Motivational talks...

So, as you can tell, I’m bored cos I’m pottering about in a city and on the internet again.

Good news is that come four pm today I should have my passport back in my hands with a brand spanking six months of potential travel stored up on one special page. VISA!

I spent the morning in a café with a pair of Scottish girls. I think I made quite an impression on them.

They are in Sri Lanka for a five month volunteer gap year placement in a girl’s boarding school, here in Kandy. They told me they’d spent two and a half thousand pounds on a gap organization to organize their trip.

I sat at their table and they both looked really unhappy. I was feeling a bit mysterious this morning (it happens) so I decided to talk to them. They were pissed not because they’d realized they had just wasted an exorbitant amount of money on what essentially is a few phone calls and the sending of a couple of emails. No, they were pissed because they didn’t feel like they were helping. It was not what they expected.

They wanted to build schools out of mud, they wanted to help deprived and sick children, they wanted to inspire some underprivileged (but golden hearted) wild brown kids and help them to learn English and appreciate the finer points of literature, art and music.

What they have actually found themselves doing is getting in the way of the perfectly capable English teacher – and then, only about once a week. They feel redundant. Useless. Cheated. And it hurts.

After our conversation they took me to the school so I could see for myself. It is gorgeous. The school is fully staffed, has well-equipped large classrooms, sports facilities, security, pets and, as I discovered myself on the way out, a half-size, well-kept outdoor swimming pool.

Hmm.

They have been here over a month and it is showing no sign of improving for them. Improving, I suppose, is an ironic word here. They really want it to be a dump so they can improve it and feel appreciated for once in their lives.

So in the café I went to town on them. I was feeling mysterious, what can I say.

I asked them why they were still there. These girls are 18 years and typically British. A transparent maze of social awkwardness and embarrassment. They utilised all the conversational diversionary tactics to avoid facing the truth and squirmed when I asked them searching questions.

The reason they hadn’t left, it seems, is because firstly the thought had never occurred to them. Leaving would involve thought, action, motivation, a plan. It would also involve a couple of difficult conversations with disappointed parents and organizers. They told me the friends they had made would be offended if they left. Basically a whole load of external excuses. Vague fears about a few imagined situations of difficulty. I told them so.

I asked them what they wanted. “To feel like we’re helping.”

And do you?

”No.”

I told them they had two options. One, to start enjoying themselves – to start using their brains to think of interesting ways to spend time with these privileged children. Surely they could at least have fun with them?

Or two, leave. Don’t just sit around moaning for fuck’s sake.

It was a bombshell. Eyes of panic and confusion and isolation. I’ll admit, I was enjoying myself. We hadn’t even exchanged names and I was already questioning the value of their existence. But I had to break them down to build them up.

I didn’t feel like small talk.

I told them that if they came to India they could find plenty of good causes. They worried about the lack of organization. Surely they’d need to find another 2,500 to set fire to? No?

NO?

Just turn up I told them. Maybe send a warning email first. Many organizations in India would be more than happy to get help.

So anyway, there were two of these girls. One of them I lost quite early on. She wouldn’t maintain eye contact and said that actually she was quite contented, she just likes to moan. She doesn’t mind that she’s here doing nothing of what she set out to do, because she’s a bit lazy and hey, at least she’s not in cold Scotland writing essays. She (let’s call her A) kept trying to make small talk – mentioning coffee and travelers cheques all the time.

Her friend, however (let’s call her B, why not huh?) I had. She was thinking. She was the one who had expressed most of the discontent in the first place and she was now weighing up the mental effort involved in taking such a risk. I did everything I could. It became a challenge. I just felt like changing her world view for a day. I gave her all the motivational speeches that my travels have given me. I used all the persuasive techniques I cultivated in my chugging job. I think I nearly got the point across.
I asked her if she wanted to look back on this five months as a total waste of time, spent dissatisfied while helping no one and just whingeing.

Her closed friend, A, said that she was content to have the ‘safety net’ that the gap project gave her.

Why?

“So I don’t have to organize it myself. I’m only eighteen.”

Listen to yourself. When are you going to grow up and start looking after yourself?

“I can look after myself.”

So what does it matter that you’re eighteen?

“Er…”

I asked B if she was happy.

“Ummmmmm. Yes? But not totally satisfied.”

So you’re not happy. You don’t look happy. In fact you look sad.

“But I couldn’t travel on my own to India. I can’t spend time by myself.”

Why not? What’s wrong with you? Are you a child?

“No.”

Silence.

I told them one of the reasons I set out to India with confidence was that it occurred to me that people travel all the time. On their own. To India. So why shouldn’t I? Am I retarded? No. Am I a pussy? No!

At this point she laughed quite a hard, nervous, uncontrollable laugh.

I told her that India is full of friends to be made, that she doesn’t have to be alone very much if she doesn’t want to. Ok, it might involve a bit of effort (shock horror) but she can make friends. Look, she’s just made a long-haired one. That was easy.

“But I’d be scared I’d get killed. Or get my bag nicked. Or get ill.”

Didn’t happen to me in five months.

“Er…”

Leap and the net appears, my friend. (I was really pulling out the motivational shit now). Be brave. Have faith in your abilities, your instincts, you emotions and your intelligence.

Man, I was flying. I think for half an hour I knew what it felt like to be Krishnamurti. I was just being honest, pointing out the objective truth of the situation. I was trying to help, but I was definitely pushing it.

I told her that I knew she wasn’t gonna change her situation (reverse psychology) that maybe it would take until next time she finds herself vaguely committed to something that makes her dreadfully unhappy before she learns to listen to her heart. Before she grows up.

I wonder if it sounded patronizing. I’m only five years their senior, but what a five years. I guess it would have been interesting to meet the marginally wiser (and hairier) Danny when I was 18. I wonder if I could have helped. I wonder if I would have still gone to uni?

So anyway, I took a look around this school and agreed that there wasn’t much they could do to help. These happy and damn cute kids running around in their whiter than white school uniforms were not the charity case they expected.

Anyway. Wow I am good at this stuff. Get me started and I can give good advice to blocked British people. I think I am getting better at seeing through the various devices that Brits use to get around from actually saying what they mean.

Three things I’ve just realized from all this:

I just need to start taking my own advice.

I’m such a creep.

Microsoft word autocorrect makes me spell like an American.