Chance to help and explore

Friday, 13 January 2006 23:24

A two-year commitment to International Volunteering offers a couple both.

Sally and Michael Neumerski, of Merchantville, hike
the Inca Trail in the Peruvian Andes.

How could my wife, Sally, and I combine our lifelong desire to travel with a growing sense of responsibility to try to help the world's disadvantaged? This question led us to a two-year commitment to International Volunteering, and the notion that we could combine volunteer work in different countries with the study of cultures and the exploration of distant places.

At first tentative and unsure, we are now experienced volunteers and confident, independent travelers, having spent extensive time in South and Central America, Eastern Europe, and the Mediterranean, while now planning our next sojourn, to Southeast Asia. Along the way, we've met incredible people and have always received much more than we've been able to give.

Salvador, Brazil, is a fascinating Afro-Brazilian city with throbbing music, great beaches, and the site of our first 12-week volunteer assignment. Initially assigned to a school for the handicapped and later to a Mother Teresa orphanage, we had our first experience working side by side with wonderful, dedicated people. We struggled with Portuguese, learned about third-world poverty and about ourselves, and marveled at a culture that was so different from our own. Weekends off allowed hiking through incredible terrain and sailing to mysterious places that were a throwback to an earlier, simpler time.

Off to Cartago, a sleepy town of 100,000 just outside Costa Rica's capital city of San Jose. The next 12 weeks would find Sally at a home for AIDS victims, while I worked first at a senior center and later at an orphanage. We explored the magnificent landscape of Costa Rica through mountains, rain forests, and superb beaches, all the while enjoying the warm hospitality of the country's people.

Cuzco is the ancient Incan capital in Peru, and the gateway to the fabled Inca Trail and the "lost city" of Machu Picchu. High in the enchanted Andes, we worked with indigenous peoples struggling to survive but nevertheless showing great dignity and an unfailing generosity. Afterward, we explored Peru, Chile and Argentina, seeing the breathtaking waterfalls of Iguazu, feeling the rhythms of Buenos Aires, and gaining a great deal of insights into the cultures and peoples of South America.

The handicapped orphans at the Tanner Missions in Romania really touched our hearts, and living for eight weeks in the small agricultural village of Nicoresti offered an unforgettable view of the plight of the Romanian people. We explored Transylvania and Romania's fabled painted monasteries, and as our volunteer assignment ended, we ventured to Budapest, Prague, and mysterious Istanbul before heading along the Turkish coast to a ferry to the ancient Greek islands of Rhodes and Crete, ending wearily in Athens.

The people we've met on our journeys have been as unforgettable as the sights and sounds that we have enjoyed. We appreciate even more fully the fortunate accident of our birth in the world's richest country. We've learned so much, witnessing peoples of radically different cultures who all have the same wants, needs and values.

The author and his wife live in Merchantville, Camden County.

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