The Selfishness of Voluntourism
What I learned from my mistakes
In the Winter of 2015, I was in the middle of my third year of college when I realized that I felt confined. I was living life without much purpose or aim, and my existence centered around my college courses. I wanted to do something that would help me grow, something out of the ordinary, I wanted to get out of my box. So, as any rational person would do, I contacted a cultural exchange organization I worked with and committed to a 6-week project, and booked the next flight out to India.
My Lebanese parents were terrified. I’d never been outside the country without them, let alone for such an extended time. They didn’t understand why I was going. “Why don’t you volunteer here?” they’d ask. They didn’t get it, I needed to go somewhere else, I needed to “find myself”. So they bit their tongues and wished me well.
The time leading up to the trip seemed like a blur. from the visa process to the necessities shopping until the time I boarded my flight. I snapped out of it as I landed at the Ahmedabad airport at around 10 pm. I remember a sheer panic overwhelming me as I left the airport. what was I doing? miles from home in a place I didn’t know, where I didn’t speak the language(s), all alone. Only six weeks to go.
In the first week that we started the project in Gujarat, we had time to prepare “lesson plans” for the teaching English part of our project. We didn’t have much preparation or coaching, but we were assured that this task would be simple. that assurance was false.
We walked into the school that next week to find out that it wasn’t a school in the traditional sense. It was a boarding center for disabled children whose parents could not take care of them. With a lump in my throat, it hit me: who the hell did I think I am? what have I gotten myself into? what qualified me for this?
I walked into a classroom with my teaching partner, and we started our lesson. We started off rocky and then we picked up momentum. It was going so well, pointing to body parts and naming them in English, playing interactive games, and quizzing kids on what we had just said. Smiles and laughs all over, save for one student who hadn’t been participating.
We asked our local partner, why do you think he isn’t participating? We were then informed for the first time that he was blind. The high we were on took a nosedive and crashed. Our mood plummetted. We scrambled to readjust, and we did our best with the rest, but as we left that day, we were shattered.
It’s so pathetic, isn’t it? that I’m describing my own feelings and emotions in this when I’m not in any sense the person delt the worst cards here? I went to bed that night staring at the ceiling and telling myself to get over it because my feelings don’t matter if I’m doing something good. But was I?
On our way to the school the next day, one of the organizers overheard my partner and I talking about our “long-term” plan for the coming 5 weeks and corrected us. We would only be teaching at this school for 1 week. The rest of the weeks will be spent each at a different school. We were puzzled.
This cycle of not knowing what was ahead and not knowing how to handle what was in our hands just kept going. We went to public schools, fancy private schools, NGOs, and shelters. We saw the full range.
At one of the private schools, where kids had already been taught English and could speak it fluently, we were there to teach them about our different cultures. We shared anecdotes and life stories, tidbits of each of our childhoods in Mexico, Egypt, Lebanon, Australia, South Africa. Everyone had a great story to tell, and the kids had a lot of questions. The one question that was the hardest to answer is, why do you have to leave so quickly?
One night over dinner, an organizer told us that on the day we transitioned to another school, the day we didn’t show up for the kids that we had spent a week with, they all started crying. I remembered one of the kids addressing me, in Gujarati which was then translated to me, asking if I’m “going to leave too”.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the sheer number of volunteers who show up to these children’s lives only to leave shortly after. The number of people showing them that they are only there to be admired as part of a culture rather than as people, that everyone who pretends to care is going to leave. We formed bonds and laughed and joked and played, but these short stints of attention followed by sudden abandonment must lead to something far worse than if they had never met us at all.
According to Francesca Edgerton and Toursimconcern.org.uk
There have been many studies showing that often, volunteers who visit orphanages or hospitals and invest a lot of time over a week or two in certain children, and form bonds with them can often cause emotional trauma for these children once they leave.
It hit me like a truck that I wasn’t just a volunteer here, I was a voluntourist. I was visiting orphanages and nursing homes like they were tourist attractions, taking pictures of people like they were the backgrounds of stock images for my Instagram.
I saw the White Savior Complex as it manifested itself in what I was doing. I had convinced myself that my presence was beneficial, that my being there was a positive contribution to the world. Was I using people as a way for me to reach personal growth, without critiquing the way in which I was doing it? As I write this I realize how ironic it is how many “I”s are in this article alone.
I’m not going to say that I regret my trip to India, because it was one of the most beautiful and amazing experiences I’ve ever had. Every child and every person that I met all have a special place in my heart. This experience did contribute to me being the person that I am today, but I carry with me a lot of guilt that I might have hurt people on my way to achieving that, and I believe that there were less destructive ways to reach that same goal.
India is a beautiful country with amazing people and I look back fondly on being allowed into the culture and the music and the food and all the richness that we were surrounded by. I cherish all of the friends that I made during my time in Gujarat, those who opened their homes to us and treated us like family. I loved this time with them and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
However, the biggest learning outcome of this volunteering experience is being able to look back with self-awareness and critique the way that things went. I had to take a long and hard look at the bigger picture.
I asked myself the same question my parents did, why didn’t I volunteer here in Lebanon? why did my own community not receive the same out of me? Why did finding myself have to pass by such a convoluted path?
I wholeheartedly believe that it’s possible to volunteer in a non-harmful way. I believe that volunteering is a beautiful thing when done right and that if you do your research and check your privileges, you can contribute positively to the world.
The best thing you can do constantly is to look back and critique your actions and learn from them.
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