Who knew the students of Kinnelon High School walked in the same hallways as an international volunteer?
Eva Breiterman, a sophomore, has embarked on long international journeys before, but this past summer, she decided to go to Thailand. The devoted volunteer worked vigorously for many days with elephants struggling in Thailand. Breiterman traveled to many unfamiliar places with a new responsibility each day.
“We went to a community and were separated into smaller groups and did a lot of service like tree planting for elephants and worked with little school children,” she said.
From there, Eva and other volunteers from around the world went to specific places where these elephants went to live and are taken care of. Eva and her peers “got to feed them, bathe them and play games with them at Elephant Haven.”
Even though volunteering with the elephants was a difficult job, there were other obstacles Eva had to face on her international trip, like adapting to the culture around her. Eva explains that one of the most difficult parts of her journey was not helping the elephant to have a better life, but learning about Thailand’s culture.
“There were many cultural differences like you couldn’t sit criss-cross because your toes would end up pointing at a person, and that’s a big no-no because they consider it as an insult. There were so many more things we had to adapt to too, like learning the simple part of the language so we could navigate ourselves.”
Keeping up with not only the hard responsibilities of helping the animals but also having to learn the many cultural differences in such a short amount of time adds so much more stress to the job. However, this did not stop Eva with her volunteer work.
Not everyone goes to another country to help save other animals with strangers they have never met before; it takes a lot of effort and devotion. Yet, Eva does this brave task each summer. She traveled to Panama to save monkeys and decided to internationally volunteer by going to save elephants with many other different volunteers. For two and a half weeks, she helped out abused elephants while adjusting to the culture and language she worked around.
“I was inspired because it bothers me that people will do things like poach or abuse animals and it makes me really mad and I just needed to do something about it,” she said. Many people believe it is wrong to abuse or torture animals; however, not everyone steps up and makes a change like Eva. Her experience in traveling across the globe to make a difference in something she believed was wrong easily makes her the perfect example to Gandhi’s famous quote: “Be the change you want to see in the world”(Mahatma Gandhi).
