FML

8/14/2014

Today, something bad happened.

Because I’m not a physical therapist and I’m assigned to a physical therapy clinic, inherently, there’s not a lot for me to do. I found myself with a lot of free time, so I sought out new avenues of volunteerism. One area I found was the records department.

Before I get to too far on this I want you to know that I’m not pulling any punches. This is exactly what I think as I think it. I also am representing facts as they happened, nothing has been embellished.

My schedule is pretty basic. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I’m at the Bacchus school in the morning. It’s a private school run by an American ex pat. There’s a technology camp going on there that aims to introduce young kids to technology. Usually I volunteer at camp from 8:30-12:30 then end up hanging out there for the rest of the day casually working on a teacher development program for teachers at the school. The hope is that it can be extended to other schools in the area. The reason I don’t go to the clinic should be obvious from my previous posts; there’s nothing to do there. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I work with the stroke patients. Usually business drops off around noon and I head home for some lunch and come back to the clinic and end up doing nothing until 4.

Well, last week on Thursday I went to the records department and they asked me to help them get a computer so they could digitalize some of their records. I said I would help and said I’d be back to talk some more about it. They already had a computer but I didn’t say anything. This past week I was talking with another volunteer and he’s analyzing trends in hypertension and diabetes patients. This sounded cool and I was going to present the idea to the records department today.

So after lunch I went to the records department to see if there was anything I could help with and present my project idea. The records supervisor was in a meeting so I asked some of the staff if I could wait until she was done to talk to her. As I was waiting someone, a guy I’d never seen before, asked if he could speak with me. He took me back to his air conditioned office and asked me who I was and what I was doing there. I told him about Peace Corps and he asked me if I had an official letter or something to identify myself and what I was doing. Obviously I didn’t because this isn’t Nazi Germany. I don’t worry about having my papers with me at all times. He told me that I should get one so in case some supervisor or something came in I would be able to identify myself. I asked him what he did at the records department. He told me that he helped out the supervisor with different things so I assumed he was just a secretary taking his job way too seriously. I thanked him and left.

A little miffed and with no intention of getting a letter to identify myself to the secretary Gestapo I continued to converse with some of the staff and wait for the meeting to end. The secretary walked into and out of the meeting a few times and conversed with the supervisor. Another staff was called into the meeting then came out and said that I needed the letter so that I could volunteer at the records department. Now legitimately upset, I left before I said something I would regret later. Now, I know they’re just doing their jobs and that anyone else that came in would have to have some sort of identification to volunteer. But I’m still pissed.

Obviously I’m not a spy or anything. I’m not here to steal the mountains of records that they have or set fire to the maternity ward. I’m with the Peace Corps. I’m here to help.

Before, I wanted to help and the people here didn’t know how I could. That’s natural, if you haven’t seen what could be you don’t know how much better it could be. That was confusing. Basically, people here haven’t been to the US. They don’t know that they could have it so much better. So when you ask to help they don’t know how you can help because things have never been better for them even though they could be.

Now it feels like they’re actively denying my help. At one point, with people filing records all around me, I literally stood there and said, “Give me something to do” while people were working all around me. And they just gave me blank stares.

Another volunteer is considering quitting. He says back home he was doing way more to help people as a nurse then what he does here. And I feel the same way. I didn’t always like The Children’s Farm Home but I enjoyed the kids and my coworkers and felt like I was making a difference in someone’s life. It’s hard to see how I’m doing anything equal to or better here.

And to make things worse, I went to the shop on the way home to buy a Coke and feel a little bit better about this situation. While I was standing in line a cockroach crawled out from under the counter, climbed my pant leg and perched on my shoulder and looked me dead in the eye. That was pretty gross.