After hearing a lot about volunteering experience as of nice mixture of traveling and filling your life with a meaningful cause, I've chosen to give it a try. My first experience happened to be an ostrich farm in Bulgaria. I found it through WOOF organization, that is promoting a more sustainable way of life by bringing people together, like hosts and volunteer guests, for example.
My hosts were a couple from Britain, with two kids. They followed a common scenario: given up their office jobs and moved to a foreign country to open up a farm. Though as it turned out later, it was not so common, given that the husband's father was a rich businessman owning large property nearby in Bulgaria, later on in the story there will be a link to it.
At first all seemed to be nice and comfy, I was proudfuly telling my friends and family of my experience via all sorts of online messanging - yes, there was WIFI! The living condions were fine: I lived in a caravan, sharing it with young guy from Britain, who was hired (not volunteer), there was a kitchen for volunteers, and all the facilities were decent. Breakfast and lunch was self made by us, and dinner was made by host and we ate it together at the common table. Dinners were tasty and conversations were interesting.
Duties were quite straightforward: feeding, cleaning, some maintenance around the farm. The worst duty was operating grounding machine, which was grinding hay into more digestible feed for ostriches, but, well, se la vie, when it was your turn to operate you just made that unpleasant face and do your bit ;) So days went by, usual farm routine.
But later more and more questions regarding the conditions at the farm started to appear in my head. First one was: why am I constantly getting a task to fix and old water hose, which has dozens of holes so water is leaking out almost always? Greediness of the host to buy a new one? (Later I found out that he gets water for free, for some unclear reasons, linked to his rich father owning some property in the village). My next question was - why is he making us assist him in veterinary procedures without any sort of medical gloves? The birds scratch a lot, and you can easily get your blood from a wound at your hand mixed with that of a bird. (Pic below of me during veterinary assisting).
Soon, it turned out that two other volunteers shared dissatisfaction with the conditions, even such basic as working extra hours, above to what was agreed. So one day this American girl, volunteer, honestly said to the hosts that conditions are not satisfactory. The hosts composed a new schedule for a day, but at the end of that day she was 'sacked', most obviously for breaking the status quo. My final straw was when the host told me I can't take a shower midday as he does, simply because he can, as he is the owner, and I am a 'worker' - on what I replied that I am actually a 'guest' and should be treated so. So the next morning I packed my stuff and left.
Summary: even though volunteering & traveling is a great idea, be careful of possible 'free labour' abuse. In general, I am not sure if farms that are run for profits can be even included in volunteer programs. But nonetheless, it was a great life experience, and I wish you to try volunteering while your travels. Just be lucky to have a good match with hosts!
PS And as to ostriches - they are quite something!
