“Life is relationships, the rest is just details.” Gary Smalley
People are social animals, with some exceptions, most people want to interact with other people, to be respected, to be noticed, to be appreciated... to be able to share their thoughts, feelings. For some of it, we just need other people around, but for sharing our thoughts and feelings, we need friends because for most of us it is important to build up a trust foundation with the person first.
Volunteers are like any other people, we need interaction, communication, friendships. Most of us come to the foreign country totally alone and we have to build up all those new relationships, with our flatmates, with our co-volunteers with local people around us. First it might seem even a bit scary, to have no roots to grab...no already known friend to turn to, you have to figure out, which person to trust to be your friend, who is more suitable. Some of volunteers use the help of internet and keep on having close contacts with people that they can trust for sure, to keep contact with old friends, although they are physically in another place. It helps to deal with the difficulties of living in another country, with people from very different cultures, at the same time, there are not so many new friendships built that way. Closing your computer and talking with new, although not so known people, is not so safe but without that step, one will never make new friends. Computers may crash, as well as internet, people have different schedules, believe me, you also need real people as friends.
Some volunteers have lucky enough to come to the foreign country with a friend. Some volunteers are even more lucky and they can live together with that friend. Or is it luck or the test of a friendship? Living together shows the fastest if people are really true friends or not, is friendship strong enough to overcome the differences between people's personalities, different living habits. Friendship is not so much different from a relationship of a boyfriend-girlfriend or a married couple who has moved to live together and has to overcome the differences. Not all of them are able to do that. Individualism gets on the way of understanding that your friend is more precious than your lost sock or your broken CD, things happen, people make mistakes, people forgive and forget. Everybody makes mistakes.
It is sad to witness that not every friendship is strong enough to realize that and friends break up. Although the term is mostly not used by friends, but the break up is as obvious as it would be with any real couple. No interaction or minimal interaction, no calls or no answering to calls and so on...
But at the same time new friendships are made, maybe not for a life time, but certainly for a period long enough to enjoy activities together, to travel, to have fun, to compare different cultures and also to talk about silly things. Friends are definitely for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, so treasure your relationships, not your things.
