Nicole volunteered as a caring assistant in Japan
I worked in a residential care home for mentally and physically disabled patients. Every morning I helped people whose disabilities were so severe that they couldn’t feed themselves. Through breakfast we always chatted. They were all so happy despite everything and seldom failed to make me laugh. After breakfast I would clean up the main play area for the day and then help with the first activit, these activities varied but included things such as paper making which I always enjoyed doing. Then I would then help with another meal and once again aid people with their eating.
After that it would be the last activity with also varied but was usually something to do with arts and crafts and then would be exercise time in which myself and the other volunteer would help exercise the residents.
Though it was sometimes a little hard, it did not feel at all like a job, it just felt like being at home with family who need a little more help than usual. I didn’t think I would love being there as much as I did but I found myself surrounded by friends and people I loved being with, everyday there was a rare blessing.
Throughout my placement I learned so much, some of the stuff I learned included
1. Being a master of charades. Trying to communicate with somebody who doesn’t speak the same language as you is hard enough but then when you have somebody like that who also can’t speak it becomes a whole different playing field.
2. To rely on other people and focus more on the present.
3. To be happy even through anything. The residents of the care home all had very severe disabilities, most of them being confined to wheelchairs and others very mentally ill and yet the care home never lost the feeling of home and happiness. Everyone banded together and laughed and enjoyed themselves everyday which really taught me an invaluable lesson and a skill which I will take through my life with unending gratitude.
The best thing about my placement was getting to know such different people. In going to japan I did not get shocked by what was different – I expected them to be. What did surprise me was the things that were the same: the people and people’s needs. It was so eye-opening and exciting to having a different culture revealed to me and to be discovering how Japanese people live.
I learnt so much about the community I lived in it would be hard to convey it all without writing a book about it. But one of the things that stood out most was the cultural festivals and activities and how much these meant to the Japanese people. I watched so many different holiday festivals, one were all the young men from the village hoisted up a portable shrine and lugged it around on their shoulders in beat to a drum to another were lots of children tugged a drum around and wore kimonos. It was so wonderful and eye-opening to be in a place that actually put so much into celebrating events and long held traditions.
The community differed in lots of ways that ranged from family hierarchy to the way people ate their food and what they ate. For one the food was the most delicious cuisine I have ever had the pleasure of eating. The attitude to clothes and beauty was also very different and you would have been very hard pressed to find somebody who wasn’t heart achingly beautiful and immaculately dressed. Also the age of adults over there is 20 so I went from just being an adult at 18 here straight back to being a child again and in the place where we were, the other volunteer and I were basically the only foreigners in the area which meant that lots of little children were very interested in us.
I think EVERYBODY should have an experience like mine. It is life-changing in the best of ways and the break between school and university is really what you need to just find yourself and learn about what you really want to do.
