One of the images you don’t conjure up when dreaming of a trip to South America is the one of you on your laptop, messing around online for four consecutive hours. In other words, those days when lunchtime is by far the most thrilling part of your day.
On Sunday night, I was excited to begin my second week as a Kiva Fellow at brand-new Kiva partner, CIDRE. It was supposed to be a week full of training new contracted employees for CIDRE’s Kiva loans and jetting back and forth from the field collecting new borrower profiles. We even had a project in the pipeline to post several group loans on Kiva to finance a potable water project in one of Cochabamba’s last remaining communities still without potable water. Needless to say, I was super excited to get to work on Monday.
I got to work Monday and asked for Diego, our Kiva Coordinator. It turned out that on Sunday, out of the blue, he fell ill and had to go to the hospital. He was in complete isolation until his blood test revealed the worst – he has H1N1 swine flu. All of a sudden, everything came to a screeching halt and suddenly our workplace was all about hand sanitizer, surgical masks, and getting updates on Diego, whose temperature had risen at one point to 40C (about 104F).
I have really wanted to help somehow carry Diego’s large workload but it hasn’t been feasible and I didn’t want to mess up his system.
Since I started my Fellowship with Kiva, my normally Type-A personality has gotten so good at resigning to, “Whelp, guess I will be doing absolutely nothing productive for the next four days…” So, I decided to throw together a few of my best boredom killers for fellow volunteers:
- Practice the language. Find volunteer translation jobs online. I help translate Spanish borrower profiles for Kiva, which makes me feel productive. Also, buy magazines in Spanish! Books are great too, but I love getting magazines like National Geographic in Spanish because you can get the colloquial language and sayings that you might actually use (instead of learning to translate words you never even use in English). Not only that, you can buy used copies of National Geographic at bookstores for fairly cheap, so you can write definitions in the margins. Also, often there are articles that I had already read in English. That really helps the understanding and translation process.
- Research your country. This week, while bored, I decided to do some research on those Bolivian bowler hats the women wear. After poking around a bit on the web, I put together a fun blog post that I posted to the Kiva Fellows blog. It made me feel more connected to the culture I am in.
- Plan your next weekend trip. In my opinion, traveling should always be done in conjunction with volunteering, even if it’s just on the weekends. You will better understand all the facets of poverty and environmental issues in your country the more you see it firsthand.
- Be okay with messing around online! You took a great leap of faith flying down here, and you are working for free. You are allowed a few hours to make yourself laugh on websites like Awkward Family Photos and reconnect yourself with friends from home on Facebook.
- Connect with other volunteers. Even if it’s just by email, I love talking with other Kiva Fellows for encouragement or just to say “hi.” They will understand your complaints about mosquitoes or cold showers better than anyone else! In addition to Idealist.org, some great outlets for connecting with other volunteers in your community include CouchSurfing and South American Explorer’s Club.
- Write a journal. Even if it’s a simple one recounting where you went and what you did the last week. Next year, you are going to be asking yourself, “What was that dish I had in Peru called…the one with the plantains, beefsteak, and eggs?” Also, write down the names of people you meet. It still stings me that I can’t remember some of the names of the people I was friends with when I volunteered in East Africa in 2007.
And if you ever run out of silly websites that make you laugh, shoot me an email. I have a lifetime supply. 
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Thank you so much for this post! I’m working in Costa Rica and become rather frustrated when I’m at work and not feeling productive enough… it’s good to know there are other volunteers feeling this way!
If you re-read the sentence, the ‘worst’ was related to my work at the office. Unlike the seasonal flu, there is still a very large culture of fear in Bolivia regarding H1N1, so the hospitals require complete isolation for up to two weeks. That kept him out of the office for longer than he was sick, and longer than most other diseases would have – due to the quarantine. H1N1 has killed many here that can’t afford adequate medical care, and Bolivia’s best way of preventing it is by quarantine.
h1n1 is not really “the worst”, assuming your colleague is otherwise well. it is flu, humanity has lived with it for centuries.
HIV would be worse, but hopefully private to him.