By Sandy Unger
Imagine your work colleague attended to a conference. From what you saw on the website, the speaker was renowned, the seminars appear intriguing and the lodging and food would not leave one disappointed. You are now at a meeting where your boss has asked him to talk about what he did there.
The conference was great. I felt like I could really put my skills to good use. I was able to approach the speaker and offer some insights on more effective ways to organize her power point and gave a few tips on public speaking. I also suggested that she look further into certain areas of the research to beef up her argument. As far as the seminars go, I had an in-depth talk with the leader about more successful ways of managing a group discussion. As you all know, I love to cook and was very excited to be able to spend a couple of afternoons in the kitchen and help the staff with their julienning and general dicing techniques and we went through a couple of the dishes with them. I think those tweaks will make their lunches that much better.
As to the hotel, it was lovely. The housekeeping staff were friendly but seemed a bit inexperienced, and the products they used were not top of the line. So I decided to go to the store and get them some and showed them how to use them. I even sacrificed one day of the conference to be their instructor for the day. Everything looked much more efficient after that. I am so glad I had the opportunity to go and do some real good for those people. I can’t wait to go back next year and see everyone again.”
This scenario is not real and may even seem absurd. Yet, when someone has gone on an international trip to a so-called developing country how often is “what did you do there” the first question that is asked? How often have we ourselves gone on such trip with the mindset of being the expert rather than the apprentice? I am guilty on both counts.
As a young college student, I went with a team to a community in another country with a week-long mission to “love them and serve”. Because none of us ever met the recipients of our love and service nor did we speak their language, this effectively translated into a list of projects we would complete. It seemed so natural; why else would we go if not to “help those people who have nothing”? And as we sang songs in English, a language they did not understand, ran (or attempted to run) little programs in our almost nonexistent Spanish and (poorly!) slathered paint on buildings, I noticed groups of local men and women with vacant gazes in their eyes standing around watching us.
The expressions on their faces were many, but the one thing that seemed absent was a sense of appreciation for our “hard work”. This was puzzling. After all, we had sacrificed time and money to come to the inhospitable place to serve, and they are not even thankful. As the week went on, I started to wonder even more whether our “helping” was actually helpful to anyone or worse yet if it in reality was causing more harm than good. What would happen if the local women ran the programs for the children? Maybe the children would actually understand what people were saying. Maybe the women would feel a sense of purpose. What if the men were paid to paint their own center? Maybe it would look a lot better than what we did, and they would feel pride and ownership over their building. That question kept nagging at me for years. I was conflicted; as the name implies, the purpose of a service trip is to serve. But why did it feel so strange? I decided to remedy this feeling by not going on any further service trips. But that did not solve the problem, because whenever anyone else went and came back, I was right there with the rest of the crowd asking the ever ubiquitous “so what did you do there” question.
In 2019, decades after my initial service trip, I had the opportunity to visit the Lukome Center with my family and a few people from our church. Our leader was committed to the “helping without hurting” philosophy, and as a team we purposed not to go to “help and do” but rather to encourage, observe and be flexible. By and large we succeeded, but my mind was still clouded by trying to find little projects to do — just enough to have something to talk about when I got home. After all, before I went, people asked what I would do there, and I gave answers. When I came back, I certainly couldn’t say that I did nothing.
I felt like a prisoner to those empty promises I made to people back home. And it was all my fault because I did not have the confidence to say I did not know what we would do. It felt strange to say we may not do anything besides observing and learning. If I am honest with myself, I could not see that “helping” and “doing nothing” were not the only options. I was like the fictional conference attendee who failed to learn what the speaker had to offer because he was too busy teaching the kitchen staff how to chop vegetables.
Our daughter, on the other hand, made no such promises to anyone. As we were at the center, I saw how free she was to just be. To talk to the staff and the students, to participate in activities as they came up. She did not have an agenda. And she had a blast. Most of all because she placed no expectations on herself, she was able to become inspired. She somehow got the point long before I did. While there, the best thing was to “be.” The time to “do” would come later. And she did just that. She was able to learn and understand and then to tell the story about the Center, the staff, the girls, and the lifechanging work ChildVoice is doing. Not only was her own life changed, but her story also inspired others in the US to get involved, and together they were able to start a fundraiser and accomplish much more than I ever could in the 2 weeks we were in Uganda.
We had an opportunity to go back in 2021, and this time I was ready. I found confidence in describing the staff at the Lukome center as authorities in what they do. The cooks are chefs, experts in the local cuisine. Sitting in the corner of their kitchen, observing their techniques was a gift. Being invited to apprentice in preparing the cabbage, beans and chapati was the ultimate bonus. The pre-school teacher is an early education specialist who can manage a group of toddlers better than anyone I have seen. She is the ultimate mama duck with a row of ducklings doing as she says. She could teach a seminar on successfully running a pre-school. The center counselors shepherd adolescent girls who have come from less than enviable backgrounds, from different cultures (that at times are at odds with each other) and don’t speak the same language. They do it with determination, apparent ease, grace and a healthy helping of humor. In the two weeks we were there, they transformed new students from strangers who did not speak the same language and were suspicious of everyone into a cohesive unit of friends. I felt my mind was stretched every time they carved out some time in their busy schedule to tell me how they do what they do. The vocational teachers are able to take a group of students who range from once-valedictorians in their class to the functionally illiterate and instruct them in a way that everyone passes the exit exam. If I were a teacher, I would be taking notes on how they do THAT.
Although the students are young and their children were not conceived through ideal means, they are fierce loving mothers and without a doubt are their kids’ favorite person. We may come from two very different worlds, but we are not that different after all. The director instills teamwork, striving toward the same goal and valuing each other better than someone who has a master’s degree in office management. He could not only teach a seminar — he could run a whole conference.
It took my second time going to realize that I was not sacrificing my time and money to go to an impoverished third world country to “serve those people.” Instead, I was privileged to be invited to take part in a two-week learning and life transforming experience complete with competent instructors, hoteliers and chefs. When asked what we would do before we went this time, I could confidently say we were not going with an agenda. I could give my conference analogy and talk about what I was hoping to learn instead. Not only did I say it — I felt it. My second time I too was ready to just be, learn, observe, lend a hand if it was actually helpful, and be inspired. I did not sit in seminars and have no PowerPoint printouts as souvenirs, but my mental and handwritten notes prove that I was indeed in the presence of world class experts.
As we start this new year, I have a challenge for all of us. What if we completely flipped the script on how we see overseas trips? What would happen if we saw our international hosts not as recipients of our charity but rather as providers of their knowledge? What would happen if we all made a commitment to replace asking “what will you do on your overseas trip” with “what are you hoping to learn?” What if we truly listened to those who return about the wisdom they gleaned and actually incorporated some of the lessons they learned into our own lives? What would happen if we went on overseas trips and were okay with just being? We won’t find out unless we try. Will you join me?
Sandy Unger and her daughters made their second trip to the Lukome Center in Uganda in April 2021. They have been actively involved with ChildVoice since the very beginning.