Volunteer Voices

I would definitely recommend working in Azerbaijan for anybody who's interested. The work you do will make a tremendous difference for the people over there - particularly the children. A few warnings, though: the workcamps come with tremendous physical and emotional hardships. You will have to be willing to do without hot water and electricity for most of the time, and of course without toilets. Bottled water is scarce and usually comes in carbonated form; you will mainly be drinkingtea withsmall amounts of soda and fruit juice. If the gas didn't work, we would sometimes have to go for hours without drinking anything (this didn't happen often though). There are bugs everywhere, especially mosquitoes, and quite a bit of disease, so hypochondriacs should stay away. You willalso get quite dirty. Working with the children can be difficult in the sense that you begin to develop close relationships with them, and then you go and visit them at home and see the abject poverty that they live in and begin to feel very upset to say the least. The seeming hopelessness of the situation can also be very demanding. That being said, let me also say that after a few days you don't even really notice the physical difficulties, and even a city boy like me managed to adapt in no time. And just the opportunity to meet such wonderful people like the children in our classes and their families was worth all of the heartache.The volunteer'slife will never be the same after you work in Azerbaijan, and hopefully neither will the children's."

Simon Russell ~ Azerbaijan 2001