Living for Disco

VSO recently asked me to give a talk to new recruits on why doing VSO is wonderful and amazing and everyone should do it. I wrote back to them saying that I’d be happy to, but was unsure as to whether I could actually be inspiring, given the sexual harassment/death threat thing, and the depression thing, and oh yes, the dashed expectations of sharing skills and changing lives thing, and perhaps they should think of looking for someone else for now?

I do think that VSO is amazing, and I would and do recommend it. It’s just that my experience was frustrating for many reasons, and it’s still very recent - although, frankly, the craziness of my current job is tinging my memories of my Namibian work with rosy gold. Ask me now! Ask me now!

Anyway, they seemed rather taken aback by my response and suggested a debrief, to take place at a returned volunteer weekend in Birmingham, this weekend. To whit, I will spend a weekend surrounded by people who have finally been let loose in an environment where they can say “When I was in Ethiopia/Ghana/India/Namibia…” until they are blue in the face, and no one will roll their eyes or glaze over.. Oh, the intoxication.

I received an email setting out the schedule for the first day, and it begins with a session entitled “Just one thing…” to which we are encouraged to wear our favourite outfit from our time overseas. I am now wishing that I had spent that vast amount of money on the Herero dress I saw in the window of a tourist shop in Windhoek. My favourite outfit from Namibia was a pair of cut off jeans, a khaki t-shirt from M&S, my Mr Price plastic flip-flops - now sadly defunct, and adrift somewhere in Malawi, and my Ray-Bans, which are so scratched I can no longer see out of them. I’m not sure I’m going to measure up. Perhaps I should take my red satin witch’s hat…

I’m alternately filled with horror and amusement at the idea of this session. I know what many VSOs are like, and they tend to go all gung-ho and dress in splashy African prints and styles that just look outlandish on middle-aged, middle class white women. Then I feel shame at being so bitter and twisted and not entering into the spirit of things as I should. It makes me feel like an errant schoolgirl. I expect I will sit there chewing gum, rolling my eyes, and flicking paper balls at the facilitator.

The scariest part of all is that when I go back to Harborne Hall, it will be over two years since I was last there, and it will feel like five minutes.

Just one thing… How did the time go by so fast?