As the end of my time in Amsterdam was fast approaching, so was the exciting inevitability of making a new plan. For those that don’t already know, I’ve spent the last year working as an au pair: living with the most colourul, real and loving Dutch family looking after their two beautiful children, Dieuwertje and Brechtje. This was a precious & adventurous year with memories that will last a lifetime. How could I follow on from this and where could I go next that would give me the same sense of learning, challenge and fulfillment.
Africa has been on my mind for years and I’ve always hoped that one day I’ll be able to go, it has always been a matter of waiting for the right time (in my life) and the right purpose to take me there. So firstly, I found a potential au pair job in Nairobi, Kenya. Nothing was confirmed but I was in conversation with a French family there who had an opportunity in which I could work for them looking after their 3 young boys (paid work), and volunteer in a school/orphanage on the side. On paper this seemed like the perfect opportunity so I didn’t know why I wasn’t absolutely buzzing about this possibility…but the fact that I wasn’t got me thinking whether this was the right option for me.
Well, I probably wouldn’t be writing this if that was the right option because as it goes I decided to turn down that job. What would be the point in being an au pair again and doing a ‘bit of a good deed’ on the side of that when really my au pair year had been incredible beyond belief, but I had somewhat exhausted the au pair in me! I wanted something a bit different, and I knew that it was the voluntary part of that venture that excited me. I began trawling the internet to find ‘something’, that thing that clicked. I applied to a few organisations who responded at unbelievable speed with a link that you could click on to ‘make a payment.’ I was really disheartened by this; despite the fact that I couldn’t afford their extortionate figures, they had accepted me knowing barely anything about me, except a few answers to a few generic questions on their website. If they didn’t even meet the volunteers before they are accepted onto placement I really feared for the quality of the projects and people taking part (group dynamics, sincerity of the volunteers and programme leaders etc).
Voluntary Service Overseas are an organisation that I heard of many years ago, and at the end of 2013 I remembered them just at the right time. I had a look on their website to find that they had a dedicated section for young people known as International Citizens Service. I sent off my online application. I just said that in a very blasé manner which is totally not what it was, in actual fact I kept hold of my completed application for about a week before finally plucking up the courage to stop checking over it and send it off!!
I received a call & email to say that I had got through to the next stage and this is where my Lattitude Journey begins…
Tags: africa, Amsterdam, ICS, Lattitude Global Volunteering, Malawi
