Having recently submitted my doctoral thesis for examination (not passed... indeed passing might be delayed by another year or two given the number of typos and approximative statements in the damn thing), I find myself with too much time on my hand, which is a NICE feeling after all this madness.
So I caught up with one of my quaker friends who works with mostly Kurdish and African asylum seekers in a major town nearby, saying I'd love to spend some time helping out while I'm exploring my options. The first thing she said was: I'm worried about a friendly young woman like you. See... many of the asylum seekers are single men, they are very likely to want to go out with you. That would be the answer to everything: the desire to get started in life, the end of crippling loneliness, permission to remain in the EU. Also, you've never lived in a Muslim country, you wouldn't understand the culture, you could really hurt them through your cultural attitudes. In short, you're definitley not my favourite type of volunteer but think about it. Then if you still want to, you can give it a go.
I was glad that someone had pinpointed this phenomenon, which I had observed many times over, and which totally destroyed many of my attempts to reach out towards vulnerable young men, and indeed made the whole situation far worse than if I hadn't initiated any contacts at all. I was also pleased that she didn't dimiss me out of hand. She just said: you're the wrong demographics, I'd rather have retired old ladies, but sure, if you want to be there next Wednesday, that would be great.
2 comments:
You know, an easy way to get around this is to volunteer at a female only agency.
This is one of the reasons why I volunteer with male sex workers and am trying to move more into that scene.
Nice to hear from you and congrats again! Now let me guess, will that kid of yours have a Brisbane-based Godfather, by any chance?
Re: flirty young female volunteers, my friend is right and you're right. There's something else I was looking into anyway: organising activities for the partner and kids of the imprisonned, which will be mostly women. Pretty holistic too. I like holistic.
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