2007 AFSA Merit Award Best Essay Winner
By Emma Cunningham
“What we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” - Mother Teresa

            Our bus smelled like incense. Red velvet curtains hung from the dingy windows and I could hear the rattling motor. I was half asleep after our flight to Calcutta, but I still felt the dry heat of India and the dust being stirred up from the road as we drove along. We stopped outside a garishly decorated hotel. Through the dark I could see figures lined up, sleeping on the sidewalk. Some had rickshaws, dogs, and mosquito nets. Some had nothing. It was unlike anything I had seen before, and I felt a twinge of guilt as we dragged our suitcases up the stairs of the hotel to our air-conditioned rooms with hot showers and soft mattresses.

            Every morning for the next week we worked at an orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa. Blind, mentally and physically disabled, uncontrollable, violent...each of the orphans was essentially helpless. There was no introduction, no instructions, no orientation...the sister in charge of the children was too busy changing a boy's soiled underwear while pulling another off a bookcase. She breathlessly explained that they had very few volunteers that week. We later learned the harsh reality. Young men and women traveling through India find the idea of service appealing and come to the orphanage. They last for a day, maybe two. It's not the "warm, fuzzy, feel-good" service they are looking for.

            After our first day, part of me understood why they wouldn't want to go back. I was frustrated and disappointed. Previous service I had done had been tangible. There was a gratification that made the hard work worth it. There was no gratification from these orphans. I felt as if I hadn't been able to make a difference. There are some things we'd rather not see. At first, I found poverty, disability, and helplessness that I didn't want to comprehend. I felt a complete sense of powerlessness. As a group sent to Calcutta to do "hard-core service", we had felt powerful, important, ready to take on the forces of illness and poverty. We were the bringers of hope and love and strength. By the end of the first day, I doubted whether I had the ability to bring any of those things to the orphans. I couldn't heal their wounds, undo their malnourishment, give them money to end their poverty, or find them homes. Over the next few days, I realized that true service is knowing this, and trying to do it anyway. I found strength in thinking that even though I got hardly any reaction from the orphans, I might be helping them somehow.

            In the big scheme of things we volunteers did little to change the lives of the orphans. For a week we may have brought them a little more happiness, but in the end, poverty and disability win. I thought our purpose in Calcutta was to fight these forces, to help orphans who have no one else to help them. I was wrong. If our competition had been poverty and disability, then we had already lost. The orphans and Sisters would go on with their lives after we were gone as they did before we arrived. But this realization shouldn't make our service any less important. The true purpose of our trip then was to learn from what we had seen. If India changed us enough that we become more aware of the effects of poverty in the world, then it has served its purpose. If India made us encourage other people to go to Calcutta, or find a way to do service, then it has served its purpose. If you can change one person's life for one second, then that should be enough. If you can allow the people you are serving to change you, then you will find that it lasts for a lifetime.