La Vida Idealist

Jennifer Yael Green is a writer and traveler who most recently spent a year as an English instructor in South Korea. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, she lives her life striving to write something worth reading, or to do something worth writing about. She spent several months volunteering in a villa in Buenos Aires, where she drank a lot of mate, led a dance class and taught English lessons. She has lived on five continents, but recently settled in Los Angeles, where she works for a nonprofit called Para Los Niños and is a freelance writer.

I was slightly unsure how I became a dance instructor to a large group of energetic, pre-adolescent girls in a villa in Buenos Aires.

I was kicked out of my own ballet class at the age of seven. I have broken my ankle tripping over my own two feet. I certainly had no qualifications to teach the girls.

But I was a volunteer in Buenos Aires, in a community center called Conviven on the outskirts of Mataderos. The volunteer who used to teach the dance class had left, flown home to her life in Europe, and this gaggle of cheeky girls needed an instructor. I was the only option.

Short-term volunteers like me arrive in places like Buenos Aires with grand plans to break through cultural barriers, connect with the local community, and leave a deep impression once they’re gone. But it’s difficult to do all that in a matter of weeks or months. Oftentimes short-term volunteers show up with the best of intentions, but run the risk of starting projects they are then unable to finish.

Which is exactly how I ended up teaching a dance class. And organizing Conviven’s library. And cleaning out the storage area. And scrubbing the kitchen’s floors. I pitched in wherever I could, trying to be as useful as possible, often taking on the unglamorous, nitty- gritty jobs.

This isn’t to say that being a short-term volunteer is all about doing jobs nobody else wants to do. Sure, organizing and cleaning weren’t my favorite aspects to being at Conviven, but I enjoyed feeling useful and needed. And I never would have offered to lead the dance class of my own accord, if I’d thought there was another choice.

Especially during the first ten minutes of my first class, when for lack of a better idea, I tried to teach The Electric Slide (no, I’m not kidding). I was met with looks of disdain, folded arms and eye rolling. There is nothing quite like the disapproval of teenagers, and I almost threw in the towel then and there.

But before I could start having flashbacks to my failed attempt at 6th grade cheerleading try-outs, one of the girls asked to put in a CD she had brought to class. I agreed, and soon loud Argentine pop music filled the room.

The girls led me by the hand so that I was a few feet behind them, and instructed me in Spanish to watch them and then repeat the moves. I watched, mesmerized and slightly horrified, while these girls shimmied, rolled, dropped and shook in a way that would have put Shakira to shame.

When I tried to emulate them, the class exploded with laughter, snorting, clutching their sides, tears rolling down their faces. Seeing my astonished look just made them laugh harder.

And that’s the manner in which my class continued for the next three months. I don’t think I taught them one dance move, but it wasn’t about that. The girls, young and poor and living in the slums of South America, loved teaching me. And I loved highlighting their talents, giggling with them, learning about their families and listening to their stories. Sometimes finding your value as a short-term volunteer is difficult, but it’s most certainly worthwhile, whichever unexpected way you can go about doing it.

For more about volunteering in Buenos Aires, check out Jennifer’s other entry, “Volunteer Spotlight: Facing Paco in Buenos Aires.” To learn about the post-volunteering life in Buenos Aires, check out entries by fellow La Vida Idealist blogger, Jon Brandt.

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