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July 30, 2010
Earlier this summer I met a twenty-six year old volunteer from Italy who had come to work for an NGO in Kabul. She left me with a parting gift today, a Penguin edition of Swift’s satire, Gulliver’s Travels. Simultaneously I happened to read a senior thesis written by a student from a prestigious New England college who had interviewed me last winter when I was touring America giving talks and raising money for AFCECO. As far as I can tell both women had had bad experiences volunteering abroad, involving a falling out with the host organization, cultural clashes, confused feelings of shame while being indignant over what they saw as unjustifiable misrepresentation and mishandling by the NGO, as well as a lack of guidance. I may be jumping to conclusions, but the book seems to me a thinly veiled comment by the Italian on the act of volunteering in a foreign culture. As for the thesis paper, it can best be described as Gulliver’s Travels without the analogous myth. Subjectively, I initially took both as a personal affront. There is little wiggle room to interpret the novel; I jumped to the conclusion that I was being compared to Gulliver. As for the thesis, my interview, which contradicts everything in the writer’s text, was completely excluded even though the author utilized the event to beef up her data, not the least of which was to include the word “Afghanistan”. After I calmed down I realized of course they both have a valid point. It is true that the volunteer experience is widely exaggerated. It has been institutionalized by outfits such as the Peace Corps and United Nations and has been commercialized by multiple “service vacation” companies. In these instances a volunteer more often than not reports being a part of the problem rather than any solution. With the small NGOs the problems come with a lack of clarity and organizational support for volunteers, often thrusting them into situations they are unqualified to handle, setting them up for failure, or worse leaving them dangling without any clear job to do. In both situations the volunteer is filled with feelings of inadequacy or anger, sometimes both because of being pushed as well as useless. Like Gulliver, the volunteer who once was idealistic, adventurous, the pride of family and community ends up a bit pompous and smug and certainly sarcastic concerning the ability of one person to change what is bad into good. From the very beginning of my experience in the orphanage I have tried from time to time to advise prospective volunteers as to the less than glamorous experience they will face. In this respect it is a good idea to heed Mister Swift and downplay Mister DeFoe (creator of Robinson Crusoe). With a preponderance of Byronic Heroes throwing themselves into the savage world and going native (Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, Avatar) we can only take so much of this liberal romanticism. But must the pendulum of opinion always swing? Is there not a way to amalgamate the two? Or, as history suggests, is real cultural exchange doomed to only occur by force of war, occupation and colonization? I am thankful for the two young volunteers and their gifts, because this seems to me to be a crucial argument, now more than ever before. If it is not periodically engaged, we will all end up with a nihilistic view of the world wherein everything boils down to a mix between fate and survival of the fittest (such as the movie Apocalypse Now). It is I think important to give a nod here toward the effect culturally of mass communication and information technology. As it plays itself out, indications are this is creating some sort of hybrid world culture, or at least virtual culture. Cellular phones alone have transformed Asian society where, unlike the West the vast majority of people still live in the isolated countryside. But this does not really have significant enough bearing on what to me is the core issue my younger adversaries have aroused in my heart: how to reconcile the American disgusted by poor, unworldly and corrupt societies with the peasant oppressed by consumptive societies? How does 28 million Afghans tossing every single piece of refuse and sewage to the side of the road and into rivers compare to a well pumping oil into the Gulf of Mexico for three months? Even more provocatively, how does the human and financial cost of the events of 9/11/2001 weigh in against the human and financial cost of invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan? In light of all this it occurs to me that people who volunteer mostly fall into two categories, runners and imposters. There are exceptions, to be sure. I sometimes fancy myself one. Having been a runner and imposter for so many years I sense both as they become manifest, and then I marvel how they burn from my skin layer by layer not out of some great enlightenment, but out of weariness from the effort it takes to sustain them. Either that or I’ve perfected the art of (self?) deception. Whatever the case, I leave you with this meditation and will speak of it no more: In the end Gulliver maintains that nothing disturbs him about humanity; he is neither repelled by the scoundrels nor admiring of the saints. Only one kind of person does he detest, and that is the deformed soul full of pride. This is the highest evolution of the imposter (not too far removed from the emperor). At the end of their disillusioning volunteer experience, the subjects interviewed for the aforementioned college thesis decided to keep their disillusionment close to the chest, choosing humbly to side with the status quo that praises such experience as life changing and character building. This is the highest evolution of the runner (not too far removed from the victim). There must be a third way to be. My second road trip in Afghanistan brought me to Mazar and neighboring Balkh. I walked upon the ruins of what was once an empire that Genghis Khan reduced to ashes simply because he was insulted by the very king he had initially reached out to in peace. I visited the tomb of Rabia Balkhi who scribed her final poem in her own blood on the wall after her brother the king murdered her slave-lover. Then I looked out across the central Asian plains that Rumi was born to before his exile. Whenever I try to imagine a third way, he is one of the poets I turn to. It may be that any page I turn to, like a fortune cookie or the i-ching would somehow be meaningful, but here is the poem I just randomly opened to: A JUST FINISHED CANDLE A candle is made to become entirely flame. In that annihilating moment it has no shadow. It is nothing but a tongue of light describing a refuge. Look at this just-finishing candle stub as someone who is finally safe from virtue and vice, the pride and the shame we claim from those. (Translation by Coleman Barks)
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