Klong Dan Fishing
Klong Dan Fishing Village, South Thailand
The two week long volunteering projects offered by International Voluntary Service [IVS] are ideal for those of us who want to fit volunteering around work and study. There is another benefit in that one does not only interact with the host community but there will be many different nationalities amongst your fellow volunteers.
I had already taken part in projects in Britain and mainland Europe so, when I heard about the tsunami, I chose a project in a Muslim fishing village in the south of Thailand where there was still much work to be done 6 months later. This gave me the confidence to go to an orphanage in Mongolia the next year followed by a return to Thailand in 2007.
This latest project was in a Buddhist village in the north east. All projects have much in common yet each one is different.
Never before had I
- been up at 6 a.m. EVERY morning
- knelt in the road at dawn to give rice to the monks
- eaten a cricket though I rejected the beetles
- ridden for 2 hours in the back of a pickup truck
- done a 12 hour overnight train journey alone
- had an hour¹s massage while waiting for a train
- been offered so many lifts on a moped
- seen a baby water buffalo the morning it was born
- eaten a meal cross legged on the temple floor
- spent a day scything rice
- shovelled so much earth
- eaten so many bananas and drunk so much coconut milk
- slept so well, laughed so much, had such a variety of tasks
- seen such rivers, waterfalls and orchids.
Other aspects were familiar. The villagers were welcoming and hospitable, the work hard but enjoyable and friendships made around the world. Now I am looking at the website and dreaming about this year¹s opportunity.
Hannah Ormisher