Small Victories

The last two weeks have been a really difficult experience during my co-op, for reasons I cannot explain here. All you need to know is that not all volunteer groups come with good intentions.

But there have been lots of small victories as well.

Back in April, I started recruiting volunteers on three different platforms- WorkAway, HelpX, and WWOOFing. All of the sites work on a trade basis- a few hours of volunteer work, in exchange for free accommodations. Since we have a surplus of tents and spare mattresses, this arrangement works out quite well for us. Most of the people on these sites are already backpacking around the area and will occasionally stop to do some volunteer work to save money. I've already managed to recruit more than a dozen volunteers, who will all come to our project in the next two months.

And so far- they are absolutely wonderful. They are hard working, dedicated, and absolutely hilarious to work with. One of the volunteers has already extended his initial stay of 2 weeks to almost 2 months and has taken the initiative to come up with new ideas for projects around Barzakh Falah. Here he is working on a pathway & patio which he designed himself with rubble material from our old kitchen roof:

Toubi, our 1st long-term backpacking volunteer!

We also have two volunteers from Germany at the moment- Georg & Fanny. They've been doing a great job learning how to imitate all of the birds at Barzakh Falah- so they are a constant source of amusement. Just this week, we had a sheep give birth to two lambs- a boy and a girl. Georg and Fanny have declared they will be named Georg & Fanny.

Georg & Fanny

Georg 2.0 & Fanny 2.0 (with mom)

Even though these volunteers don't make a monetary contribution to the project, they have already proven to be invaluable. Despite our preoccupation with our troublesome university volunteer group, this small team of backpacking volunteers has continued to push forward with the progress at Barzakh Falah. This week they have learned how to fill earthbags and have already constructed one whole layer of bags on our girls dormitory- work that we did not expect to be able to achieve by the end of this month.

Georg & Fanny (Germany)  and Sam & Ben (Australia) learn how to earthbag

Sam, Ben, & Georg tackle their first earthbag

So despite the fact that the last two weeks have been a total nightmare, there are plenty of small victories. I feel really good about having been able to recruit these awesome volunteers just with the power of social media. It's awesome to know that my content for Barzakh Falah isn't just getting lost in the mess of the internet.

One last small victory: I got this picture of a tree frog that came to visit us while we filled earthbags: