Post 2

To serve is to do something for someone else. In different contexts, service can come in very different forms. This experience has not necessarily changed how I define service. Service has presented itself in the form of putting the needs of another over my own. However, over the past few weeks in Zambia I have begun to understand service as an investment.

            One of the first things I noticed about Zambian culture is how people treat each other. Similar to the us, every interaction begins with “hi, how are you,” but rather than a mere courtesy people genuinely want to know how your life is. Here, people invest in each other, they invest their time, energy, resources and self into one another. My host mom has given a new meaning to how I understand service.  I can think of 1,000 ways that she serves other people every single day, but it is the way in which she interacts with people that has changed my sense of what it means to serve. One day while driving in the car she said, I am not a confrontational person, I usually just apologize and laugh and it’s not a confrontation anymore. This in itself is not an example of how she serves but it exemplifies how she puts another before herself, investing in another.

            She has shown me a quality of service that I hadn’t identified before. It is the ability to make yourself subservient to another while at the same time maintaining your integrity. Before, I would have thought that to serve one in this way is somehow inherently demeaning; however, she has taught me that you can lift someone up and put their needs before your own without it saying anything about yourself. Over the past few weeks I have realized how service isn’t about yourself it is about another. My work at CCZ, while it is not a topic I myself would have chosen, it is important for the advocating they will be doing. My service is to invest my time to produce a report for their use.

            My motivation to serve was and still is based in the fact that I value helping others. What I have come to learn is the importance of valuing others. I used to be motivated to serve because it made me feel good to help others. While this is still true, I am dually motivated by what I can do for someone else. Relationships are mutual and when you serve someone it is as much about you as it is about them. Going back to the way in which Zambians greet each other, it is a mutual relationship and they value what is happening in the other’s life. The importance of this for me, is the ability to fully invest myself in someone else, putting myself on hold and paying attention to someone else. People here act in a very self-less way, doing things for people not for what they will get out of it but because it is for the other person, a skill which I had lacked.

            This is not a conventional definition of service, but this is an important underlying quality of service that I had not realized before. I hope to not only serve with this quality in the future but also to maintain this as a core value. We get so caught up in making sure that our personal concerns are met that we are blinded to what others need. To serve is still to do something for someone else but I have come to realize the importance of the someone else.