The More

Introducing Mandy Morell, GVN Alaska Partner, great friend and world traveller!

Mandy is currently travelling through Ethiopia and India and has just spent a month volunteering in Kolkata. Mandy is a committed humanitarian and says "the reason I travel is to volunteer, not climb mountains, not lay on a beach (although I love all of those things and try to do them as much as possible), but make volunteering the point of the trip, is because of the more.
What is 'The More'?

Trying to describe the more is like trying to describe "The Nothing" in The Never Ending Story. It is amorphous, indescribable, ineffable, uncontrollable, and unpredictable. Unlike "The Nothing," the more is a positive "thing," not a force to fear. Once you have experienced the more you cannot imagine life without it. One is speechless, dumbfounded and a myriad other clichés because there are no words, at least that I know of, to tell others about the more.

The problem with not being able to describe the more is that those of us who have it, want it, can't live without it, end up sounding like stuttering school children when asked, "Why are you going there (insert country name of choice here) to volunteer?" Why not go to Ghana to enjoy the splendid beaches; it's much cooler there than in a concrete box with a tin roof. Why not check out the gorillas in northern Uganda instead of shifting bricks for two days in the sweltering heat outside of Entebbe? No safari in Kenya? And what about Goa; you went all the way to India to spend time in one of the most polluted places in the universe! The pious have words for it: God, gods, enlightenment , sacrifice, humility, etc. However, those are not the words I would use to describe the more.

The more is the man on Park Street: no legs, hated me for a couple of weeks because I gave him a smile instead of money, yet every morning and every evening greeted him with an exuberant "Hello" until I learned "Namaskar, Ke mon acho?" and now the zeal with which he notices my legs among all the others coming and going, and looks up excitedly as we greet each other in the same instant; he knows I treat him like a human, not a crippled beggar. His presence in my life is the more. The more is complimenting the family on AJC Bose Rd on their spring cleaning: they live on the sidewalk; a man, his wife, and their little son, on a 4ft X 6ft square space covered by a tarp. They got a new tarp and it's green. Being here every day, a part of a neighborhood, a street community, an auto-rickshaw route, dodging the heroine needles as I walk down our sidewalk just like everyone else that lives there, allows me to make this observation. Noticing the change in a tarp color is the more.

The more is Ganesh, named after the elephant man-god, a Punjabi who turns on the little fan as I talk on the phone in his hot-as-Hades telephone booth. The more is working with a group of women, a school, a project, for an extended amount of time; a trip can't do it. Four weeks rarely does it. Two months teases you with what the more could be. And even though I continue to seek out the more I am continually surprised at how I receive it. As I said, it is not predictable; the only predictable thing about it is how not to find it.

The reason I travel to volunteer, not climb mountains, not lay on a beach (although I love all of those things and try to do them as much as possible), but make volunteering the point of the trip, is because of the more. The More is why I am here.