Last night I had one of my now infamous “Sleepless in Vientiane” nights, which are becoming one too many for my liking. The reason for this episode is someone had decided to entertain themselves way into the night, way past the recommended 12pm hour. The beats of the music were so loud and I got up wondering why the hell someone would be having a party on a Sunday, which quickly turned into: hmmm, which song is that – sounds familiar.
So now that I was awake, I had to do something while waiting for the party people/person to switch off the music. So I got to thinking about how upset I was that my team, as of the last check, was three goals down. I didn’t even have the patience to wait and see if they could redeem themselves!
That thought finished, something else came up. VOLUNTEERISM. Don’t worry; I’m just as confused as you are – loud music, “my team” and then now volunteerism? But this topic has been in my head for a very long time and it surfaced again recently.
My Longman Advanced American Dictionary tells me that to Volunteer is to: offer to do something without expecting any reward, often something that other people do not want to do. In its noun format, it’s a person who is willing to offer to help someone. That definition then connotes that a Volunteer is a person – who likes people and thinks they are of importance. The volunteer surely must have such values as: truth, right conduct, peace, love and non-violence in them. Therein comes another word VALUES. The same reliable dictionary tells me that values are: principles about what is right and wrong, or your ideas about what is important in life. Values call for people to be self-less, dependable, respectful, responsible, serving, calm, disciplined, humble, caring, compassionate, generous, helpful, considerate, kind, brotherly, having citizenship, universal love, etc etc.
I remember in 1998 when there was the bombing of Co-op Bank in Nairobi. I was a “chick” in colle (as Kenyans would say), bored to death of my typewriting and shorthand when our teacher walked in and told us that we were to go home, but to avoid the area near Haile Selassie avenue. We were all in a panic because it wasn’t clear what was going on. So we jumped into our mathrees (Matatus) and I headed into town. In the matatu, there was excited banter about what could have happened and by the time we were getting to University Way roundabout, it became abundantly clear that movement around town was going to be an exercise in futility. But, leave it to the mathrees to weave their way in and out of the city streets and we found ourselves at the “stage”. Now, going by today’s standards, I think I was absolutely MAD to do so. You see my house was within the same geographical area as my college (Loreto College Msongari). I just needed to take a 48 from the road outside my school and drop off in Lavington, and then take the 20 or so minute walk and I’d have been home, safe and sound. But no, curiosity got the better of me and I headed in the opposite direction.
The commotion around the city center was too much – and now the concern was trying to find out whether family and friends were alright and thankfully they were. Then my cousin suggested that we must do something – anything to help. So we decided to go to a hospital and just wait until our help was needed (donate blood, call up people’s relatives, comfort each other, etc). By now the sketchy details of what had happened were coming more frequently and we were managing to patch up the story. After a couple of hours and late into the night, we opted to head home and watch the news to be in the know. We saw selfless acts of humanity – people assisting strangers. At that point, there was no tribal issues, no rich, no poor – just Kenyans caught up in a fight that had nothing to do with us. There were people carrying the wounded to safety; others comforting the confused and disoriented; others, sifting through the rubble without safety equipment, trying to lend a hand in saving lives. Then, the Israeli’s sent over a team to assist in the rescue and recovery efforts. Key themes here: VOLUNTEERISM; VALUES; SELF-LESS ACTS OF KINDNESS.
It doesn’t mean that such acts as the ones above are the definition of Volunteerism/Values - in one way or another, we all somehow do self-less acts of humanity: when you baby sit your brother or sister’s kids, or a friend’s kids; sit in for a colleague at work; tutor a struggling student, work with disadvantaged groups (street kids, disabled, orphans, etc).
Some people say that for me to be a good human being, I have to have VALUES – a sense of right and wrong. Many of us believe we are people of value (not the monetary one). But, when it comes to some things we tend to forget that we advocate for values.
The point of my whole composition here is: is it moral for us to say that we can only volunteer as long as our safety is guaranteed? Only when we are assured that our life would not be endangered? If we all look at things that way, then who is left to help? And, what happens when it’s you that needs the help and somebody else said that it would be too risky to help? Maybe its time we took a long hard look at ourselves and what we consider to be our values.
If you got to the end of this composition, thank you for volunteering your time and sanity. And in case you're interested, I never did manage to get my sleep at all. It turns out the music was coming from my neighbour's apartment. I went over and knocked, but he didn't hear - CLEARLY. I figured that they were either out of the house or DEAD. Shock on you: one was out and only returned at 6am, but the other was in, ASLEEP! That music was so loud you would have had to have been DEAD not to have been bothered by it!
