Friday, April 01, 2016

Volunteering at Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata

In my time travelling I have encountered two great volunteer organizations that have left an impression on me. One in Ladakh where volunteers spend the cold winters as house guests and teach at local schools and another in McLeod Gunj where volunteers spend time helping Tibetan refugees in whatever way they can. At each of those encounters I was always impressed by the fact that tens and hundreds of people from all over the world show up and dedicate their time towards worthy causes. And we are talking serious time here, weeks and sometimes months. I have always wondered if I could be such a person.
Over the past few years volunteer tourism has caught on big time and I have eagerly tried to learn more. People working in Africa, South america and anywhere possible. One of such searches got me onto the volunteer page for Missionaries of Charity. I've been to the place before but oddly enough never heard of this thing. The volunteer program seemed straight forward and hey I've always #hated# Calcutta so it made it even more challenging. So yes I wanted to do it.
The experiences people have written about on-line encompass the entire spectrum. Some talk about the lack of empathy towards the admitted and others give near gory details of how severe the patients are there. Honestly this scared the shit out of me. Heck I still cringe and shut my eyes while I watch Hannibal all alone :'( So that made me second guess if this was a good idea.
But reading more about Mother Teresa recently I felt this would be a good place as any. I have always agreed to the notion that its easy to give some of your money as donations and "play your part", but if you can you should try giving some of your time, which is usually more difficult to part that money, and see how much difference it makes to the people you help and almost certainly yourself too. So with that selfish thought in mind I booked my tickets to Kolkata.

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