Chris and I have written a lot about the experiences we’ve had running and biking for this campaign, and while our experiences with service have come up from time to time in the blog, they have, rather unjustly, taken a back seat. This blog post is an attempt to do something about that.
After participating in Alternative Spring Break (ASB), a student run program that organizes over 30 weeklong service-oriented trips, taking place throughout the country and abroad, Chris and I have surpassed our goal of a combined 100 hours of community service for the semester. Chris travelled to Costa Rica, and I ventured to Portland, Oregon. We each completed roughly 20 hours of service on the trips (mostly environmentally focused), which, coupled with the 30 some-odd hours we’ve each accumulated in Cville, puts us comfortably above our quota- and we’re still going.
This does not include all of the hours that friends and family have spent volunteering beside us in the name of the Thankful for 2013 campaign. They deserve a special shout out here- Thank you all so much, and keep the help coming!
Why do we serve? And does it really make an impact?
I’m going to share a personal story that, at least for me, helps explain why service is such an indispensable part of life, regardless of how it’s done or one’s circumstances. Most people who know me are aware that I spent some months living in Nepal before coming to UVA. It is an experience continues to shape and define me as a person. Very rarely, however, do I share specific stories of what happened during that time. Before the Nepal, I had never travelled alone, and had never left the North American continent, so traveling unaccompanied halfway around the world and living with a group of people who spoke only rudimentary English was incomparable to anything I had, and have still yet, experienced.
I felt welcome and safe for the majority of the trip, but there were a handful instances, possibly amplified by my slightly sheltered 18-year-old imagination, in which I was not sure that I would make it home alive.
One of these events occurred during a white water rafting trip led by a team of ambitious guides who clearly overestimated the skill-level of our group, and took us down a series of rapids that led our boat to flood with water, nearly capsizing mid-rapid, before thankfully being whisked back into the center of the river by everyone in the boat desperately pushing their oars against a large rock. One woman fell out of the boat and nearly drowned. Thankfully she was wound up alright.
Another instance was a cab ride I took, hoping to get to an orphanage in the small Nepalese town of Tinpiplé. I asked the cab driver if he knew how to get there, and he responded with an ambiguous “Ok.” After driving in circles on the back streets of Kathmandu for 20 minutes, and knowing full well that I had hundreds of dollars worth of money/goods in my pack, I began to suspect I was being kidnapped and would soon be left for dead in one of the abandoned buildings we kept driving past. Thankfully, he was not kidnapping me; he was lost and too embarrassed to say anything about it. I had him take me back to the hotel from which he had picked me up, and found another cab.
Finally, I was renting a room in a small hotel in Thamel, Kathmandu’s tourist district, one night, and, due to political unrest, which was rampant in the country at the time, a riot took place on the street outside my window. I had no idea what view the Maoist’s (the rebel group) held of foreigners, and sat awake in my bed till dawn thinking of every conceivable method of escape in the event of a raid. Again, thankfully, tourists’ presence in the country was an afterthought in the riots and my hotel was left alone.
Needless to say, I came home alive.
What do these events have to do with service? In each of these instances, as most people would, I began thinking about my family; I thought about how the news would reach them and how they would cope if the worst were to happen. Another thought followed, unintended and immediate, in response; I thought about the garden I planted before I left the country. I had become really passionate about growing food that winter, and built two large wooden frames with compartments for different plants. I mulched and planted before I left. My mom, dad, and brother took turns watering and caring for the plants while I was gone, sending me updates with each new stage of growth.
A garden’s a weird thing to think about when you’re convinced you’re facing death. Upon reflection, however (and here’s where the service aspect comes back in), it’s quite an uplifting choice. The garden itself was not the object of importance. It symbolized a larger concept- things that I had passionately poured myself into during the then 18 years of my life, be they the finger paintings I made in kindergarten, the curveball I taught my little brother to throw, or a poem I wrote for 11th grade English class. These things became, in a very real sense, an extension of myself, and would still be around whether I was there to witness them or not.
Try dissociating this from communion or cannibalism, but I had a very real feeling that, when my family would eat food from the garden, this garden, which I had poured so much passion into creating, they would symbolically be eating me. This might sound strange, and it’s important to remember this is a metaphor, but this thought gave me a strong sense of comfort during these times. Planting a literal garden is one way to create this experience; volunteering, teaching, making art, and building friendships are just a few less tangible examples among many. Knowing that, even if I were to not make it back, at least I’d done something, however small or insignificant, that would continue to influence and help others, gave me, not only a strong sense of comfort, but a lasting optimism that not all of the work I do is in vain, and that some of the good I put out in the world will be experienced and built upon by others, in the same way I’ve had the good luck to experience and build upon the many wonderful things that have come my way.
In a sense, this is what the whole Thankful for 2013 campaign is about: planting a garden and helping the seeds grow. As with every garden, the seeds planted have a story behind them; they come from other plants in other gardens, which in turn come from other gardens (be they wild or domesticated), and so on and so forth. With Thankful, these seeds come most directly through the memory of Casey Schulman, who, among others, has inspired Chris and myself to do these crazy things. The seeds also come from Madison House, which has created such a positive and lasting impact on the UVA and Charlottesville communities. We hope that some of the seeds that result from Thankful for 2013 find their way into the soil of other gardens and continue the chain of service, inspiration, and gratitude of which this campaign is just a small part.
No comments:
Post a Comment