For months I have been blogging about international volunteer experiences and opportunities. Now I want to tell about my upcoming trip to Peru.

 On May 15^th, 2011 I will fly out of Minneapolis, Minnesota and about 12 hours  later land in Lima, Peru. After landing I will be picked up by a representative from the International Volunteer Headquarters program and then driven up the Andes Mountains to the city of Cusco. Once there, I will move in with a local family and begin work at the orphanage.

During my time in Moshi, Tanzania I had the opportunity to attend the mazishi, or funeral, of a young man. Tanzanians regard funerals as very important and critical to attend.  Making an effort to help out a friend or family member in need, or sometimes  even just an acquaintance, is expected of everyone.  It is even considered polite to join a funeral procession  if you pass one, or at the very least to stop and pay your respects as the procession passes by.  

In recent months I have been blogging about my trip to Tanzania, and until now I have only discussed short stories about my time there. In this blog post, I will run through a typical day and some forms of the compassion that I experienced throughout those days.

Each morning we were expected to be downstairs to eat breakfast between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. As we ate, the women working at the house would bring out food faster than we could consume it.  It was around this time every morning that we witnessed our first episode of compassion.  Every individual who was employed by Cross Cultural Solutions waited patiently for us to eat our fill before dishing up their own plates.  As hard as we tried to convince them to eat first, or even to let us cook for them, they politely declined and said it was their pleasure.  They had been raised from a young age to treat guests with a great deal of respect and to show compassion whenever possible.

As I have discussed in my previous blogs, “International Volunteering and Relief Work” and “Compassionate Man," I traveled to the rural town of Moshi, Tanzania, last summer for nearly a month to donate some of my time by volunteering. While in Tanzania, each member of the program was assigned a volunteer position according to their skills and interests. Some of us worked at schools, some were assigned to hospitals, others to women’s shelters, and a few worked with a local NGO entitled Tanzanian Organization Facilitating Community Development Projects, or “TAFCOM” for short. I was not assigned to work with TAFCOM but realized quickly that I was very interested in their mission and the work they were doing.

With countries all over the world enduring poverty, natural disasters, and other incidents of extreme misfortunes, the demand for volunteers is higher than ever. The ease at which individuals are now able to donate their time is also easier than ever with the growing number of organizations dedicated to facilitating the process. Volunteering in other countries has become as affordable as a family vacation, with the added benefit of delivering acts of compassion and really experiencing other cultures.