Clean, Chop, Drink Coffee, Fix Stuff, Repeat.

That just about sums up my volunteer duties at the Hai Bar Wildlife Reserve. Seriously though, over the past month I've learned tons of new things: the eating habits and food preparation for 25 different animals, how to build habitats for mice, that roosters are quick little suckers that are almost impossible to catch, and the proper water temperature for bathing turtles, to name just a few.  While I doubt any of these new skills will help me find a job (since I don't want to work with animals), volunteering at the Hai Bar has been a truly unique experience.

A typical day for the volunteers started early (arriving at 7:30 AM), and right away we got to work cleaning all the animals' cages.  Once the animals were taken care of, we went back to the work area to prepare their food for the following day. Around 10 or 11 AM we had a coffee break where everyone would gather in the kitchen and chill for a while.  After the coffee break we were usually split up and assigned random tasks for the remainder of the day.  The work varied a lot but usually involved some sort of cleaning or repair work.  One of the more interesting things I got to do was observe the caracals (a member of the cat family) to see if they would mate.  The Hai Bar has one male and one female who are usually kept in separate cages, but apparently May is mating season so the staff would combine them for a few hours at a time to encourage procreation. They never got down to business while I was on watching duty, but apparently it did happen a few times.  Around 3:30 the volunteers were driven to the bus stop, and we'd arrive back at the kibbutz at 4 PM.   I generally spent the rest of the day lounging around the pool, working out, eating at the dining hall, and hanging around the kibbutz with the other volunteers. Some nights we were completely bored, other nights we found ways to entertain ourselves (making bonfires, playing soccer, drinking...). The weekends were spent travelling to other cities or relaxing and partying at the kibbutz bar.

In a few days I'll be continuing my travel adventures, leaving the Hai Bar and Kibbutz Grofit behind.  I know that working with animals isn't the type of work I want to do, nor is a kibbutz the type of place I want to live, but I'm thankful that I pushed myself to do something completely outside of my normal interests and I think I'm better for it.

Last day of volunteering

Today was my last day of volunteering!  It was a good experience and I'm glad I did it, although there were some bumps along the way.  The main thing I'm happy about is that I won't ever have to walk down our dusty, muddy road and wait for the bus in the middle of a construction zone anymore. A few pics to commemorate my last day of bus riding/dusty road walking...

waiting for the bus, face mask on

Libby, Sandrine, Mike, and Camille....fellow busmates, waiting for the 201

bridge construction

construction

Peace House!

Giao Xuan - weekend workcamp

Background: Giao Xuan is a small town in Nam Dinh province, where the Red River empties into the South China Sea.  One of VPV's NGO programs focuses on Giao Xuan: they are trying to improve/maintain the fragile ecosystem while also promoting ecotourism in the area.  Part of the work is currently focusing on sending groups of students and volunteers to Giao Xuan for weekend workcamps, and that's what I did this past weekend! There were six foreign volunteers and about 12 Vietnamese volunteers, so it was a pretty big group.

Getting to Giao Xuan is a hellish five hour ordeal, over what is definitely the bumpiest road I've ever been on. The pic below was taken at the very beginning of the journey...the bus got a lot more crowded at each stop!

After arriving in Giao Xuan about 6 PM on Friday, we were divided into small groups and sent to our homestays.  After a quick walk around town, we all headed to one house for group dinner.  The rest of Friday night was spent playing icebreaker games and preparing materials for the weekend.

roomies 

Saturday was great, although I would have preferred waking up a little later - 6 AM on the weekend is just not my cup of tea.  We had breakfast, and the foreign volunteers had some free time while everyone else went out to collect the bikes we would use all day.  Around 8 AM we got on our bikes and started a tour of the village.  We also used the tour to hand out flyers advertising a town meeting we would be holding later that evening.  We stopped at a temple, the dyke that separates the town from the river delta, and the "beach" where there are hundreds of tiny stilt houses that fishermen live in.  On the way back from our tour we stopped at the only school in Giao Xuan to have a meeting with some of the students and sign them up for the new Giao Xuan environmental club.  

Saturday afternoon was supposed to be the main activity of the weekend - planting trees. And we did plant them, it's just that the things we planted barely qualify as trees. They were more like sticks with sprouts.  And the location was less than ideal - we planted them in this very grassy area where some trees had already been planted and a lot of them were dying.  So I'm not sure that our efforts will produce lasting results, but it was still great fun and all the Vietnamese students were so enthusiastic.  After planting "trees," we went on a leisurely bike ride through the countryside - my favorite part of the weekend.  This is exactly what I pictured myself doing in Vietnam, and it totally met my expectations.  The scenery was pretty, locals were friendly and the kids were always excited to see us. They would run after us shouting "hello! hello!" So cute. 

Sunday we held a town meeting to encourage locals to be more environmentally responsible, and raise awareness about the ecotourism project. Since it was all in Vietnamese I'm not totally sure what went on, but there was a skit, speeches, interactive games, a video and lots of singing. Basically the message was "take pride in your town and don't litter everywhere because it harms the environment and tourists won't want to visit."  The foreign volunteers participated in a few activities, including a very unharmonious rendition of Michael Jackson's "We Are the World."  After the meeting we went back to my homestay where we had an amazing lunch along with some incredibly strong home-made rice wine offered (read: forced upon us) by one of the locals.  Then it was back on the bus for the long ride back to Hanoi!

While Giao Xuan was neither the prettiest nor the most interesting place I've been (although it was both pretty and interesting), it was by far the most authentic.  There are still very few tourists so the town and the locals remain quintessentially Vietnamese.  That is to say, there are no ventures that specifically target tourists, and the locals don't try to hawk their goods because they have nothing out of the ordinary to sell.  I liked that a lot.  If this ecotourism project succeeds, I hope Giao Xuan is able to retain its culture and attitude or, in my opinion, the best part of Giao Xuan will be lost.  

ready to ride!

quick break

stilt houses

peace

Vietnamese pride

biking the countryside

high tide

singing "We are the World"

Where do most volunteers come from? (Hint: definitely not the U.S.)

Nothing much new with me lately...I'm back at work, and have a normal routine going.  

However, there have been lots of changes in Peace House recently.  To start, Lynn, one of my roomies from the beginning, just left yesterday.  She's headed back to cold, snowy Canada, and didn't seem too pleased with that.  I'm going to miss her!! Not only because she spoke some Vietnamese (which made things so much easier for us, not going to lie), but she was so sweet and awesome to hang out with.  We plan to travel together sometime in the future and be total foodies and eat at all the best restaurants...of course, we plan on having a lot more money by then. A few of the long-term volunteers are leaving at the end of this week as well, and it will be weird without them around. 

To make up for the departures, fifteen(!) new volunteers arrived last weekend, so Peace House is completely full again.  It's been fun getting to know the new volunteers and they seem really cool for the most part.  Just like the volunteers I arrived with, these new guys are from all over the place. But, I've noticed that there are a few particular countries that most people seem to hail from. The rankings below were conceived through the very mathematically accurate process of counting the number of people from each country in my head. I lost track a few times and had to start over, but I'm still pretty sure it's accurate.

#1 Australia. By far the dominant nationality overall in Peace House. And hearing them all talk about Australia non-stop has moved that country way up on my list of places to visit.

#2 Germany. Did you know that the German government pays recent high school graduates to volunteer abroad for a year? Lucky bastards.

#3 Denmark (tie) For a country with a small population, there sure are tons of Danes here...

#3 U.K. (tie) Brits are everywhere, no surprise finding a lot of them in Vietnam

Best of the rest: Canada, Japan, Spain, Sweden, France, Switzerland, South Korea

Notice the U.S. isn't on the list? Yeah, that's because until yesterday I was the only American volunteer here. And I've asked around...a few Americans have volunteered through VPV but they were few and far between. Also, since I've been here I've only met three other American volunteers, as opposed to the scores of volunteers I've met from every other developed country.  It doesn't really surprise me...most Americans who have the means to travel abroad go purely for vacation; international volunteering is just starting to gain popularity. Case in point: As of yesterday, the percentage of Americans in Peace House went up by 50%...now there are two of us. 

The best part about having another American in the dorm? Well, two things really:  I can finally talk about the weather in Fahrenheit again, and she knows who the Cubs are without any explanation needed. Amazing.