Not A Vacation

My first foray into Voluntourism was in 2006, when I discovered the Carter Work Project. I decided to travel through India by myself for a month around the week-long build. I’m smart, but not so smart, you know? Since then I’ve visited a few interesting places for the purpose of hauling some cinder blocks, always on my own dime. And with other people. Safer.

The last CWP was the exception. Kind of. We were asked to fundraise $5,000 in order to qualify to go. I donated about $1000 of that — enough, I presume, to cover Habitat’s expenses to get me and keep me there (based on the fact that I’d never paid that much for a CWP fee to date, add a charter flight). You see, the problem with raising money for Voluntourism is that people are reticent to pay for your “vacation.”

Here is Habitat’s stance on our being “on vacation”:

“The build week will be far from a vacation. Volunteers will work 5 days straight, 8 hours a day, under very tough conditions. While a portion of the $5,000 fee will cover transportation and lodging expenses for volunteers, a large percentage of it and anything raised beyond it will go directly to Habitat Haiti to build the homes in the Santo community, including construction materials, site preparation, labor to prep the land, and construction of latrines with shower areas and water points to provide fresh, clean water.” 

Not to mention that we were without hot water or an actual roof to sleep under or a mattress to sleep on. We slept under mosquito nets and took malaria medication and sprayed our clothes with Permithrin. At the time, Haiti was on the travellers’ warning list for Canadians. If that was a vacation, I apparently missed the beach volleyball and karaoke night.

Still, I’m committed to donating enough to this year's fundraiser to once again cover Habitat’s cost of having me there, so that contributors to my fundraisers know that their donations are going directly to Habitat Haiti, and not to, for example, pay the guy with the big gun who rides our bus between the site and our camp, or for my coffee or those weird sandwiches we couldn’t identify. I got that for ya.