That is the question that has been hounding me these past couple of days. Middle of last week, I officially received placement offers from VSO partner institutions. There are five of them all in all—two in Mongolia, two in Zambia, and one in India. As I was reading through the placement documentation for all these options—especially the ones for Zambia—I felt my cheeks flushing and my heart skipping a beat! The responsibilities attached to these placements were overwhelming but exciting as well. And they’re all youth development-related, which was exactly what I had hoped for. Not bad for someone who was fine with taking on
any placement that would come her way. Not bad at all.
That's the exciting part.
But now comes the difficult part—the one that involves making decisions. Asking me to choose between these placement offers is like asking me to pick just one dish to eat amidst a buffet feast! It’s a good thing that VSO gives its volunteers two weeks to formally accept an offer or not. As my training/programme adviser told me,
“This is gonna be a life-changing decision, so take your time.” Talk about adding pressure to an already buoyed-up balloon. Haha.
If only we could make decisions based on
eeny-meeny-miney-moes, things would probably be easier. Or not. But hey, who am I to complain? There are worse things in life than having several options…like not having
other options to base one’s decision on, which is the dilemma that some of my co-volunteers are finding themselves in.
Anyway, a day after I received the offers and read through all the materials forwarded to me, I narrowed down my options to these three designations:
- Volunteer Programme Manager, Mongolian Youth Federation (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia)
- Organisation Development Adviser, Patang (Orissa, India)
- Projects Coordinator, Action Nation Group for Emerging Leaders a.k.a. ANGEL (Chipata, Zambia)
These three possible placements stand for causes that I believe in (i.e., youth empowerment, education development), and are somewhat similar to what I have been doing for Pathways these past years (except that two of these involve fund raising…arrggh!). I could see myself working in each of these organizations and countries. Had any one of these options been offered to me individually (that is, not simultaneous with the other options), I probably would have taken it without much ado.
My sentimental favorite, of course, is Zambia. How many times have I said that working in Africa would be a dream come true? In fact, that rush of blood to the head that I experienced when I received the offer to work with ANGEL almost made me decide, right there and then, to take the job. But then again, I knew that any choice I’d be making would have to go through careful deliberation.
At the end of the day, it would have to boil down to where I would be able to most effectively serve, given the skills and experience that I have vis-à-vis the needs of the community. Hence, I had to gather information—read through the briefing packs, online articles, and get in touch with people who have lived and worked in these countries and institutions. And I have been doing exactly these things these past few days. What I’ve learned through my “research” were daunting at times, and encouraging at times. But at all times, they proved to be enlightening.
Four months from now, I could be freezing to death in Ulaanbataar, or getting my feet muddied in the rugged terrains of Chipata, or weathering cyclones in Orissa. But wherever I may be by then, I just hope that it is where I am
meant to be.
Labels: Confusion Says
