ICS blog

We have started the work with my new fellow volunteers. It will be 11 weeks of hard physical labour, but all will be for the benefit of the Santa Marta community. Recently we started a clean-up campaign in the community and started re-collecting bottles to create eco-bricks.

I would like to thank local organisation ADES - Progressio and my fellow former volunteers (cycle 6) for having trusted me to resume my ICS volunteer experience and to continue benefiting the development of my community.

Volunteering with ICS has definitely helped me develop my understanding of social and development issues.

From the first day I met with the UK volunteers, I was very excited yet and I had a fear of the unknown of working cross culturally.

During the first week of the cycle l was very shy. I did not have the confidence to make contributions to team discussions and I was an indecisive person, but my experience over these two weeks with the UK volunteers has definitely improved my confidence.

This time last week I was sat in an East London start-up office, a Britney Spears head set on, trying to squeeze every last penny out of a spoiled American tourist. Fast forward seven days and I find myself in the Department for International Development (DFID), in Lilongwe. I’m surrounded by 25 other young volunteers, all aged 18-25 and all wearing the same t-shirt as me.

In our search for a metaphorical, developmental El Dorado we have ventured into a quagmire of verb tables. Out here, swirling above us, are peculiar and frightening tenses we once thought belonged strictly to the realm of mythology. We try to focus on the road ahead but their cries haunt us in the night. 

Though it goes unspoken, I believe we have all asked ourselves the same question: to turn back to the relative comfort and blissful ignorance of our Spanish phrase books or continue on towards the mountains of vocabulary that loom in the distance? 

We are officially in Zimbabwe! This week the UK volunteers arrived ready for action. We met up with the in-country volunteers, who we’ll be working with for the next 11 weeks. Orientation, orientation! The first week pretty much consisted of us getting to know each other, cultural exchanges, the DOs and the DON’Ts (code of conduct) we have been good so far, pinky swears. Oh, the host families. The kids (me included) were handed over to their host mums and dads for the remainder of their time here in Zimbabwe!

When I first heard of Progressio ICS I thought it might not be very useful but I proved myself wrong. When you talk of volunteering, it is not about money. I find the programme very important in as far as personal experience is concerned. Different people have had different first impressions of Progressio ICS and here I will talk about the first impressions of the UK volunteers and also of the in-country volunteers. When it comes to working with someone whose culture is different from yours (and only our culture is different because we all have the same goals), it is sometimes a challenge.

One of the most nerve-wracking things in the build up to leaving the UK for Zimbabwe was deliberation over where and how we might be living. Who will I be sharing with? Will I have electricity? Will I have running water? So many questions. The placements and partner organisations in Zimbabwe are based in various areas so there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ guide to host homes. But we hope this blog might help a select few, lucky enough to be placed in a more rural location!

In Parque Cuscatlán, with dozens of new faces, history hangs in the air. El Monumento a la Memoria y la Verdad stretches like a pavement, engraved with the names of civilian victims killed or gone missing during the 12-year Salvadoran civil war. In groups, we rake through the blackboard of “O's” and rolling “R's” in search of a single name. The task was completed after ten frustrating minutes, but for those families still searching, closure is a long way off. Our perspectives are stretched in the park that afternoon.

After a sleepy 15-hour overnight flight from London, via Addis Ababa, the UK volunteers finally arrived in Harare on 4 October, before travelling on to the eastern city of Mutare to meet with the national volunteers. The latest Diocese of Mutare Community Care Programme (DOMCCP) team consists of 13 volunteers; that’s 5 UK volunteers, 6 national volunteers, plus veteran team leaders John and Ngoni.

A week in and aside from the torrential downpours that sweep in every few days with huge rolling clouds and dissolve the afternoon heat into a patchwork of ravines and dried riverbeds, there is little relief from the broiling sun. However, if not to the weather, the UK volunteers seem to be acclimatising to the local fauna. The wasps have become amicable neighbours, and even the ubiquitous scorpions, which were once the formidable villains of horror stories, have diminished in our minds to slightly bothersome crustaceans with limited depth perception.