This is my personal account of applying to be a volunteer with VSO.
The Assessment Day
What makes a person decide to give up a well paid job, a comfortable home, a secure family life and a close circle of friends to spend two years in an inhospitable place, on a meager pittance, far away from those they love? This question went through my mind frequently in the months and weeks leading up to the assessment day. There wasn’t a straightforward answer but you knew they’d ask that question.
By nine o’clock on March 26th 2002 I’d arrived at the VSO headquarters in Putney having spent the night in a local B&B. Although only March, it was a warm sunny day and I was already beginning to sweat under my ‘casual’ outfit designed to help me fit in with the younger applicants. I wasn’t sure who else to expect at the interview – would they feel like me?
I’d envisaged being one of the oldest there – just like on the TEFL course that I’d done in my mid 40s when most of the students were young enough to be my children (just!). I finished that course out-drinking and out-dancing quite a number and still passed the assessments. As I walked in the entrance to VSO there was another mature man signing in and down in the reception area were more potential volunteers ranging from early 20s to my age. When the sixth person arrived we were ready to begin.
Now I’m well used to interviews (and interviewing) and we were all told that we weren’t in competition with each other. None of us came from the same job background anyway so why did it suddenly feel competitive? The first task, with our three assessors, was nice and easy but then we set about doing the first team task. I won’t go into detail about the task, just in case VSO still use it, but suffice it to say it was demanding. It assessed a range of skills including time-management, problem solving and working with others. Forty five minutes never went so fast and by the end we were all sweating with little in the way of a results to show for the effort; but we felt we were a team. That was strange since I’d never met any of these people up until the hour before. I made a mental note to use this task in work for team building.
The one-to-one interviews followed – over an hour of very personal questions about how I’d cope, how my husband and family would cope – just the type of questions I’d anticipated. I’d even rehearsed some of the answers but wasn’t prepared for the searching interrogation. What made things more difficult for me was that my circumstances had changed since applying and my husband, who should have been at the interview with me, was in hospital.
Ian, my husband, was a police superintendent with a challenging career and two years to go before retirement (since they retire relatively young). He’d had a particularly stressful meeting a week or so previously and things had come to a head, quite literally, when he collapsed at work with a burst blood vessel in his brain. He was rushed into hospital and we faced the inevitable fact that he would have to take early retirement on ill health. He’d already had previous injuries on duty during a career spanning over 27 years in West Yorkshire and North Wales.
Was I selfish in still pursuing the idea of voluntary activity overseas when it seemed possible that he would be unable to join me as a partner and yet he could no longer pursue his career at home as planned? Not only were we losing my wage for two years, but we now had to take into account a severe reduction in the other income that would have provided security for us while I was away and he was working. Then there was the question of what effect my leaving would have on him when he was going through a traumatic change in his own life.
Things had also changed in my own career and I knew I wouldn’t be staying in the job that I had been in for nearly eight years. I was manager of a company quality assuring learning and awarding certificates to learners in North and Mid Wales and I knew that my company was to become part of an all Wales organisation. I’d had six months experience working part time in South Wales and knew that I could not take on a role with so much travel. (Travel to the other side of the world for two years was acceptable however.)
With these things going through my head, it wasn’t so easy to answer the questions about ‘why do you want to go?’ and ‘will everything be okay at home?’ ‘Why do you want to do VSO?’ attracted the standard answers: ‘It’s an opportunity to share my skills with others – job satisfaction – giving something back to the global society – seeing the world.’ To be honest, once I’d left that interview I couldn’t remember what I’d said, whether I’d been entirely truthful or whether I sounded as selfish as I felt.
Where do you want to go?’ A question posed by the interviewer and by everyone who knew that I was proposing to do VSO. ‘Africa!’ I’d reply and would usually get a response, ‘Yes, but Africa’s a big country – which part?’
To be honest I’d not made a decision. (After visiting the VSO resources centre I wasn’t that sure I really wanted to go to Africa when there were countries like Nepal, the Maldives, Pacific Islands and Thailand to visit.) Ian suggested I consider Bosnia – closer to home and on the Adriatic for sailing were his motives.
But I stuck to Africa. I’d always held some fascination for that continent and my mother should take some responsibility having told me of her youthful ambition to be a missionary there. (She became a youth hostel warden instead!) At primary school I learnt more about the country through fact and fiction – starting (dare I say it in our politically correct world?) with learning to read ‘Little Black Sambo’.
In junior school during the 1960’s we had radio broadcasts on famous characters including Albert Schweitzer, Livingstone and Stanley. We also read King Solomon’s Mines and I’m sure we had to read Prester John. I did a project on cocoa from the East African Coast (courtesy of publicity packs from a famous chocolate company). When we finally got a television I watched Tarzan, The African Queen, Zulu and countless wildlife programmes of the jungles, savannah and deserts of Africa.
In 2002 I finally got to see Africa when Ian and I went on a Ramblers holiday exploring parts of Swaziland, the Kruger National Park and the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa. I met the people, viewed their culture, journeyed across their lands and enjoyed the sights.
I was hooked. I wanted to find out more about Africa. I bought books in a second hand bookshop in Sabie: ‘Out of Africa’ and ‘Shadows on the Grass’ by Isak Dinesen (the pen name of Karen Blixen); ‘Valley of the Brutes’ (I left that with our guide) which was an interesting account of Constance (Nonnie) Venter who travelled from England with her father and settled in Pilgrim’s Rest to make her fortune gold prospecting; Sir Percy Fitzpatrick’s tales of ‘Jock of the Bushveld’; and a very serious study of how black and white South Africans view change, ‘The Narrow Margin’.
Wales also proved to have links with South Africa that emerged on our visit to Pilgrim’s Rest. There, on a hillside overlooking the preserved gold prospecting town is a graveyard with headstones, dating back to the latter centuries, in memory to the families and individuals who came to Africa from other countries to make their fortune. Among the headstones were inscriptions in Welsh on slate that had been brought over from Britain to this far off colony.
Back in Wales I read more and more about Africa and discovered the similarities and differences of the sub Saharan African countries in ‘Africa, Dispatches of a Fragile Continent’ by Blaine Harden. I read biographies of white Africans like Alexandra Fuller in ‘Don’t Let’s go to the Dogs Tonight’ and moving memoirs of settlers like Kuki Gallmann, who lost their loved ones in Africa and still felt compelled to write about its beauty and power in ‘I Dreamed of Africa’. I scoured the second hand bookshops wherever I went, picking up copies of ‘A Short History of Africa’ by Oliver and Fage and ‘Mau Mau Detainee’ by Josiah Mwangi Kariuki. I read the classics like Mandela’s ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ and Elspeth Huxley’s ‘Flame Trees of Thika’. I read the newspapers and took real interest in the political events unfolding there.
Ian recovered enough to go for an interview with VSO a few months after me and he discussed the possible options that were open to us. He would not be able to join me as a partner and would certainly be unable to apply to be a volunteer unless he too passed a medical. We decided to postpone my departure by one year and as luck would have it, I successfully applied for a one year project manager post with the local Community University. That meant I could postpone my VSO for one year – enough time to make plans and for Ian to decide what he wanted to do.
Preparing for the Challenge
Friends and family showed varying reactions to my decision to go.
“You can’t leave Ian!” was my mother’s response, despite the fact that she was had probably been one of the most influential people on my life. She came from Stretford in Manchester and had left work at fourteen, married at nineteen (to my father who was from Moss Side) and together they moved to one of the most remote areas of North Yorkshire to run a small Youth Hostel with no running water, no electricity or gas, no road for at least half a mile and no sanitation to speak of (rather like some places in Africa). I spent the earliest months of my life there and, while I can’t remember anything from that time, I did return with my parents and brother when I was about ten for a short stay before the Youth Hostel closed.
My parents introduced me to a range of experiences at home and helped make me the adaptable and adventure seeking person that I think I still am. We never stayed in one place for long and seemed to spend our lives either living in quite stately homes (Youth Hostels of varying sizes) or two-up two-down terraced houses, until I left home. My father encouraged me to read widely and develop an interest in nature. My mother taught me the domestic skills and from her I also learnt to be persistent, determined and take on new challenges.
I can’t remember exactly when Ian and I decided to go on VSO together with me as the volunteer and him as my partner. I do remember him having to go for a meeting with VSO to be interviewed about such an arrangement. I happened to be at a meeting in London on the same day so we went down by train together and I left him in Euston underground with a tube map and instructions on where to go. When I got to my meeting I phoned him on my mobile to see if he’d arrived safely. He was still on medication and one side effect of the stroke seemed to be short-term memory loss. He had travelled north (not south) and only realised he was going in the wrong direction when he saw the station sign for ‘Barking’. Luckily he had the sense to get off and return so he got to VSO in time for his meeting.
Ian’s health improved dramatically during the summer months that followed partly due to a relatively stress free existence at home, an exercise routine involving walking, cycling and sailing, and plenty more opportunities to develop his skills and knowledge in teaching sailing to others. We had a third share in a large yacht based in Conwy and this became a kind of second home for him. I did agree to join him for a week’s holiday on the boat in early June on the west coast of Scotland with two close friends. By that time I had committed myself to doing VSO the following year, which gave us another twelve months to plan and prepare for the venture together. I had also decided to leave my current job as Chief Officer of an Open College Network in Wales, where plans to merge were looming, and take on a one year contract as a Project Manager with the University of Wales.
So in August I started this new job while my son prepared to go back to college himself and train to be a teacher. He was living at home again and family life was very precious and enjoyable. This made up for some of the frustrations I had in the new job. By the end of the year I had the project mapped out and needed a break so Ian and I took a late holiday to Kenya.
Mombassa at night was hot and steamy when we arrived. There was a scent of baked potatoes and the company taxi that picked us up took us through the streets from the airport to a local hotel where we’d been booked in for a night. The first impressions were so different to South Africa yet we were still only seeing it through tourist eyes. The journey to Malindi in a plush taxi began to make us aware of a different Africa with stretches of road full of potholes, goats wandering around the small townships of shacks, and people that crowded onto the ‘matatus’ that sped past us on the long tarmac freeways.
We initially felt threatened in this town where tourism had waned following the Mombassa bombings and where there were so few British people that we stood out like ‘sore thumbs’. Guides, hawkers, taxi drivers, shopkeepers and even the locals pounced on us wanting to sell us dhow trips, safaris, trinkets, carved animals, printed cloths and lifts in cars or on the back of cycles. It didn’t matter where we were outside the security of the hotel perimeter they were there waiting for us. A walk along the beach turned into a nightmare as more joined the group trying to sell us something. We only walked along the beach once. We soon gave in trying to be independent and took our tour guide’s advice on diving trips and safaris. Both experiences turned out to be brilliant but we felt that we had slipped into being typical tourists rather than adventurers.
We did make use of a young taxi driver who took us to a few local places and gave us an insight into some of the life around that area including his own parents’ home – a mud walled house with its own well outside. Rather more affluent than many mud huts we’d seen and with better amenities than we’d witnessed elsewhere with women carrying large yellow drums of water for miles on their heads to provide for daily needs. Kenya was vastly different to South Africa once you got outside the hotel perimeters and into the back streets and villages.
We returned home revitalised and more determined than ever to prepare for VSO. Christmas was the next event, one highlighted by the news that my daughter was expecting a second baby. Ryan was now four and would be full time in primary school by the time his brother or sister arrived. Hopefully it would be born before we left Britain. I’m not that fussed about babies but I did want to see it at least once before I went. Ryan would be missed as he was entering those fascinating years of development that showed up every time we spoke with him on the phone or saw him which wasn’t very often. One year would be a long time to go without seeing him or speaking to him. He already had his connections with his imaginary friend in Africa. We encouraged that interest with books, tapes and toys with African themes.
Once Christmas was over we started our training with VSO. The first course was ‘Preparing for Change’. Most of the participants had only recently applied and, like us, didn’t know where they were going. A few had destinations arranged and some were very close to leaving but we all had to participate in this programme. We had some laughs and some periods of self-questioning with some of our questions answered, particularly by the training staff who had each spent periods overseas on VSO.
Harborne Hall seemed the right type of venue to prepare us for the simpler life. Shared bedrooms (though in our case we shared one together) and bathrooms and a youth hostel type canteen (with good wholesome food) provided simple accommodation but there was also a bar and a nearby pub for socialising - and there was a lot of that. We came away from that weekend with a positive outlook and a list of our minimum requirements. My bottom line was a bit lower than Ian’s.
In March I had my placement interview and was given some examples to consider. I liked the look of Addis Ababa and the job role but Ian took one look at the description of the accommodation and put that alongside Peshawar. It didn’t help when we looked on the Internet and read disparaging remarks from tourists who had visited the city and other Ethiopian centres. He was not going there.
I also liked the sound of Uganda and the thought of living in a less urban environment. We live near a very small village and our nearest neighbour is quarter of a mile away. I didn’t know how I would cope with living in a city. That left Cambodia that we both agreed sounded interesting, even if it was very hot and humid. I had not done any previous research on South East Asia and was reluctant to start reading up on the history and culture of that part of the world until I knew for definite where we were going.
The second training event was early in April and again Ian and I were to go together. This Volunteers and Development course was incredibly intensive but extremely interesting. We started after an evening meal on the Friday with two hours on Disadvantage and Globalisation. We were ready for a drink at the bar when that finished. On Saturday we covered everything from World History, the IMF, Political Theory (Neoliberalism), AIDS/HIV, Community Development and VSO’s role in the countries it works in. We started the next morning at 9.00 with more development issues so we were shattered by the time we left after lunch and it was back to work on Monday.
Two weeks later I had an email from my placement officer at VSO with the offer of a placement in Abuja, the new capital of Nigeria. It came as a complete surprise – I hadn’t considered Nigeria so I spent the rest of the day on the work’s Internet finding out about the country and the job. We both resigned ourselves to the fact that we would be spending two years out there and made contact with volunteers already out there or who had returned. One girl living in Abuja provided a brilliant picture when she copied me an email that had gone to her friends shortly after the tribal uprisings in parts of Nigeria that had left many dead. Her message was that there really wasn’t anything to worry about particularly in Abuja and she went on to describe two weddings that she’d been to involving VSO volunteers who had married local men. Food, drink and coping with the head ties in the cramped church pews were the main areas of concern. I built up a better picture of life there in those few paragraphs than in any of the books or articles I found on that country. I then started to extend my reading on Africa knowing that I was going to live there for two years.
I was beginning to prepare myself for this challenge and Ian seemed reasonably satisfied that he would be able to find work in the city – at least for six months and then he would return to Britain for a while to work on the boat. Two days later I had an email from VSO saying that they had changed our placement. We were now going to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. I now had to break the news to Ian.
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