Above is the image, and below is the 2nd installment of my UNInformant column, about a day in the life of volunteering. I was honestly a little surprised that it wasn't edited, although I just noticed that the title did get changed from Involuntary Offence to Involuntary Response. Very little to complain about there, though. I just wish that it was paragraphed properly, and I should maybe have submitted a picture or photoshop to make it stand out. This is more than double the length I will usually be writing, so it was nice to be able to be a little bit more narrative. I hope you enjoy it, because if you don't enjoy it, you really won't enjoy it. That's just how I roll.
Involuntary Offence
I’ve always said that I’m not a bad person – I’m just not a very good one. Volunteering for the Student Volunteer Army is a perfect example of this. It was great because I was able to meet and help so many different people, and then I could judge them and make fun of them behind their backs. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not being malicious, but it is just the way I usually was before the earthquake, so getting back into this mind-frame showed me that life was getting back to normal. And that’s what everybody wants right now.
Friday, March the 4th was a big day for the SVA, but it felt more like a giant PR exercise for the group photo which was planned in advance, as there were obviously not enough buses running. At least they provided a “BBQ Breakfast”, which as it turned out was pretty-much the same as a regular BBQ. Sausages don’t go so well with coffee, but in this time of need, we all have to make compromises.
My couch-surfer and I found space on the police criminal-transport bus, which led to a very deep conversation about the brilliance of the action film, Con Air. In retrospect, it more resembled The Fugitive, but that horrendous oversight must be due to ‘earthquake brain’. However, escape from this bus was disappointingly easy, as they kicked us off saying that Civil Defence has a better use for it. I imagined they had organised a criminal chain-gang to pick-axe a new tunnel to Lyttleton. Yes, I am aware that I am easily influenced by the movies.
They told us to wait at the tent until the next buses arrived, and once we arrived at the tent they told us that there would be no more buses. Damn, we fell for that one too easy. Now, it was after 10AM, this article is already 300 words long, and I hadn’t helped anyone yet (apart from contributing a few pixels in the group photo). After a few more coffees and a lot of waiting around, I was able to join a squadron consisting of a Czech Republican, her station wagon, a wheelbarrow with a monster-truck-sized wheel, my couch-surfer American and two 17-year old schoolgirls. It was a group of misfits unseen since Dad’s Army or Vince Vaughn’s team in Dodgeball.
We drove out to the address given to us, only to learn that the Farmy Army had cleaned up the street without letting the SVA know. Damn farmers. Sure, we appreciate the work they have put in, but they don’t seem to be very good at communicating with creatures that have less than four nipples. Unfortunately that includes most of the volunteers at the Student Volunteer Army.
The next address given to us was a beautiful house with a New Zealand flag and a Dutch flag both flying at full-mast. Being both Dutch and a Kiwi – and a full-mast kind-of guy, I felt completely at home. The 80+ year old lady home was equally badass. She even had one eye like the assassin The California Mountain Snake from Kill Bill. She, and her two ridiculously cute Maltese’s were very happy to see us. She said the only damage to her house was a broken mirror which apparently was ‘God’s way of telling her she was getting too vain’. There was only a small pile of silt that we cleared in about 15 minutes, but this is exactly why the SVA exists. She was so happy that she brought out glasses and a bottle of 7-Up, and a couple of $20 notes. I am so proud of us for not accepting it. I mean, I’m a poor student, the two foreigners on working holidays could have used money instead of working for free, and I’m sure the schoolgirls have cell phones that they’d like to bedazzle.
Next we arrived at a house on a big main road. It seemed all the houses and streets had been cleared, but this property still had a large pile of silt on the lawn. I knocked on the door in case the owners were home. Nothing. I knocked again. I heard a budgie from inside and some movement. The door opened and a couple wearing a nightgown and Pjamas stood there as I explained that were from the SVA. The house was filthy. They just repeatedly said “yeah, ok.” and closed the door in our face.
That was weird. I think they were retarded. My friend thinks they were just poor and lazy. There was no other possible explanation. But either way, that is not a good reason for why 10 days later they hadn’t even tried moving the silt. If they were retarded, they were surely the real strong kind, like Chief from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I felt like our volunteering was being abused a little bit. Thankfully, the monster-truck tyre of our wheelbarrow blew up before we could finish. I knocked on their door to tell them why we’d be leaving without finishing, and they were still in their Pjamas. Mind you, it was after midday which put very bad images in my head. Because whatever the truth was about them, thinking about retard sex - or poor and lazy sex – is really quite gross. And we had impressionable teenage girls around.
Our third address for the day was extremely hard to find. Luckily, we passed by a school ground where there was a free BBQ for the community and also volunteers. Basically, if you look dirty enough, they’ll feed you. This was perfect, even though it made the day a total sausage-fest, it was infinitely better that what we’d been given at the SVA. Don’t get me wrong, the donated lunch packets were glorious, but it consisted only of the snack foods kids love to find in their school lunches. I mean, they were labelled “Non-perishable”, which is definitely not a synonym for “healthy”. I think the last few days I consumed enough preservatives to last me a few lifetimes. In fact, I believe that’s how the process of mummification works. The mummy of King Tut is actually 90% muesli bar, as is Larry King.
The third address was near to where I went with the bus Battalions on the first days of the SVA. This cul-de-sac had been completely skipped over and only now was being filled with a mountain of silt. I got to talking with the home-owner and his freakishly large rugby-playing 14-year-old son. The dad was using the experience as character building for his son, and since it’s too late for my own character to be built, I chimed in with some advice that has served me well: “Stay in school, don’t get a job.”
I mean, I came back to university to escape the real world, but for the last 10 days the real world was far too close for comfort. I want to go back to pretending that the archaic feminist perspective is still valid, that I believe all cultures are equal, and that getting a C+ is an actual tragedy. I don’t believe in karma, but I have done a lot of good deeds lately, and I now feel justified at being an asshole again for quite a long time. At the end of the day, three of the comedians who were planned for the UCSA Comedy night on the 22nd of February came by to perform for an hour, and based on their jokes and the response from the crowd, I think most people feel ready to stop being so sensitive. Things were starting to get back to normal.
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