Perpetual Change

An interesting question

As we were sitting around last night, one of my fellow leaders, Tavis, asked if it was difficult or strange to come from Ukraine development work to Backroads because they were so different. I had thought about this in the past a good deal, and wanted to answer because I thought I had something to offer, but Backroads leaders like to talk, which is important for our job and the conversation carried on without my answer. I later thought that you all might also be interested in the answer. If I addressed this last year, I apologize; it certainly isn't the first time that this question has been asked.

The answer is two parts. First, of course it is difficult and strange. I have culture shock sometimes, but because I have moved back and forth between poverty and luxury so many times (from the Keys to Yosemite, from Peace Corps to Backroads, etc.), the shock comes in little sparks. Something catches you funny, or makes you emotional, but it usually passes as fast as it came. It may be a problem with Backroads guest that is rather trivial, but reminds you of a similar complaint by a boy who has no family at all. This is difficult.

But there, is a selfish part of me, that gets a similar shock but in a very pleasurable way from the thought of eating prosciutto or mozzarello, or from sitting around with friends having a beer, or pizza and wine with my favorite toppings, or going for a bike ride alone, or taking a passegiata (evening stroll) with friends.

The second part of the answer, is that it really ins't such different work. You are recognizing needs in both situations and serving them. What a human being needs most is just someone to listen to them, and that is something that both Backroads guests and abandoned children have in common. Both jobs are all about the relationships that you build.

The conversation went on to talk about leaders who have guilt because they feel they are destroying the environment, or foreign cultures, with this job. This is really what I wanted to address most, and a question that I struggle with a lot. Once a place becomes a National park or a World Heritage Site, its amount of visitors goes up astronomically. In the Keys, we would "shuffle" across sea grass beds, effectively killing a delicate ecosystem that is imperative for the success of the reef. Here in Backroads, people fly thousands of miles using jet fuel, so that they can bike around for a week. These things troubled me at first and still do, but it is one of the few times in my own personal ethics where I have settled for the lesser of two evils. In all these situations, the people that are doing the destruction become advocates for the places. Often they don't realize the effect that they personally have had, but just by being better educated about the places, they often work to defend them. The idea of the National Park Service intially with its historic luxury lodges, was to bring wealthy Americans into the parks, so that through their love, they would fight with money and political weight back home for their preservation.

Tavis mentioned an analogy of a new Backroads leader, who like a new teacher, quickly becomes disillusioned with how much impact they will have. I suffered from this too last year, but I now think it is more a disillusion with the visibility of the effects of the impact. The impact is there, but it happens in subtle and small ways that we will often never see.

With Backroads Leaders, I think their struggle stems from another source. We have these intense local experiences every week, but don't ever integrate into the local community. We can't get involved with local politics, schools, volunteer groups, and this aggravates are feelings of helplessness in our job. It contributes to feeling disconnected from a place, even one that we may know intimately; and I think that disconnect, more than anything else, is what makes someone unhappy with their situation in life.

posted by jjs @ 2:32 AM