Emigrant
Sensibility in the Age of Globalization (3):
The
Gap Between Countries, And Between The Rich And Poor ①
By
Jo Hyobi
Published:
August 6, 2015
Translated
by Marilyn Hook
Editor’s note: Vacation,
business travel, migrant labor, language study, study abroad, international marriage,
immigration—many of us have such experiences of crossing national borders, and
there are many immigrants living in our country. Ilda examines the emigrant
sensibility we will need in order to live equally and peacefully in the age of
globalization. This series is supported by the Korea Press Foundation’s Press
Promotion Fund.
 |
| I volunteered in India and Nepal for a year before graduating university © Jo Hyobi |
Right before graduation,
opening up my bucket list file
In
high school, I had two phrases that kept me going through the worst of it:
“volunteering abroad” and “never give up.”
These
two phrases shook up my young, high-school-girl heart. But everything about my
present, as a student stuck in the bleakness and restrictions of the
countryside, was stifling. I think it was because of that that my baseless
self-confidence grew and I began to dream of a “scene change” in my life.
But
four years later, I was on the cusp of graduating university without having
done anything you could call a challenge. “If I get a job now, my life will
have no place for reckless bravery!” I thought. One day, for the first time in
a long time, I opened up my bucket list file. The words “volunteer abroad”
jumped out at me. I immediately found some websites run by that kind of
organization and began to fill out an application for long-term volunteering
abroad.
Faster
than I expected, I received the news that I had been accepted, and I went
straight to a workshop held by organization A. But the workshop was different
than I thought. For 3 days and 2 nights in the mountains in Gyeongsan, all we
did was hold religious events, listen to endless speeches, and learn dance
routines to Christian contemporary music. While I was doing the routines and
wondering, “What is this?” though, I received word from organization B that I
had been accepted for long-term volunteering at an overseas posting. I quickly
had an interview with organization B and then participated in their
orientation.
In
June 2011, I went to Incheon Airport for my flight to southern India. I smiled
as hard as I could in front of my parents, but really I was anxious. It wasn’t
until then, as I was actually leaving, that I felt worried about the situations
I was about to face and really thought about the attitude necessary for
volunteering. Had my optimism stabbed me in the back? But, like the perfect
example of an optimist, when I couldn’t figure out what to do about it, I fell
into a deep sleep.
The
two faces of the first Indian I met at the airport
In India and Nepal, caste is still strongly in operation culturally,
so the right to education and the freedom to choose one’s work are limited. ©
Jo Hyobi
I
got off the plane in Bangalore and went through Immigration. A friendly-looking
officer saw the U.S. student visa in my passport and spoke to me in English.
But when I, flustered, couldn’t understand what he said and gave answers that
didn’t fit his questions, his expression suddenly changed. Saying he needed to
check whether my passport was forged, he immediately placed several calls. And
he shouted, “If you don’t have anything that can verify your identity, go back
immediately! If you don’t, our police will take you away!”
Scared
by this unanticipated situation, I couldn’t even look the officer in the eye. A
co-volunteer with a lot of experience abroad, who had finished the immigration
process before me, spoke up quickly. “She was only in the U.S. for 4 months, so
don’t judge her based on the student visa. People feel uncomfortable and can’t
speak well when they meet a foreigner. You know what I mean, right?”
At
that, the officer’s manner became friendly again, as if nothing had happened,
and he stamped my passport. I’ll never forget the impression made by the first
Indian I met, who showed two faces within seconds. We were standing only a
meter apart but it seemed like there was a glass wall between us.
Thus
intimidated, I went to the southern Indian countryside. It was a place where
caste divisions and gender discrimination were still powerful. Groups of two to
three of us would be sent to four areas in an Untouchable town about 30 minutes
from the place we were staying, and we would teach art, music, and physical
education. I wanted to change my impression of India to a positive one. Knowing
I would be there for a year made this change crucial.
Before
leaving our lodgings, we had to check our outfits. We had to avoid tight
T-shirts and drape long scarves so that they covered our bodies. Even then, all
eyes were on us when we went to the market. Everyone stopped what they were
doing to stare at us. When I asked about this later, I was told they looked at
us “because the whiteness of your faces is surprising.”
But
where were the young women? I could see only men and middle-aged women. In the
marketplace, there were many people chewing tobacco. Chewing tobacco makes your
tongue red. People with blood-red lips and eyes that were yellow and bloodshot.
The fear that I had started feeling at the airport continued, stopping me from
breaking down boundaries.
Volunteering is like the one
million volts of joy that flow from Pikachu
In
the afternoon, I looked around the Untouchable village where I would be
teaching. The people there gave off different vibes than those in the
marketplace. In the houses, mothers and children were playing innocently.
Though
they were mothers, they seemed to be my age or younger. I drank every drop of the chai tea that they
kindly gave me. The feelings of anxiety and division that I had had since I
arrived in India evaporated in the narrow-alleyed village.
 |
| Me in India. Being helpful gave me unimaginable joy © Jo Hyobi |
In
class, the students were obedient, even though we couldn’t communicate with
each other well. There was no trace of dishonesty in their faces. In addition,
the children and their parents always showed concern for me, asking if I had
any problems. I think it was because they knew that we were there just to help
them, without putting religious pressure on them. I wanted to give everything
to these villagers. I wanted to help with anything that I could.
During
those two months, I felt that volunteering was something inexpressible, much
more than simply heartwarming. It had a power like Pikachu’s, sending out a
million volts of joy and illuminating everything all the way into space. The
villagers’ warm demeanor, the stars at night, the sound of the prayers said at
the temple, the fragrances and atmosphere were more than I had been able to
imagine. The cockroaches and mice that roamed around our lodgings were no more
than momentary surprises.
The India-Nepal border, where
cows and people slowly come and go
But
that only lasted for a short while before the Indian police started to bring us
in to the police station. We were notified that our applications for residence
had been denied, and so were ordered to return to Korea. My sense of regret at
finding out that we had to return to Korea after two months, just when the
volunteering was starting in earnest, was unspeakably deep. I went to the area
where we had been teaching in order to say goodbye. When I saw the people, who
greeted me warmly and asked me why I had been away for the past few days, I
began to cry.
We
went to the big city and waited a month for our residence permits to be
approved. But the situation didn’t get better, so in the end we were
transferred to Nepal. I took my large rolling suitcase and my 45-liter backpack
and got on the train [with the others]. It was a 48-hour trip, and I was
worried because in addition to sitting in coach class with the locals, I had a
lot of luggage. I chained my bags to a pole, put a padlock on anything that had
a place for one, and, on my guard, slept fitfully.
In a village at the foot of the Himalayas in northwestern Nepal © Jo
Hyobi
On
the morning of the second day to begin in the train, a family across the aisle
offered me something to eat. At the locals’ friendliness, my vigilance started
to melt away again. The dark and dirty train no longer felt stifling. After
getting off the train that had held us for 48 hours, we slept for a night in
Gorakhpur, India. We didn’t know anything about the area, so an Indian college
student that had been sitting next to us on the train helped us. The young man
called people he knew in order to find a cheap, clean hotel, and even carried
some of our luggage as he showed us the way.
We
soon arrived at the town of Sonauli, which marks the border between India and
Nepal. Picturing, at the word “border,” the border between North and South
Korea (the 38th Parallel), I had a strange anxiety that there would be
landmines and wilderness, but it turned out to be a totally different
landscape. A seemingly-free coming-and-going across the border, the slow
movement of cows and people. We were just in time for the festival of Dashain,
and so people appeared to be enjoying themselves.
At
a roadside office that was hardly more than a pyeong [35 square feet], we were
admitted into Nepal after attaching tourist visas to our passports and getting
stamped. There was no search of our bags or inspection of our passports. There
was only a friendly introduction to the rickshaw that could take us to the bus
terminal so we could go to Pokhara, Nepal’s second-largest city.
Reflecting on the sense of
superiority felt by the “helper”
There
were no buses because of the festival, so we took a van from the border to
Pokhara; later we found out that the price we paid was a rip-off. From Pokhara
we took two buses, and arrived at a village in northwestern Nepal with an
altitude of 8,500 feet. A completely vacant desolation approached. As our body
temperatures slowly dropped, shingled roofs with holes here and there came into
view. Finding ourselves here so soon after India’s high, humid temperatures, we
thought first not of volunteering but of surviving.
We
did homestays there. The mother and grandmother I lived with kept cooking for
me just in case I was hungry. They also made traditional Nepalese clothes for
me. I wanted to adjust to this new place quickly, in order to show my gratitude
for this kindheartedness.
In
order to raise our body temperatures when we woke up in the morning, I did
stretches with my homestay family in the yard. We could see travelling
Westerners pass by. One of them, a German woman, came to me and said, in a
friendly way, “I want to give you a present. It’s a nice ballpoint pen.”
I
froze. Did she think that I was a person who didn’t have a ballpoint pen?!
While I was just staring at her, my homestay father said, with exaggerated
gestures and intonation, “Thank you. Could we have one more?” He soon sent them
on their way.
My
face flushed. Seeing that German woman was like looking at myself. I went back
to my room and thought for quite a while. I wondered if I’d done anything to
the locals that would make them feel so disrespected. Whether I hadn’t been
acting out of a sense of superiority that I hadn’t been aware of... I suspected
that I had. I was ashamed. I had been giving as much as I could to help the
locals, whether they were child or adult, but I really had no idea how they saw
me.
Changing the way I look at
foreigners
 |
| In art class at a school for children of Nepal’s lower castes © Jo Hyobi |
Around
the time that I was inspired to think deeply about the attitudes of those who
came to poor countries to do volunteer work, the people in the village started
to move south for the winter. Eventually, we also decided to move to a southern
village. As a place where the weather was milder and there was plenty of food,
development and aid were becoming well-established there. A local school
principle and the Korea International Cooperation Agency helped us get settled.
I quickly started teaching arts classes at a school for students of lower
castes and one for disabled students.
But
that was also for a short time, as conflict sprung up between us and the NGO
that had sent us. Not only would they not take responsibility for the safety of
those they had dispatched, but they announced that they would not be giving us
the 3 million won they had promised for our living and working expenses. As the
friction continued, I worried that I was losing the warm heart with which I had
started my volunteer work. So for the remaining time, I did my work not as part
of an NGO but independently. That motivated me to think about the true meaning
of volunteer work. I also started to reconsider the activities of international
aid organizations that play on people’s emotions in order to attract donors.
After
finishing my year of volunteer work and returning to Korea, I visited my
parents’ house in Yangju, Gyeonggi Province. The foreign laborers in the area
caught my eye. Even just at the market in front of their house, there were many
Nepalese people. Watching them discussing dried laver for kimbap, salted dried
laver, dried green laver, and dried kelp, I was reminded of myself when I was
shopping in Nepal and trying hard to fit in.
The
mental borders that these people from a poorer country were feeling must be
much higher than those that I had experienced. In my experience, the thing that
can break down mental borders is no other than the expression of the other
person. Everyone feels scared and isolated in an unfamiliar place. More so when
they can’t speak the local language. At that time, someone’s attitude has the
capacity to terrify and daunt us, or it can melt fear away in moments. So I have
started greeting foreigners with a smiling face, hoping they can break down
their mental borders about this place as quickly as possible.
My
experience volunteering in India and Nepal didn’t just show me several paths
that my life could take, it also changed considerably the way I look at
foreigners and my attitude towards them.
*Original
article: http://ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=7189§ion=sc4
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