Rashmi Kedarai- MOHSS VSO Namibia,

Sharing skill changing lives with Innovative skill

Its was quite a chilly morning - holding a cup of coffee thinking and smiling of the past days of 2006 and 2007. The month of May last year when I was thinking of flying back home with tears in eyes and with the frustrated heart. And strongly thinking not be a VSO volunteer. And still I don’t know how I am still here! Its another few months more to complete my 2 year volunteer contract with the Ministry of Health and Social Services in Namibia.

When I landed in this country (September 2006) and entered the MOHSS for the first time, I was feeling so proud of my skill, which I brought from home But very soon I realized that my skills were being underused because the need of the Organization was different and expectation was high and the recourses were limited . For a while I was thinking, am I an unskilled volunteer? So many questions were troubling my mind….. well had some days of sleepless nights.

But after sometime every thing began to change as I started molding myself into the new structure, put my old skills aside for while and began to discover a new potentiality. Having been a community development social worker I never had a chance to practice as psyco-social counselor (smile) sitting in the hospital and counseling rape cases, psycho- depression cases, children behavior problem etc. With this opportunity I had to pull out a new skill and sharpen my understanding on a given task.

Today I am proud about my new skill as the result of all my cases came positive. Every individual counsel by me has surely got a little change in his/her life, Several suicidal cases come back with positive result. The above mention results made me think “How can I say I have been underused or I am an unskilled volunteer”

I have discovered that I am flexible and it helped me to move easily in every given aspect. Every one was expecting me to be in the shape, the way they wanted , and to full fill everyones expectation I had to go through a kind of stormy cyclone. It was quite painful, lot of tears and I went though the experience of psycho-depression.

But today when I look back at my 21 month experience with VSO Namibia, I feel so good. I feel that I have discover a new potential within me, I have learnt about myself. It has broadened my views. I have learnt a lot about cross culture and people and personalities. I have definitely learned to be flexible in any situation and condition and circumstances.

Today there are no more tear of sadness in my eyes as the view has been broadened with those hard learning experiences. When I think about a bamboo tree’s ability to bounce back or return to its original position, the word resilience comes to my mind.

When used in reference to a person this word means the ability to readily recover from shock, depression or any other situation that stretches the limits of a person’s emotions.

Have you ever felt like you are about to snap”? Have you ever felt like you are at your breaking point? Life is a mixture of good times and bad times, whenever the negative curves balls are thrown at you, decide to bend but do not break

Now I have another 3 month more to stay with VSO Nambia so at the end I would like to thank all VSO staff and those VSO volunteer and Namibian friends for boosting me up to stand up firm and to be brave and also for reminding me all the time to bend but not to break.