My Work Exchange Experience- Northern Peru

If you are looking to go on a new adventure, practice a language or pump up your resume with something others don't have, consider volunteering in another country!

You can learn many valuable skills by volunteering abroad and make memories that you will cherish for years. There are also many other skills that you can learn or perfect while volunteering abroad. I personally chose to do work exchange. That means I was provided food and accommodation while doing my volunteering. Definitely the way to go! I was able to choose what I want to do, where I want to do it and didn't have it cost me an arm and a leg, just flights and a few more expenses.

I used workaway.info to arrange my work exchange experience. I started hearing about this site in different travel blogs then I found out one of my friends was using it to do work exchange in Costa Rica (Kate! ;P) and she was absolutely loving it so I decided to check it out.

My other friend had just recently traveled to Peru at the time and had deemed it a wonderful, surprisingly safe, location. I was fresh out of college living on an island off the coast of Texas where there was not even a coffee shop at the time. I had decided it was my mission to fix that but realized I didn't know anything about coffee except how to order it at Starbucks. That's when I decided it was time to make a move. I wanted to speak Spanish and I wanted to know where coffee comes from, and based off my friend's recommendation I decided Peru was the place and workaway.info was the site to help me make it happen.

I participated in work exchange at a coffee farm in northern Peru and had an outstanding experience. It changed my life. I traveled on my own for the first time outside of the United States, I gained confidence in myself like I never had before. As well as, found my passion, found myself, learned a language, gained extensive knowledge about farm management, coffee, and permaculture, and eventually started a business from my experience there. It really changed my life in a magical way. This was not glitz and glamour, this was a breaking down of all the societal norms that I knew.

When I first arrived at that coffee farm there was a huge dog fight going on, then I looked around and it was like no other accommodation I had ever stayed in... run down, old, boys only, and I couldn't even locate myself on Google!! At first I almost had a panic attack. I slept with my pepper spray under my pillow and had to share a room with a boy I didn't know. I was thinking, "What in the world have I gotten myself into???" I was so uncomfortable that I wouldn't even wear shorts for two weeks, I didn't want to expose my legs when only strange men were around. There were farm workers, and only one woman next door, on the property but not in my house. None-the-less, two weeks went by and all of a sudden I started to bloom. The other work exchange guys turned out to be the nicest guys in the world and I ended up being so happy to have them around me. We were like the 3 amigos.. or in this case the 3 gringos because we were the only ones those people had ever seen. We were up on a mountain in the middle of nowhere in the dry forest between the Amazon Rainforest and the Andean Mountains. We would laugh that we were celebrities the way that people would stop and stare at us when we made our weekly trip into town for supplies and to eat Pollo a la Brasa. I think I spent $80 during the 2 months I was there.

That became my new comfort zone and when it was time to leave, I was scared. It would take 3 days to get home and I would be on my own again. Riding in a shared van with people I didn't know, 19 hours on a long distance bus, overnight in a hotel, private driver to the airport, 6 hour flight to Miami, sit in the airport all day, then finally back to Texas. Lima is a huge and intimidating city when you are unfamiliar. I remember the long distance bus stopped and called out "Lima" and it was in a part of town that I was absolutely terrified. ROUGH with a lot of men standing outside the bus station, I thought to myself I'll just go wherever the bus is going, I'm not getting off there. Luckily for me, I didn't realize that was only the first Lima stop and when we arrived to the next one, it was a large and modern bus station. All this to say, it was not easy, it was not perfect by any means, I was scared. And I did it anyway. Now, I'm not advocating for women to go running around the world blindly, if you would like to know how I prepared for this trip ahead of time, see my blog here.

Beyond facing my fears, I also improved my Spanish-speaking skills immensely, saw many, many beautiful things, deeply connected with many new friends, and created a 3 year-long love affair with Peru, with my freedom and the establishment of an import/export business. When I say it literally changed my life, it did in many ways. The coffee farm owner was a woman living in a man's world, the former mayor of one of the neighborhoods in Lima. She would take me around with her in the mountain town and I would watch how she interacted with people. Quite frankly she did not take any shit from anyone. She was the boss. Blonde hair, light skin, woman, in a place where no one looked like her and all the people in charge were males. She did not care about being liked and she demanded her respect, because otherwise she would not get it. I took it to heart. After that, I did not allow people to cut in front of me in line at the bus station, or squish me in with too many people in the seats in the shared van with 6 people in a 3 person seat for 2 hours. When I established business contacts in other parts of Peru only one time did I ever go across town to sit there and wait 45 extra minutes because they were late, after that I said you have to come to my part of town and meet me, I would name the time and the place and if you want to do business with me, don't be late. I would make the meeting at my favorite coffee shop at the time I'm going to go there anyway, they can show up or not show up... and they did.

When I returned home, I had a new sense of what mattered and what didn't. I saw horrible living conditions, dirt floors, everybody sleeping in one room and chickens walking around on the floor, but they were happy. I found new perspectives, new strength, and a perseverance like I never had before. After doing all those things, by myself in another country, another language, another culture, no comfort zone, everything else seemed doable. If I could do what I did there, I could do anything. My confidence soared, not in arrogant way, but in a truly unshakable way.

Later I sold the last of my inventory in the import/export business and decided to re-enter the traditional workforce in Texas. My resume stood out, it was unique among competitors. Every interviewer asked about my time in Peru, and I never did a single interview without receiving a job offer after. I truly credit that experience. It gave me something different and that inner strength, that extra confidence.

If you are considering doing a work exchange, I encourage you to do it. Whether you are a recent graduate, need a change or are looking to do something different, do it. But be prepared. Make sure you read THIS blog too.