So after my Habitat For Humanity trip in Costa Rica, I did the natural next step for Singh Around the World-- I hopped a plane and went to Abuja, Nigeria. Gentle readers- you are probably asking why Costa Rica to Nigeria? I assure you there is method to my madness.
In October of 2007, I was invited by the Center for Advanced Study for International Development (CASID) at Michigan State University to be part of delegation that was creating a partnership between MSU and Jos University in Jos, Nigeria had received a federal grant to develop the partnership between the two universities.
The first phase of the grant provided resources for 14 Nigerian professionals that were in governmental and nonprofit positions to come to the United States for an intensive professional development program. The Nigerian delegation came to East Lansing for three weeks in the fall 2007 and CASID organized a number of seminars as well as site visits to provide a broad perspective on American local government and nonprofit management. The Nigerian delegation also had the opportunity to visit Washington, DC.
I had the opportunity to present at two seminars during their stay at Michigan State University. The first session was in my capacity as Mayor of East Lansing. I, along with Ted Staton (East Lansing’s City Manager), presented on the topic of local government and its role in providing services and its relationship to the state and federal government. The second session was in my role with the Michigan Nonprofit Association. The session was an overview on the nonprofit sector and its relationship with government. One of my colleagues at the Michigan Nonprofit Association also presented a session on nonprofit best practices.
The dialog during the sessions was very rich. Issues of the role of federal government in relationship to local government were a hot topic. Because Nigeria’s experiment with federalism and democracy is at the beginning stage, many of the issues our founding fathers debated and we take for granted were the issues of day in Nigeria. Though we were there to present, the conversation was more of a group discussion and I found myself learning as much as I was teaching.
The delegation visit was not on the original itinerary for Singh Around the World. Actually- I was supposed to go to Brazil for Carnivale. But because of my experience with the original delegation, I jumped at the opportunity. The upcoming Nigeria Blogs will cover the first ten days of February 2008.
The Families
The families that lived in the Habitat houses were a great grounding force for me. My trip has the potential to see things at a very surface level. Tourism in general puts the focus on sites and we often miss the human element of the people who live, work and play in the communities we travel through. The neighborhood we worked in used each other as resources ranging from helping to organize transportation, to watching the children and to cooking the joint Sunday dinners. My understanding of the culture and their country was enhanced by our conversations no matter how poor our language skills were.
The kids in the community were excited to have new faces in their community. Every morning they were out watching what we were doing and at times trying their best to help with a shovel. Games like tag and rock, paper, scissors are universal and we were able to connect through them. The great things about kids is that they are not embarrassed about the language barrier so they will keep trying to get you to understand and will attempt to communicate more often.
Lessons Learned
One theme I heard from my friends that they wanted to take back to the States was the concept of simplifying their lives. We often accumulate and define success by material items. Experiences like Habitat for Humanity often illustrate areas for personal change but the hard part is implementing the change once we head back home. It will be interesting to see once people head back to their regular lifestyles if they will actually make any changes.
Friendships
An experience like the one we had creates a strong bond amongst the participants. I know I will look back with fond memories at the friendships we created and the work that we accomplished. The conversations about family, relationships, service, and spirituality were meaningful. The nights on the porch drinking beers and laughing at meaningless banter were memorable. Listening to the off color jokes from Bob were hilarious and he was the only one to appreciate my candle joke! I believe some of the friendships will continue. A few of us have signed up for the Jimmy Carter Habitat for Humanity work project in May in New Orleans. Others have been connecting through the social networking site, Facebook. Finally, we will see who will see who actually meets up with us along the way. I hope a few of them will.
One of the cool things about international volunteer opportunities is that they often combine some level of sightseeing with the volunteer component. Of course, the volunteer pays for the extra curricular activities. On our trip we had three things planned for us by our team leader- a trip to Mt. Arenal/La Fortuna, a riverboat trip and a day in the beach town of Quepos.
After working very hard during the first week, we had the weekend off. And I mean hard work. Now gentle readers- you know Sam as the guy who gives speeches, shmoozes, and delegates but this week had none of those noble pursuits. I became an expert at moving rock, pick axing and making concrete. Each night we made it back to the hotel and we would tender our aching muscles, blisters and in my case a jammed finger.
The weekend came and we relished not having to dig for two days. We toured an animal reserve before we made the long trip to Mt. Arenal, one of the active volcanoes in Costa Rica. We did a nature hike and our guide explained to us the region, showed us wildlife, and everything you wanted to know about ants. I am quite sure he had a degree in “ant”ology. After the hike and a nice lunch, we made it to the town of La Fortuna, which is know for its hot springs. The hot springs were a welcome treat to our aching muscles.
The next day we went north to the Nicaraguan border where we took a riverboat tour to watch birds. I am quite sure I would have never done this on my own accord. The concept of looking at birds has boring written all over it but because it was with the group, I found myself barreling down the river looking for pelicans, toucans and herons. I will admit that I found myself taking pictures throughout the trip and at times getting excited when I saw a rare bird for the region or the time of year.
The other R and R activity planned for us was beach time. One of the days we left the worksite early because one of the families wanted to take us to the beach. The husband was a cab driver and we piled into his van and had a great time while we watched the sunset. After our last day of work, we said our goodbyes to the families and traveled to the beach town of Quepos. The group spent the day and night there while I took off that afternoon to head to Nigeria. Though the rest and relaxation activities were rushed, they were a great time to bond with the group and gave us a quick perspective on why Costa Rica has such a booming tourism industry.
Gentle Readers-A few of the pictures here were taken by my fellow volunteer, Laurie Smith. I downloaded her pictures along with mine on the flickr site for Singh Around the World.
Amanda Sharai, our Habitat Team Leader, had chosen the team from a group of sixty applications. She interviewed via phone 35 people and narrowed it down to a group of fourteen including herself. The group was an interesting mix of people that came from different walks of life. The group ranged in age from a retired couple in their late 60’s from Alpena, Michigan to a 22 year old part-time student from Calgary, Canada. There were people who worked with nonprofits on a professional basis, people who spoke Spanish, and people who were looking for a change in their life.
The most interesting dynamic for me was the gender dynamic because there were only three men to eleven women. Now gentle readers, you can imagine that these ratios made me smile when I first received the e-mail with the names of the brigade going to Costa Rica. From what I understand, even Alyse, Patrick’s fiancé made note of the number of women to men on the trip. A no win situation for Mr. Patrick Krips.
The first few days seemed the same to me. The activities changed daily on our build site but one theme remained the same. As the only single guy, I was peppered with the questions.
“Why are you still single?”
“What type of woman are you looking for?”
“What happened to your last relationship?”
“Don’t you want children?”
“Do you think you are a afraid of commitment?”
“I have a friend that you should meet. Would you be interested?”
Listen, I am a politician and I enjoy talking, especially about myself. It is the one subject that I know pretty well. But there is point when even a guy like myself thought he was going to crack. I couldn’t complain to my roommate, Patrick, because he was going through his own interrogations.
‘How did you and Alyse meet?”
“How did you propose to her?”
“When is the wedding going to be?”
“Do you want a destination wedding?”
If it wasn’t about us, it was about their husband, their ex-husband, their boyfriend, or their last boyfriend. Patrick and I would take bets at night how long it would take for relationships to be brought up in conversation. We relished conversations about politics, travel, nonprofits, religion, and our trip around the world-- anything that would take us to safe ground.
I don’t know what happened but one day I found myself saying the craziest of things out loud. I had become the Borg.
“I don’t care if he is separated from his wife, he should get a divorce if he wants to be with you!” (Oh no- he didn’t?)
“Oh, girlfriend-It is all about communication. He thinks he is communicating but you need to tell him how you want him to communicate to you.”
“If he doesn’t know what a great women you are. He doesn’t deserve you.” (That one was followed by a couple of snaps)
I never had a sister but by the end of the trip I had a slew of them. It makes me smile. It was a great group and many of them said they would try to catch up with us on the road.
Well--we shall see….
International volunteering is growing at a rapid pace. It is a wonderful way to see the world and to connect to people of different cultures. International volunteers from America can also play a role as an ambassador for our country and our people. It is a wonderful antidote to the pathetic foreign policy coming out of Washington these days.
During our trip, our group struggled with two unique challenges that are quite common in international volunteering- language barriers and cultural misunderstandings. These barriers made the work at time more difficult but also gave us great insight into ourselves and into American culture.
The language barrier was a significant issue for us though we managed to work our way through it. Our construction manager spoke no English and only three in our group had decent Spanish speaking skills. We would often have to stop what we were doing to get one of three members of our group to help us interpret. The construction manager was new to Habitat and didn’t have a lot of experience in working with volunteers. He communicated through our interpreters and gave many directions using the international language of pointing and making gestures. My years of playing charades came in handy.
We found ourselves in a few instances having to go over work because we didn’t understand the directions. When we conveyed our concerns with the placement of a shipment of gravel on the site, it was interpreted that we wouldn’t move the gravel from the truck. A few minutes later the women who were home in the neighborhood were in the back of truck with shovels removing the gravel. We had to coax them down from the truck and apologize for the misunderstanding. By the end of the trip we were very careful to repeat our understanding of directions.
The group also struggled with a few cultural issues. We were told during our orientation that it would be common for our construction manager to get to the site later than we would arrive. He would get there on “Tico Time.” Every morning we would be ready to go and often we had to wait for our directions to come when the manager arrived. Having grown up in an Indian family, I am very aware of the cultural nuance of time. Indians were known to be late to many functions and we would call it “Indian Standard Time.”
For the people in our group that had the American mindset of time and getting things done in a rapid pace, it was very frustrating for them to work in this environment. You could hear their comments when the construction manager finally arrived in the morning. We had to manage the expectations of the group as well as convey to our construction manager that he had volunteers who were ready to work and that he was losing valuable time by not fully utilizing us.
Shortly after the trip was over, I read this passage in the book, Three Cups of Tea by the mountain climber turned nonprofit executive, Greg Mortenseon. I thought it was quite fitting for our experience.
“ That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life…We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We’re the country of 30-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their “shock and awe” campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.”
Though the barriers were unique to this volunteer experience, they helped us better understand the people we worked with and provided a great learning atmosphere.
Our build site was located in Santa Cruz, which is in the Guanacaste Province of northern Costa Rica. In many Habitat for Humanity builds, you work on a house along side a family. Our project was different. There was a small neighborhood of nine Habitat for Humanity houses that were recently completed and we were going to build a pavilion for a children’s play area and dig drainage ditches around the property lines. The families were excited to have us and supported us through out the week.
It seemed that during the past rainy season, the area around the homes flooded. The pictures that were shown to me were startling. Though the children’s play area was important to the quality of life of the families, it was obvious that helping the site develop a proper drainage system would be essential to the families.
After a few days of working with the families, they became comfortable in talking to us about their concerns regarding the work that was proposed for the neighborhood site. They were concerned the drainage ditches that would be around the site would be irrelevant if the city didn’t agree to dig a ditch in the public right of way and connect them to the major city drainage ditches along the main roads. The Habitat for Humanity Chapter was confident that the city would get around to doing the work. The families were concerned that the city would take a few seasons before they would do their work.
My immediate reaction was that we needed to contact the city and cut through the red tape to find out when this was going to be completed. Of course, we were not in East Lansing anymore. I couldn’t get on the phone and try to get this resolved. I was just a cog in the machine. Reality put me back into my place. My role was to be supportive, listen and do the manual labor that was needed. The Habitat Chapter and the families would need to be the advocates. For a person who enjoys being in control, I will admit it was a bitter realization.
