The Lessons of Responsibility

Getting the chance to do a trip like this is not easy. I had to get selected through an interview process, be willing to live in a third world country for three months, lose the income of a summer job, be willing to go through two terms of opening up myself to the world’s problems and be physically, financially, intellectually and emotionally invested in this program and the experience that it will give me. However, this sets up a difficult question: how will I connect with people in Canada about what I see and experience? After all, they will not have the same background, both in education and experience that I will gain in Kenya and have already gained here at the University of Waterloo. The only answer can be is that I will come back and engage others in the experience that I had. I will continue to use this blog to update throughout my trip over the summer, at least once a week. And all the support I have gained because of this blog so far has been a real big help, encouragement that keeps me in a good mood with my head up.  I have had a lot of people tell me that they will live this trip through me. That is what I want to achieve through this blog and through my conversations afterwards. I want you to live this through me.

                This trip has made me a lot more open, I am finding that I want to share what is happening in my life with a lot of different people that I would not normally talk to about myself. And this openness is opening up others as well and I am learning about their volunteer experiences as well. I have heard stories about trips to India, Brazil, various countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, Haiti, even different provinces in Canada and states in the US, all about doing different forms of volunteer development work. All of these stories, from the young and old, are lessons of the global world and I am sure most of these people saw this as a major personal development stage for them. So why is international volunteering this popular? And why do I consider it so important?

                These types of trips are popular because we do get to see things that most people will never be able to see: in general Kenya, wildlife and safaris but also slums, starving children and people dying of AIDS. They will not all be enjoyable sites but as a whole the trip will make an impact on each individual life.  I was drawn to this program because of the global experience it will give me and the knowledge to deal with global problems but also because of the opportunity to develop leadership skills. This leadership that it develops is not immediately obvious: I do not feel that I have become, or will ever become, a John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King. However, it has put me into a leadership role in different clubs I am part of on campus, on my youth hockey team as a coach and it has developed confidence to voice my opinions in classes and talks that I would not have done in the past. I have not even completed the program yet and yet the benefits personally are already palpable. But how do I give back with these benefits? That is where the major lesson I learned today strikes: responsibility.

                Everybody knows that line from Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility”. To be honest, it is one of those lines that I hear so often in pop culture that it has never really hit home like it did today. In class, we were talking about leadership and the program and how this is not your run of the mill volunteering trip. We are putting a lot of preparation into this trip and spending our whole summer over there. During this, it dawned on me that with this program comes a responsibility; to share this experience and my lessons from it. Not all of my friends will have the opportunity to experience the developing world and Kenya in particular. Not just safaris and Mount Kilimanjaro but the poverty, the disease, the positivity of the people, all of these global problems that we in Canada can help fix. We are a major part of the problem and I am going overseas to understand this.

The responsibilities that I am placing on myself for this trip? To ensure that I will tell people of this experience, the lessons I learned and ensure that I will change my life to become a better global citizen, as concerned with our brothers and sisters in Kenya and Uganda as I am in Kitchener and Waterloo. I promise to help any who want to live this journey through me over the summer by writing, posting pictures and giving back after because of the responsibilities that come from this opportunity that few get to experience.

I will not take this trip for granted.