Culture+Shock

I found the modules on volunteering and culture shock hit "nail on the head" so to speak. When I was in my early 20's I volunteered for the Christian Appilation Project. I spent about a month in the Appilation mountains and it so happened to be during the Christmas season. The amount of poverty I witnessed was truely nothing I had seen before. The so called "poor" people that I saw in Fall River where I grew up lived in apartments, had color televisions as well as a car for the most part. In the mountains I witnessed people living in corregated tin shacks with live stock running around the front yards. The majority of the people had lived in this area for generations. This was at a time when many of the coal mines had shut down and unemployment was the norm.

I am not an overly religious person but had learned about this volunteering opportunity from a close friend of mine and we decided to go. Aside from the daily praying, everyone (the volunteers) that I worked with were there essentially for the same reason as I; to help and learn from this experience. I must admit some of the people were a bit too religious for me but I went with the flow. I did experience many of the culture shock issues mentioned in the learning modules. One of my initial reactions was "hey, theres no work here, why don't they move so they can get a job". This thought went away suprisingly quickly and I soon become good friends with many of the people from the area.

On one occasion I must admit I became disillsioned with the people and the experience. It was a day or so before Christmas and myself along with a couple other volunteers had spent many hours wraping gifts for the children in the area. These gifts were donated by people throughout the country. One particular package contained two shiney new bicicles, one for a little boy and one for a little girl. We carefully wrappeed these gifts and I was looking forward to driving up a steep mountain pass to the childrens home to present them with these fantastic gifts. Upon arrival my partner and I unloaded the bikes from the truck and watched as the children openned there rather large gifts. On a side, the manner with which they openned them was a bit different then I was used to. They did not rip the paper enthusiatically but rather almost in a ho-hum manner. When the new bikes were fully unwrapped the children barely said thank you and really didn't even seem to care. The feeling of diappointment I had was, well, a feeling of disappointment. This feeling then turned to a bit of anger thinking about how someone somewhere in the country had thought enough about these children to buy these great new bikes for them and the kids didn't even care.

At the time I left Appalachia I definately had mixed feelings about the experience. I haven't thought about my time there in a lot of years. As I reflect on it now my feelings are still torn between gratitude for the experience and opportunity and that of, unfortunately, a bit of resentment that the efforts made by me, the other volunteers and the kind people who donated so many items was not appreciated. Perhaps I did not have the time to fully matriculate into the culture thus I could not understand fully some of the local's reactions and mannerisms? (rhetorical question, but quite possible)