Sunflowers and Stone Hamlets
How to turn this patch into those ones?
Photo: Alexandra Panzer and David Gumbiner
Last May, Condé Nast Traveler covered voluntourism, the practice of combining volunteer work with holidays, with hands-on anecdotes provided by our editors. All fine and good, but we want to hear your stories. First up, Alexandra Panzer and David Gumbiner. Recent college grads, Alexandra and David have set off with her friend David Gumbiner on a five-month tour of Europe and Asia with an emphasis on volunteering and participating in "green" projects. She'll be posting her exploits on the DT during the weeks ahead. Below, her first post.
by Alexandra Panzer and David Gumbiner
Our packs were heavy and the sun was bright as we stumbled off a train in the Lot River Valley of Southwest France. This was to be the first of the voluntourism efforts we had planned for the coming months, and we looked around curiously for our WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) host.
WWOOF is a network of national organizations that connect organic farms with willing workers from all backgrounds. As a WWOOFer you are fed, housed, and welcomed into the farm family in exchange for between four and eight hours of labor on weekdays.
On our host Eric's small farm, the work was simple and rewarding. During the days we worked in the fields, and in the afternoons we helped build a major extension on his house using recycled wood and his neighbor's leftover sheep's wool for insulation. We worked hard, but we never felt like employees. At lunch and dinner breaks we would sit down with satisfied groans, grinning at what we had accomplished.
Eric was exceptionally welcoming and generous--nowhere more than in his kitchen. He is a proud founder of the Church of Cream and Garlic, and through extravagant meals cooked up on his little gas stove, we became his devout followers. Our plates were laden with shallots, onions, and potatoes we'd picked from the ground ourselves and cheese we had helped to make. There was always some delicious bottle of Cahors wine in his cellar that we just had to try, and Eric did his best to teach us the nuances of each local vintage. Eric's generosity extended beyond his table, though. He would take us on field trips to nearby villages and markets, and even to an annual party in a little stone hamlet where every wine imaginable was pushed; the elderberry Champagne came with harrowing tales of exploding bottles, corked too soon.
On our last night in Eric's scrappy handmade house, he poured a Champagne fountain by LED light, and we drank it happily with our paint-stained hands. We left the next morning with a notebook full of recipes, a new set of French friends, and a ton of dirty laundry.
Further reading:
* Check out Alexandra's photo album here
* WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms)
* Voluntourism (Condé Nast Traveler)
* Voluntourism: The Most Important Question of All (Condé Nast Traveler)
* Ten Tips from a Voluntourism Master (Condé Nast Traveler)
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I hope you will continue to post these. I want to take my family on a "voluntourism" trip, and the personal experiences are much more helpful than the canned marketing info.
Posted by: FLY9 | September 04, 2008 at 02:36 PM
Voluntourism is fast becoming a recognised way of giving back, one project in St Lucia, South Africa is very special to me, these kids win your heart in a second, and the area is absolutely beautiful, http://www.africanimpact.com/volunteers/hiv-aids-volunteer-south-africa/
I encourage everyone considering volunteering to go for it, it really is a life changing experience!
Posted by: Africa08 | September 05, 2008 at 07:48 AM