On a handful of occasions, when I was working in Vietnam, I’d find somebody waiting behind to talk to me after I had made my “Story of KOTO” speech to a tour group.
If I had pitched it just right and mixed enough laughs with enough lump-in-the-throat bits, then people would donate to the cause. Often too an after-talk visitor would want to speak to me personally.
Invariably they’d be old. Quite often they’d push their donation directly into my hand. On more than one occasion they didn’t understand the local money, or inflation or whatever. Their gift, which I am sure they thought was generous, turned out to be only a few pennies. It was gratefully received all the same.
But they’d stayed to talk to me for a reason. They’d say something kind in an oldies way. They’d thank me for the speech and tell me to “keep it up” and use words like “marvellous” a lot.
What they didn’t know, and what they couldn’t grasp, was just how easy it was. Their praise was nice to hear but unnecessary. Because what I did wasn’t hard.
You want to make the commute to work fun? Weave your way through a million scooters on the back of a motorbike. Want to find some motivation? How about 60 kids being put on the streets if you fail? Want to feel wanted and appreciated? Work with Vietnamese people.
I’ve always maintained that the hardest part to working for a living is not the work itself. It’s the grind. It’s knowing that your holiday is only four weeks a year. Or your days off number a measly two out of seven.
So now I am doing the hard stuff. The number one bus to work. The cold. The weekend heralded with a whoop on Friday night, only to be commiserated as “almost gone” by Sunday.
I remember when I first started my working life after college. I kept starting sentences with: “This summer I’m going to…”, before letting the line die as I remembered that this summer I’d be working.
I reckon it took me five years to be work institutionalised. To feel that two out of seven, and four weeks a year were not so much ok, as just the way it was and eminently do-able. Now I have to relearn the old work ethics.
And all of that is what I told the old dears who said kind things to me at KOTO. The nine to five (and the rest) grinders are the heroes.
It’s good to be home. It would be churlish to say that it feels tough. It’s not. Just more mundane. I’ve been spoilt.
Spoilt by the sensory overload of Vietnam and the lazy days of Nicaragua.
To take a positive from all of this: To anyone reading this who might have thought of volunteering overseas but reckon they couldn’t stick it….
Just do it. What you already do is harder. Volunteering is easy.
Voluntary Service Overseas details here.
