amazing [laughs].
It looked really good and I just kind of wanted to do something good for
society. I don’t know that sounds a little bit cheesy doesn’t it [laughs].”
Question Two: What were some of your
most memorable moments? Apart from the time you spent with me, of course.
“ Nawwww [laughs]. That time I
spent with you in the hills was amazing, all like two days of it. It was
probably one of the highlights of my trip.”
“And when I was
teaching at the school, when one of the girls that I was teaching found out that
I had like two weeks left she started crying and saying that she loved me and
would miss me and then the whole day she spent giving me little presents and
giving me little love notes and things.”
“There was this one time
one of the Slim Funky Boys, that was
our dance funky group. Their rock stars,
don’t diss them [laughs]. Anyway, they accidentally locked me in the port-a-loo with a
rat. They forgot I was in there, and they were cleaning up the space and then
they left. So I was locked in there until someone from the organisation came
back with keys after two hours. In the dark, stuck in that port-a-loo, I didn’t
tell you this story. It was horrible. This was in the middle of Delhi in 47 degree heat. It was amazing [laughs]. It was a drop down toilet too, and all the kids use it. And like I love the kids, but they have no sense of hygiene, and it was bad.”
“Also one of the awesome
things was when I went to Amritsar. I absolutely loved it, it was the best.
Everyone I met there was so beautiful and they’d always give me hugs, and try
to teach me Hindi and I was really bad at it. And they were really good at
English, so that was embarrassing [laughs].”
Question Three: What was the hardest part, well, other than the rat experience?
“That wasn’t even hard
[laughs]. But seriously, I had quite a lot of hard times in India. The hardest
part was definitely being away from my family for so long. I was really
fragile, like I’d get a phone call and I’d just cry.”
Question Four: What do you miss the most
about India?
“You
and Shari, of course! [laughs] And the kids, and Swechha, the organisation I volunteered for.”
“I want to go back all the
time. Did you not feel that in India everything was exciting, everyday was an excitement?
Everyday you’d plan, and on the weekend you’d go and do something crazy. And every
afternoon me, Nat and Mareid made sure we went out in Delhi and we did
something crazy or we went to a restaurant, we tried different suburbs, like every
day was an adventure. I miss that adventure.”
Epilogue: I would like to thank Bernadette for her time, and thanks a lot to Skype and Evaer for failing me. I speak on behalf of both of us that this experience was an amazing one, and trust me, she had plenty more stories to tell.
I am going to leave you with these wise words from Harriet Naylor;
Volunteering can be an exciting, growing, enjoyable experience. It is truly gratifying to serve a cause, practice one's ideals, work with people, solve problems, see benefits, and know one had a hand in them.
