Division by Context

A question was asked, and it had me thinking.

"Who else has been to a third-world country before?"

As a new volunteer, I suppose I have yet to meet the bigger challenges in my place of assignment. I have not even started working. Yet being a new volunteer, fresh from the rigorous pre-departure trainings, that question still haunts me.

The person who asked the question probably did not mean to be offensive by saying it, and maybe he was just being naive.  However it is not an excuse for being callous. 

As a new volunteer, I look up to the serving volunteers with high respects, for doing what they do, for actually in the placement for a period of time now, for everything they have given up back home in order to serve as volunteers.  But callousness is just not one of the dimensions this volunteering is all about.

How is political correctness present in a question when you already know by way of introduction from the very first day of orientation and even prior to departure, that one would be coming from a third-world country.

Third-world is a Western concept just as terrorism is another Western concept.

I see a divide here and this division is only a matter of context.

But as volunteers we are trained to be flexible and adaptable.  To be sensitive to the needs of others.  to be committed to learning.  To have a positive and realistic commitment.  To be self-assured. to work with others.

Now, when we cannot bear the heat and tolerance of the culture seems unbearable, do we buy air-conditioner and say fuckem 'all?

Maybe I am just being idealistic, being new and all that jazz.

No apologies.

Now I am sure brows will be raised and murmurs will be heard.  To those who would feel affected by my opinion, please understand that this is an exercise of freedom of speech. It is another copied concept by a third-world country like the Philippines, and is very much alive since even before the Declaration of Philippine Independence. 

There is indeed a divide by way of context.  It is a process I am chewing bit by bit, morsel by morsel.  

As for us third-world volunteers, flex those facial muscles and smile.  We are here.  Make the Filipinos proud.