Catching the humanitarian travel bug

Volunteering in South Africa

Teghan Beaudette, volunteer staff

The travel bug is something that runs rampant through universities — if you haven’t already caught it you’ve definitely at least heard of it. It’s that little itch at the back of our brains that leaves us constantly daydreaming about foreign places and lives much more interesting than our own. In our Manitoban climate it’s easy to see why we want to escape during the winter months, during reading week or over our seemingly short four-month summer break. It isn’t just the weather that beckons us abroad.

As a student, losing sight of yourself and your goals is easy when the only things that matter are exams and assignment deadlines. Christine Young, a 21-year-old student from the University of Manitoba, was feeling much that way when she decided to make a change in her life.

“I knew I wanted to travel. I just wanted to get out and see the world. I just felt like there was this part of me that was missing when I was here and I was kind of searching for it. I wanted to go see something that was totally, completely new — something I hadn’t seen before,” Young said.

She didn’t plan a reading week trip to Los Cabos or to Big White; but she ended up satisfying her travel itch in a different way. “I went to CAA, when my mom and I were going on a road trip to North Dakota two summers ago, and I just ended up talking to the lady that was helping us about wanting to travel. I was kind of on the fence, thinking maybe France, but there was also an interesting prospect in South Africa for volunteering. She told me she had gone through this program called Aviva. She said she had an amazing time, she learned so much and she’d love to go back. So I looked into it, found a program that I liked and I applied. Within a week, I was accepted.”

The media coverage of the area has instilled fear in most westerners. It isn’t just the perception of violence and disease in the area that keeps people away; there is undeniably some truth to the reputation Africa has developed. Africa is frequently at the top of lists ranking areas of the world in terms of murder and rape frequency. These aren’t the only problems associated with Africa; AIDS and Africa are virtually synonymous now, and the poverty there has reached levels unfathomable by many westerners. Civil war has also plagued many areas of Africa — the Rwandan genocide being one of the worst in history. With these things in mind, the obvious question is: why would someone want to go there? It seems so much easier to donate money or ignore the problem entirely.

Despite the potential dangers, Christine decided that she did want to go. She wanted to experience the area first-hand. While she was nervous, it was for reasons that might not seem immediately apparent. “I was nervous just because I’m kind of a shy person. I wasn’t sure how it was going to be meeting these people; I was going to be thrown into a place that I had to stay for three months at a time. It was scary just hopping on a plane by yourself and going somewhere completely . . . well, you have no idea what to expect. I just didn’t know what to expect.”

Her family members cautioned her repeatedly against going. They were worried about her personal safety and the reality of the things they had heard about Africa. “My uncle, a lot of people in my family, were hesitant about me going. My uncle said, ‘You know it’s the rape and murder capital of the world?’ I guess statistically it is, but it’s just like anywhere, really. You have to be careful wherever you are; more so some places than others.”

There are many misconceptions about the people and the atmosphere in South Africa, one of which centres on crime. Ed Scott, the co-director and project co-ordinator for Aviva explains, “Many volunteers, particularly those from the U.S.A., are often surprised to find that the crime problem in South Africa is nowhere near as bad as they had heard from ‘reliable’ sources. That’s not to say that crime is not a problem in this country, but certainly it is more localized than some publications would have you believe. We have hosted over 1,400 volunteers over the past five years, and every single one of them has arrived home safe and sound. Of these, three have had cellphones stolen, and one was asked to hand over her handbag.”

Keeping this in mind, Christine saved up approximately $7,000 in four months and got on a plane headed for Cape Town, South Africa. Her first impressions of Cape Town were overwhelmingly positive, despite being exhausted after a 37-hour plane ride.

“I arrived in Cape Town and the first thing I remember was this guy, Keenan; he was the driver for the Aviva house and he came and picked me up. They always came and picked you up and made sure you were safe. Driving down the road with Keenan, he was explaining all the different things. He showed me Table Mountain and where Lion’s Head Mountain was. It’s a beautiful city.”

Christine arrived at the Aviva house shortly after her brief tour with Keenan, “I arrived there — I was kind of speechless. My mind wasn’t working too well, but everybody was very welcoming at the Aviva house.” Aviva is based out of Cape Town, South Africa and it aims to help international volunteers experience South Africa while providing manpower for local community and wildlife projects. Aviva sends approximately 400 students a year on volunteering excursions.

During Christine’s 10-day stay in Cape Town, she took tours of townships — one of the products of apartheid. These areas are located on the periphery of urban centres, which are racially segregated and severely underdeveloped and reserved exclusively for non-whites. The township tours were some of the most memorable experiences of Christine’s time in South Africa. The poverty she saw in those areas was completely different from the westernized city of Cape Town.

“I saw people cooking — BBQ-ing lambs’ heads over a fire. Some townships are cleaner than others, but some of them just have trash lying all over the place because they don’t have proper waste or sewage systems or bathrooms.”

After her 10-day stay in Cape Town, Christine flew to Johannesburg (which she calls Jo-Burg) and drove four hours to a program known as “Untamed Africa.”

“Untamed is kind of a safari organization, or company. They do tourist stuff — take people on safaris. They have a tented camp where tourists stay. We stayed at a place called Bush Camp, which was just down the road. After four days of being there we started the field-guiding course.”

The field-guiding course taught Christine in-depth details about the wildlife and ecology within Kruger National Park, the area that Untamed Africa operates out of. It is essentially a course that teaches volunteers how to become safari guides. Christine spent a month there and is now officially certified to lead safaris in South Africa. “If you passed a test — there’s a written and practical test — if you passed both, you got your field-guiding certificate. I did pass and I have my certificate for field-guiding.”

After a month in Bush Camp, Christine began volunteering at several schools in the area, serving children breakfast. The children eat a powder-and-water mix for breakfast, which Christine helped prepare for each student.

“You get up at around seven in the morning, leave at eight for the schools. We’d bring them breakfast. It was like a protein shake kind of thing. When we’d get to the school, the kids would bring out a table for us and some chairs and some buckets. We’d have buckets full of water and then we’d just individually mix up the cups and hand them out to the kids. . . . At one of the schools we even put in a garden to help them be more self-sufficient.”

It was within the schools that Christine first noticed the presence of AIDS in Africa. She said it’s something you don’t see clearly or very often, but it was evident in the children within the schools.

“I could tell that it was there, mostly from working at the schools. You could just see it in the kids’ eyes sometimes; that they were sick. The eyes were a little bit yellowed or they had mucous around their mouths. It was pretty sad to see some of the kids which were not in good shape, and you knew that that was what it was.”

AIDS is only one of the things constantly jeopardizing children’s education in South Africa, said Christine. “The system there is kind of on edge. There were a lot of teacher strikes going on when I was there. The group that came after us didn’t get to do the volunteering because the teachers were on strike the whole time. That was pretty unfortunate because the kids don’t have anything else to do, and they’re missing out on their education because of it.”

Despite these things, Christine speaks extremely fondly of her experiences within the schools. When asked about her most significant experiences in South Africa she said, “So many good memories. . . . It’s really hard for me to pick out one thing. One thing that just brings me back when I think about it is on one of the last days being at the schools. It was really an emotional time because after working with the kids putting in a garden you really got to know their personalities. I remember taking out my camera. These kids just love the camera. They go wild when you take it out. They all just run towards you and they’re all just trying to get in the limelight. They all jump up and down. It was just such a great few moments. I had the video setting on and I was holding it out and the kids started jumping all at the same time and kind of chanting and circling around me.”

Christine continued, “They’re all just so happy for you to be there. They brought me to tears. They were in tears too when we were leaving. They said, ‘Christine, don’t go. Stay with us.’ They’re just lovely. They’re just such resilient kids. Its not like you see on TV — everybody looks so sad in those charity commercials. These kids are just so full of life. They’re excited to be there. They’re excited to talk to you and find out about where you’re from.”

After Christine left the schools, she moved on to volunteer at The Jane Goodall Institute, where they work to preserve wildlife and rehabilitate chimpanzees. Christine said this was the most disappointing aspect of her trip.

“Being at the Jane Goodall Institute sometimes was frustrating because a lot of the things that were promised by Aviva that we were going to receive there or the activities that we were going to do didn’t end up happening. We were supposed to get rifle training, but that didn’t happen. We didn’t really get an education about the chimps or chimp rehabilitation.”

Aviva no longer offers this opportunity to volunteers and the Jane Goodall Institute was short-staffed at the time; there simply wasn’t enough staff to train Christine and her fellow volunteers.

Christine also said that she had problems with the program when she was departing from South Africa after three months.

“Yeah, I had some troubles. I guess the best example is that when I was leaving the lady that was organizing my departure didn’t really read my flight very carefully and I ended up going to the wrong airport. They brought me to Jo-Burg. I was supposed to leave from Cape Town. That was a little piece of hell right there. At first the people at Lufthansa — like Air Canada — told me, ‘No, no way you can do this. You’ll have to buy a new ticket,’ and that was going to cost me. It was actually cheaper to buy a round trip, which would have cost me $3,000, and I was like ‘I can’t afford that.’ I was going to have to stay a night by myself in Jo-Burg in a hotel. I don’t know anyone there.”

Christine got in contact with Ed Scott, the co-director of Aviva, who helped smooth things over. “Eventually I got through from a lot of frustration and trying to convince them. Eventually they said they were going to let it go this time but it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I was so grateful for that. It was pretty terrifying.”

Although some aspects of the trip proved to be challenging for Christine, she says that she would still recommend the program to other students. “I had a great time. The thing was, when I first got there, I went to Aviva house in Cape Town and I was there for 10 days. I got to meet other people that were going through this Aviva organization. None of them had anything bad to say. I met people who went through the surf school and the Baphumelele orphanage. They just had good things to say about it. As a whole, I think that Aviva is a good organization — just I had some problems with it.”

Christine says she absolutely would go again and strongly recommends the program to others who are interested in getting involved in the crisis in Africa or who are simply looking for a new and different travel destination.

“I would definitely recommend that people get out and see the world. It doesn’t matter where, really. Just get out and explore. South Africa is a great place to do that because there’s so much culture to see.”

The process can be, and often is, life-changing for those who choose to travel to South Africa and volunteer. The changes aren’t just evident in the people that choose to visit, however, but also in the people and places that the volunteers work for.

The difference that a single person can make is often quantitatively small, but as Ed Scott says, the qualitative changes are huge.

“When we first began to work with Baphumelele Children’s Home in 2004, conditions at the home were in a terrible state, with two to three babies sharing cots in a small room with mice, cockroaches and flies all over them. There were no staff available to play with the children, as they were too busy cleaning and cooking. Consequently, the babies and toddlers were very underdeveloped and often left in their cots for days on end. Funds were also scarce, with one or two nappy changes being the maximum they could allow per child per day. Forty-two teenage girls shared three small bedrooms at this time and literally slept wherever they could find a space on a bed or the floor. Thanks to the sustained efforts of international volunteers since then, Baphumelele is barely recognizable now, with new clean accommodation facilities, more local staff, proper procedures in place, and many more improvements that are too numerous to mention.”

Christine’s reasons for volunteering in Africa exceeded the concrete changes in standards of living that are achieved for the local residents by the volunteers.

“I think this kind of volunteering is important because it gives the people hope. It shows them that the outside world does care and that there are people that do want to help. I think it’s also important for us to go there to do this kind of volunteering because it makes us feel connected to the problem. It makes it real.”

When Christine describes the way she feels about her time in South Africa, there is a swell of emotion evident on her face. I know few other people who have told me the details of their travel experiences with so many positive things to say and such conviction in their feelings. Christine says her volunteerism in Africa significantly changed her life.

“It was just a really profound experience and it’s so hard to try and portray that to anyone who wasn’t actually there with me. So much happened to me there. I came back feeling like I was actually more myself than when I had left.”

Did she find that part of her that was missing, when she left for Africa?

“That kind of thing is a process — something you’re searching for your whole life, maybe? I came back feeling a lot more confident about myself, feeling like I had done something really valuable with my time.”

An increase in confidence is something that Ed Scott cites as being frequently reported by volunteers who return from Africa. It seems a common byproduct of travel abroad. You are more independent; you’ve learned new things and acquired new skills. Christine’s attributes the changes within herself recently to her experiences in South Africa.

“I’ve just gained a lot broader perspective on the world. Just being able to see such a diverse place as South Africa and having such diverse experiences there opened my eyes so much. It also gave me the travel bug, so now I just want to keep travelling forever. But that’s not really the easiest thing to do. I’ve gained a sense of confidence. Actually, when I got home, one of my cousins thought I looked taller. So I think I’ve just felt like a stronger person. I mean, I went through so much there.”

There are numerous companies like Aviva available for students or individuals interested in volunteering in Africa to get involved with. Christine advises doing something she didn’t. “I would suggest researching the different organizations and get in touch with them beforehand. Give them a call. Have a conversation with whoever organizes it. I just pretty much signed up and went, kind of on a bit of a whim.”

So, research the place that you are interested in going to, and as far as what to expect, Christine thinks, “Everyone’s experience is going to be different. I wish I would have been told I wasn’t going to get half the things Aviva told me I was going to get. Actually, maybe not, because then I might not have chosen that, and I am really glad that I chose that because I met a lot of really great people, friends that I hope I can keep friendships with for the rest of my life, hopefully.”