A Humbling Experience

I was feeling a little down this past week because of how things were going at the hospice. The first month and a half at the hospice was amazing. My days were filled with home-visits and spending time with the patients, learning Setswana and dancing to the local music. There were four other volunteers from Guelph that were working with me at the hospice and we all got into this routine of coming in to work and just talking to the hospice workers and patients all day! I had a lot of interaction with the people and I kept learning a lot of new things every day. But once the Guelph girls left, I felt like my time of “settling in and observing how things were run” was over and it was time for me to start working on real projects. And this is where the trouble started...

I got along very well with my co-workers when I was just “observing” with the Guelph girls ...but when I wanted to work, I was surprised by how much resistance I felt coming from my co-workers. I would ask for a file, and it would be nowhere to be found ...for weeks! I would ask for a signature on a proposal and the person that’s suppose to sign would say they would sign by the end of the day, but they’d leave early and not come in to work for the rest of the week! There were so many times where I felt like excluding everybody else at the hospice and doing things on my own, but then I would be like the oppressor in “Pedagogy of the oppressed”. If I am to hold myself back and work at their pace, things will get weeks to get done and I only have a month left! So for more than half the month of June I’ve been grappling with this dilemma and I couldn’t even decide how I felt about my situation. One day I would be mad at the hospice for its lack of structure and disorganization which resulted in severe inefficiency of the workers. The next day I would be mad at myself for being as frustrated as I was, not handling the situation better. And my days would just fly by so fast without me having even accomplished much. I kept an hour by hour log for a few days to see how my time passed by , and a lot of it was spent waiting!

I was talking to my roommates last night and one of the things I told them was that a significant part of what bothered me about this whole situation was that I was not enough to “fix” the hospice. My roommates’ response was “who do you think you are?! Of course you are not going to change the entire working of the hospice on your own!” and she was right. Who did I think I was? I am a 3rd year undergrad student who came here to volunteer for three months and I realize that I didn’t make much of a difference....but what matters is that I did my best. I went into work every day and gave it my all. That should be enough. This whole experience has been very humbling. In terms of personal development, I have discovered a few of my strengths and what I need to work on. I know that when I go back home, I will continue to look for opportunities like this to ensure I keep growing.