The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life Part 20

Twenty-five years ago, Irma Turtle led a very different life. Smith-educated, she lived on Manhattan's East Side, marketing the products of Fortune 500 companies for advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather. Frustrated and feeling there was something more she wanted to do with her life, she quit in 1984. A vacation to the Sahara desert the next year shaped a vision of what her next life chapter would be.

Somehow, she decided, she would help the indigenous cultures of Africa that were disappearing faster than you could say, "economic development." The UN and other aid agencies couldn't be bothered to help these marginalized people, so she asked herself, "Who would help?" "TurtleWill" was the answer and the name of the agency she started, not to fling money from her New York penthouse, but to put both her well-manicured feet on hard, dry African ground.

TRAVELING TUNES.

Bamako, the dusty capital of Mali, is a good place to catch free concerts. It's where Mali's tribal musicians-the Tuareg, the Songhai, and the Dogon cliff dwellers-come to mix it up with such Western artists as Bonnie Raitt and John Lee Hooker.

For centuries, itinerant musicians have gathered in this southern Malian city, entertaining villagers along the Niger River. But in the 1990s, several locals made it big. Singer-songwriter Salif Keita and singer-guitarist Ali Farka Toure achieved international recognition, which attracted even more aspiring musicians to the area. Eventually, the record producers arrived, trolling the city's bare-bones, thatched-roof nightclubs and intimate bars in search of the next big thing in so-called world music.

TurtleWill funds short-term humanitarian projects, such as building wells ($300 can provide a well for up to 300 people), opening schools, operating medical clinics, and organizing food or sewing cooperatives. To this day, she has no staff and leads all the volunteer trips herself. And the nomads of Mali, Ethiopia, and Niger know her by name. Tribal chiefs will travel miles on donkeys or by foot just to speak with her.

Doctors, nurses, and other health-care professionals are, needless to say, encouraged to volunteer for the two-week, open-air bush clinics, but Turtle welcomes anyone from anywhere. Only requirement? An open heart.

People who are not medical professionals are needed to count and label medicine, dispense soap, clean wounds, maintain patient records, and keep order among the 250 to 300 patients, many of whom walk 20 miles or more just to get there.

Because TurtleWill projects take place in the remote bush, there are no hotels or restaurants. Rather, Turtle's expedition staff sets up tents, tables, showers, and a makes.h.i.+ft kitchen from which all meals are prepared.

Costs for the two-week bush clinics range from $4,200 to $5,000, including lodging and all meals.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

TurtleWill, Box 1147, Carefree, AZ 85377, 888-299-1439, www.turtlewill.org.

TRAVELLERS WORLDWIDE.

teach music in ghana.

ACCRA, GHANA.

We each disappeared as individuals. We were no longer sick or well, able or disabled. We were players in a deeply human mystery; a story-and oohhh-how we played!

-John Glick, fiddle player and international volunteer.

71 Talk to any veteran volunteer and invariably you'll get some variation on the following sentiment: "I started out in the hope of giving to others, but found out I was the one getting the most." Nowhere is that more true than in Ghana, where Travellers Worldwide sends volunteers to teach music-although no one is quite clear who is teaching whom. Volunteers, who work in one of several primary schools in the Asylum Downs suburb of Accra, end up learning more from the children, who seem to have music in their souls.

In Ghana, kids sing and dance on the way to school, on the playgrounds, in the cla.s.sroom, and pretty much any time they're not sleeping. But because of budget shortfalls, formal music education has been dropped from most school's curricula. Keyboards, drums, and other instruments sit in cla.s.srooms unused. Therefore, anyone who can play an instrument, sing, dance, or even hum "do-re-mi" is extremely welcome. But watch out-Ghanaian children will likely ask for your autograph and inquire as to whether or not you're a pop star.

LIVING THE HIGHLIFE.

Highlife, Ghana's signature sound, emerged in the 1880s as a fusion of rhythms from the West African coast with music from North America, the Caribbean, and Portugal. For years, highlife, with its unusual rhythms, distinctive guitar styles, and interplay of guitars, bra.s.s instruments, and woodwinds, ruled dance floors across much of West Africa.

Today the music has spread across Africa, and, indeed, all over the world. At last count, Amazon.com listed more than 40 CDs of Ghanaian highlife. One of the most popular collections, The Guitar and the Gun, was recorded in the early 1980s during Ghana's civil war. Although most of the recording studios and music clubs were shut down, Bokoor Studio managed to keep highlife rolling with this now cla.s.sic alb.u.m.

Like many countries in Africa, Ghana has young people who live in garbage dumps, thousands of AIDS orphans, and families who can't even remember the last time they had enough to eat. But at the Madonna Primary School, one of the places where you'll likely be placed, or Great Lamptey-Mills Inst.i.tute, a school in the Muslim sector of Accra, nothing matters but the beat. Poor, rich, old, young-they're all one, moving to Ghana's magical rhythms.

And talk about coming home with more than you left with! Because music offers an instantaneous avenue for connecting with someone from a different culture, get ready to come home with lots of new entries in your address book. Expect to make lifelong friends, not to mention returning home with a whole different way of looking at the world.

For example, "Ghana time"-which is when someone says, "See you at 10 a.m.," but really means "See you sometime tomorrow"-just might be a better way to face life. In Ghana, the pace of life is slower and more relaxed. Above all else, Ghanaians are dedicated to having fun. Even at the busy city markets, where crowded stalls sell everything from CDs of Ghana's signature highlife music to pigs' feet, there are DJs blasting music and encouraging people to dance, dance, dance.

Travellers Worldwide, which arranges these volunteer teaching positions in Ghana, is a Suss.e.x, England-based company that specializes in volunteer vacations throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Volunteers can do everything from coach basketball or cricket to work with crocodiles or leopards.

Prices for the Ghana trip vary depending on how long you stay (two weeks is 795 or about $1,590; three months, 1,795 or $3,590) and include accommodations, most often with a host family, and all meals.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Travellers Worldwide, 7 Mulberry Close, Ferring, West Suss.e.x BN12 5HY, England, 44 1903 50295, www.travellersworldwide.com.

asia.

It is only when we truly know that we have a limited time on earth-and have no way of knowing when our time is up-that we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.

-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, psychiatrist and author of On Death and Dying In Asia, the world's most populous continent, volunteer opportunities are diverse and plentiful. You can save urban wetlands in Hong Kong, conduct fish and coral surveys in the Philippines, make amends for Hiros.h.i.+ma or Agent Orange, or teach English in Tibet or Thailand.

If you have an interest in health care, you could help the people of the world's newest country, Timor-Leste, fight diseases like tuberculosis and promote maternal and child health.

If animals are your bag, try your hand at zookeeping in Malaysia. Or help care for orangutans in Borneo. Or save endangered elephants in Sri Lanka.

If architectural preservation is what you really find fascinating, help restore a Buddhist monastery in Nepal.

But whichever direction you take and whatever project you choose to work on, just know that spending time with and paying attention to your four billion brothers and sisters in Asia will strengthen the fabric of our shared humanity.

SRI LANKA WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY.

compile data on endangered wild elephants.

MATALE DISTRICT, SRI LANKA.

The love for all living creatures is the most n.o.ble attribute of man.

-Charles Darwin, naturalist and author of On the Origin of Species.

72 In Asia, man's best friend is not the dog, but the elephant. This unique relations.h.i.+p dates back 4,000 years when elephants were first captured, trained, and used for farming, warfare, and religious ceremonies.

Lately, at least in Sri Lanka, that unique bond has gone south. Wild elephants, faced with shrinking habitat (the 70 percent of Sri Lanka that was natural tropical forest a century ago is down to 20 percent today), are starting to raid crops, bulldoze houses, and cause serious injury to anyone and anything that gets in their path.

Every year, hungry elephants destroy hundreds of acres of agricultural crops-never mind that these farm fields used to be the elephants' jungle. Villagers, many who have been relocated by the government into elephant territory, sit up all night in rickety tree houses, trying to scare them away. They yell, set off firecrackers, and, if that doesn't work, resort to firearms. Around 200 elephants are killed each year.

The stakes in this conflict are high. The Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society (SLWCS) set up this project to find a way for elephants and humans to share this island country that Marco Polo called the "finest he'd ever seen." Although Sri Lanka has changed a lot since Polo's time, it's still one of Earth's most biologically rich countries, recently identified as one of the world's 18 biodiversity hot spots. A recent survey in the rain forest turned up more than a hundred species of frogs unknown to science.

But on this project, you'll be collecting data about Sri Lanka's remaining 3,500 wild elephants. You'll work with local field scouts to conduct human-elephant conflict surveys, known as HECs, and compile data on elephant movement, behavior, and density. You'll patrol fences, tanks, and transects to record the frequency and consistency of elephant dung. Several times a week, you'll go into Wasgamuwa National Park and, from the safety of your jeep, photograph individual elephants that might be doing anything from trampling trees to taking dust baths. At night, from time to time, you'll sit in the tree houses, keeping your eye out for marauding herds.

Even though the villagers are at odds with the elephants, they don't take it out on volunteers. Village kids love to practice their English on volunteers, and their parents invite them into their homes for drinks and peanuts picked fresh from their gardens. Many volunteers say the villagers are the best part of the whole project.

You'll live in the p.u.s.s.ellayaya Field House, a sprawling, open mud shack with a tin roof that you'll likely be sharing with a motley collection of dogs, frogs, lizards, and insects. It has flus.h.i.+ng toilets, solar-powered lights, and cold showers (though the sun warms the water pipes during the day).

The elephant monitoring program runs 12 days, starting the first Monday of every month and finis.h.i.+ng Friday of the following week. Accommodations at the Project House, along with three wonderful Sri Lankan rice and curry meals per day, runs $1,300.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society, 38 Auburn Side, Dehiwala, Sri Lanka, 94 1 12714710; U.S. contact: 127 Kingsland Street, Nutley, NJ 07110, 973-667-0576, www.slwcs.org.

BY BUDDHA'S TOOTH Wait until the tooth fairy hears about this. In Kandy, Sri Lanka, an ancient religious center for Buddhism, there's a Temple of the Sacred Tooth. Built between 1687 and 1707, this ornate, gold-roofed octagonal temple houses the left upper canine of the Lord Buddha himself. According to legend, Buddha's tooth was secretly extracted as he lay on his funeral pyre in India. Then, the tooth was smuggled into Sri Lanka in the hair of a princess and has survived numerous attempts to capture and destroy it. Every day, thousands of white-clad pilgrims bearing lotus blossoms come here to pay homage to the tooth and hope to get a sprinkling from the scented floral water in which the relic is bathed every day. The rest of the day, it sits on a shrine in the center of the courtyard.

BUFFALO TOURS.

make amends for agent orange.

THAI BINH, VIETNAM.

The United States must admit it's responsible and compensate the Agent Orange victims in Vietnam. It is your moral obligation.

-Duc Nguyen, born a conjoined twin with one leg and bone distortions due to high dioxin levels in his mother's body 73 During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military dropped nearly 20 million gallons of Agent Orange, a deadly, dioxin-laced herbicide, throughout the jungles of southern Vietnam. More than 30 years after the war ended, they still haven't cleaned up their mess.

The result? More than 200,000 children have been born with birth defects, including blindness, mental r.e.t.a.r.dation, and a wide range of muscular and skeletal disorders. Incidences of cancer and other health problems have increased dramatically, as well. More than a million Vietnamese are thought to be affected in some way.

Despite the 3.2 billion dollars in reparations promised in the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the United States has only recently agreed to begin cleaning up the 28 Agent Orange storage facilities they recklessly left behind without properly containing them. Called hot spots, the facilities are to this day polluting fis.h.i.+ng ponds, rivers, and soil. In Da Nang, farmers still can't get rice or fruit trees to grow due to the dioxin levels. Children like seven-year-old Van Nguyen-born with an oversize head, a profoundly deformed mouth, and skin that has a burned appearance on much of her upper body-still suffer the consequences of this pollution. Van's parents, her doctors say, ate fish from polluted streams.

SAILING ON THE WIND.

On a perfect half-moon bay surrounded by red cliffs sits Mui Ne, Vietnam, a sleepy village that has become legendary in kite surfing circles. Thanks to consistent cross-sh.o.r.e winds, low rainfall, and nearly perfect weather, it's considered the place to take up and practice the world's fastest growing sport. Already, there are more than 10 kite surfing schools in this tiny town with more palm trees than people. Kite surfing, which has grown from fewer than a hundred fans ten years ago to more than 250,000 today, uses scaled-down surfboards to ride into and over the surf, compliments of the wind. Serious surfers cart around as many as three sizes of kites, each designed to maximize the force of any wind. The Kite Surfing Fun Cup, held every year in Mui Ne, blows in kite surfers from around the globe.

Thai Binh, a farming province on the coast of Vietnam's northern delta, has the most victims of Agent Orange. The herbicide has affected three generations of some families, resulting in many children who have disabilities and are unable to lead normal lives.

Since the U.S. government has yet to pony up for rehabilitation centers, health clinics, and schools for afflicted children (despite Congressional appropriation of $3 million for this purpose in May 2007), ent.i.ties such as the Ford Foundation, UNICEF, and the UNDP are doing what they can to augment Vietnamese government programs. Buffalo Tours, a Vietnam-based tour company specializing in what they call responsible tours, sends volunteers to this province 60 miles north of Hanoi.

Some volunteers a.s.sist teachers at the Quang Trung School, where children with Agent Orangerelated disabilities learn to read and write and to partic.i.p.ate in sports and music. They're often refused admittance to regular schools because authorities say their appearance scares the other students. Other volunteers work in orphanages or build homes for families with disabled children affected by Agent Orange exposure.

Buffalo Tours, whose CEO Tran Trong Kien recently received recognition from the Pacific Asia Travel a.s.sociation (PATA) for promoting sustainable travel, was the first to offer volunteer trips to Vietnam. Buffalo Tours also offers medical treks and charity challenges for volunteers wanting to raise money.

Opportunities include two-week, one-week, and shorter group volunteer tours, which usually include accommodations with a host family and daily lunch. Inquire for availability and cost, as opportunities are customized.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Buffalo Tours, 94 Ma May Street, Hoan Kiem, Hanoi, Vietnam, 84 4 3828 0702, www.buffalotours.com.

WILD FILMS.

schlep cameras, make films, and guide nature tours.

BEACHES, MANGROVES, RAIN FORESTS, AND REEFS, SINGAPORE.

Although it's called Planet Earth, it is mostly ocean!

-Sandy Romeo, Singapore volunteer.

74 Singapore may be the only place in the world where you can find a rain forest, a mangrove, and a coral reef within 30 minutes of the central business district. And like rain forests, mangroves, and coral reefs everywhere, these isolated pockets of nature are shrinking, mainly because all those people in the central business district, like people in central business districts everywhere, think making money is more important than preserving wild places.

That's not going to happen in Singapore if Ria Tan has anything to say about it. This 40-something dynamo, a director of corporate affairs for a technology firm by day, spends nearly every nonworking waking hour introducing people to wild Singapore. She leads free nature walks at Chek Jawa, Kusu Island, and Pulau Semakau. She monitors seagra.s.s meadows. She coordinated Singapore's 2008 International Year of the Reef efforts, running a blog about global marine issues.

Over the years, Tan has launched and partic.i.p.ated in dozens of volunteer initiatives from the Naked Hermit Crabs, a group that protects endangered Singapore sh.o.r.es, to Wild Films, a group that films and doc.u.ments life on Singapore's sh.o.r.es.