People on Project

We have a great bunch of people on project. We’re quite a varied bunch so far, and are likely to become even more varied as our numbers expand. The staff will stay the same throughout, and three of us volunteers are scheduled to be here for the whole project, but others will stay for a few days or a few weeks.

The ages range from 20s through to 60s so far. And we are a mix of different countries / ethnicities / mother tongues / cultures. The countries represented so far include: Nepal, India, England, Scotland, Italy, China, Singapore, Sweden, USA, and Australia (if that’s what I count as). As with any group of people there is a variety. We have very shy, retiring types, and we have some excessively exuberant ones too. No big problems thus far and there isn’t anyone who is particularly bothersome.

Every human is some degree of annoying at times (I certainly am) and there aren’t many here who are more annoying than that. But living and working in close quarters means that some of the idiosyncrasies in people that you might usually only notice after several months of moderate contact, become very obvious in only a few days. Nothing too major. But if you have a funny quip that you say in an odd tone of voice whenever you see something in particular, especially if that is quite an everyday occurrence (eg: saying “more power” whenever anyone plugs an electrical item into an outlet) then this has the potential to become a little wearing after a few weeks. And if you have a favourite story (and I say this next bit with quite a lot of self-awareness and inherent apologies to those of you have tolerated this in me, have I mentioned that I’ve been to Sri Lanka?) that your normal cohort hear once or twice a year, it is likely that it will be churned out in this environment three or four times within the first week. Now, if it is a good story then I’m all in favour – but there are good stories and then there are good stories. And since these are the biggest complaints I can come up with (and these are really very minor), we’re obviously doing exceedingly well!

We have people here with a variety of professional and educational backgrounds and a variety of interests (some people tick more than one of these boxes and I tick a couple too): dry stone walling; biochem; guitar playing; ants; graphic design; firefighting / EMT; constructing gondolas and ski lifts etc; economics and gender in Rwanda; Doughnut Economics; Excel; travel; forestry; the military; yoga; house dancing; ballet dancing; ballroom dancing; ceilidh dancing; construction; partying; reading; learning languages (these are some of the additional languages that people have: Japanese; Spanish; Dutch; Hindi; Nepali; French). People here have travelled to lots of different places and have plans to travel quite soon to lots of other interesting places: Africa; China; Thailand; India; Australia; Europe; the USA; Latin America; the Caribbean; etc. So this all makes for very interesting sets of conversations!

I find the ways I talk to people change quite a lot depending on who I am talking to. I think this is a good thing. There are some people with shared cultural references (Simpsons, for example) where an offhand quote can be a shared in-joke. There are others whose first language isn’t English and I have to be more aware of how I speak to them. And by this, I don’t mean simplifying my language – in fact, in many cases I do the opposite. (I was out for an evening walk with two non-native speakers – one from China and one from India – they had torches on their phones to light the way and I thanked them both for being brilliant, in both senses of the word – the Indian thought this was hilarious and explained the double meaning of brilliance as both outstanding and related to light intensity to the Chinese volunteer who asked how common this was and I said that I would guess some of the native English speakers might not be aware of that sense of the world brilliant, when we got back to base we asked a couple who indeed didn’t know.) But I certainly try to mutter and mumble less and I try to speak a little slower. I try not to use obscure slang. Enunciation is exceedingly powerful, as is eye contact and checking for understanding or confusion. It’s all pretty basic communication skills really, but since these aren’t taught in school they are much rarer, broadly speaking, than I think they should be. There are two Scottish guys here and it is such a delight talking to them. Firstly, I am genetically programmed to love the accent. Secondly, they are both lovely people. Thirdly, they use Scottish slang that I haven’t heard for ages and I adore it.

Something else that is really interesting when we all live and work together is the different ways in which we each build community and how we maintain privacy. We all have periods of seeking out contact with others, and we have ways of trying to shy away from contact. Broadly speaking, I think we all do a pretty good job of respecting each other’s privacy – people with headphones in; people sitting just round the corner of the building; people in their tent or in their bunk; people sitting in the shade away from others; people with a book or a journal or a laptop or a phone; people going for a walk alone; etc. But we are also often quite good at being open to others approaching us and wanting to connect, whether that is a quite trivial running gag, or a more serious conversation about life experiences and outlook.

The other interesting thing that I’m aware of is the sometime asymmetry in the desire to connect. To give you a very simplistic example of what I mean: there might be one particular person that I want to spend time with who perhaps is more interested in spending time with another person, who might, in turn, be more interested in someone else, etc. Now, we don’t need to only spend time with one other person, and it isn’t primary school where the girls rank their friends in order from bestest friend on down to worst enemy (or was that just my primary school?). And we are very often with 2 or 3 other people anyway. But I am aware of wanting to not overwhelm people too much by being too clingy or overbearing in one direction. I’m also trying to be open to others approaching me who I might not make a particular effort to initiate contact with. This probably sounds very calculating and manipulative, it isn’t at all. Most of this just happens naturally, the group of volunteers all leave at roughly the same time to go to site but we leave on our own or in twos or threes and on one day you just happen to be walking next to one person and it’s a different person the next. In other cases, you might deliberately hold back and wait for someone in particular. Again, because we live and work together I guess we have to be a bit more mindful and careful of how our community works – or at least, I am.

It’s a lovely group of people that seems to be cohering beautifully at the moment. I’m sure there will be some hiccups over the coming months, but I am sure it’ll all work out fabulously.