was so high, we would change money on a weekly basis rather than all at once. This is
definitely advisable in countries where the currency is unstable.
However, what happens if you volunteer with a charity or sending agency on an organised
volunteer programme? David Grassham, who volunteered in rural India, remembers:
As everything was included, the only thing I bought was the occasional chocolate bar or
soft drink.
If you are volunteering on a conservation or wildlife project the situation will be similar.
The reason for this is summed up nicely by Vikki Cole, who volunteered on a conservation
project in the Borneo jungle:
We were quite literally miles away from civilisation so taking credit cards or substantial
amounts of cash was futile. We were advised to bring only a tiny amount of local currency.
We were told we’d need this for the last day when we were able to access a bar in a motel.
We drank them dry within an hour!
The organised skilled volunteering programmes offered by the Australian Government
provide volunteers with a monthly allowance which is deposited into an Australian ac-
count. Overseas withdrawal fees start at A$5, so it’s worth considering how you’re going
to access your cash if you’re on a long-term assignment, and compare rates across banks.
Also, if you find yourself in Asia trying to secure long-term accommodation, you may have
to pay up to three to six months rent in advance, so a cash contingency plan is essential.
Credit & Debit Cards
If you want to find out how near your volunteer programme is to a local ATM, log onto
an online ATM locator. The one for MasterCard is http://www.mastercard.com/us/personal/en/
cardholderservices/atmlocations/index.html and for Visa it’s http://visa.via.infonow
.net/locator/global.
The rate of exchange for cash withdrawals from ATMs is often pretty good but it’s offset
by hefty transaction charges. What you need is a card which doesn’t charge you each
time you get cash out. One such debit card in the US is the Compass Free Checking Visa
(www.compassweb.com). At present, the best option in the UK is a Nationwide FlexAc-
count Visa debit card (www.nationwide.co.uk). These cards will not charge you for cash
withdrawals while you’re abroad, and with Nationwide you get to keep your savings in a
relatively high-interest-bearing account. The only problem with the Nationwide card is
that it can’t be replaced from abroad should you have it lost or stolen.
Travellers Cheques
Experienced international volunteers (and travellers generally) know that one of the disad-
vantages of travellers cheques is that you’re usually charged a commission when you buy
them, a commission when you convert them, and on top of that they rarely attract a decent
rate of exchange. Nevertheless, if you are volunteering somewhere remote you might rely
heavily on travellers cheques.
In the UK you can buy American Express travellers cheques in US dollars commission-
free from post offices (www.postoffice.co.uk). In the States and Canada, they’re sold at
many banks and credit unions and all AAA offices and American Express Travel Service
branches (see http://www.americanexpress.com/travellerscheques for a list of locations). Aus-
tralians and New Zealanders should check out http://www.americanexpress.com/australia and
http://www.americanexpress/newzealand respectively to find out where to exchange their cash
for cheques. American Express travellers cheques can be exchanged commission-free at
most American Express offices while you’re away. However, remember to ask for a good
quantity of cheques in smaller denominations, so you have the choice of changing either a
large or a small amount of money. Needless to say, the equivalent of US$100 in some local
currencies is a lot of money.
Keeping in Touch
The Yahoo! Mail Internet Café Awards were held in 2004 to celebrate 10 years since the
opening of the first internet café. At the time, the award for the most remote internet
café went to Télé Centre Polyvalent (TCP) in Timbuktu, Mali. Since then, internet cafés
have sprung up in increasingly remote places, which is good news for the international
volunteer. Clodagh O’Brien, who volunteered in the jungles of Borneo, says:
Email is the best thing that was ever invented for keeping in touch, not only with people
from home, but also those you meet along the way.
As you would imagine, this is how the majority of volunteers keep in touch with friends
and family. In Bangladesh, Jacqueline Hill remembers:
I mostly kept in touch through emails and my online diary. I would go to the internet café,
download my emails onto a disc and reply to them on my PC at the flat. I would then copy
my replies, go back to the internet café and attempt to send them. Erratic opening times,
phone lines and electricity supplies made this a lengthy and often frustrating process.
There are two interesting things about Jacqueline’s experience. Firstly, that she wrote an
online diary (for more on this, see p75) and secondly, the way she beat the problem of
erratic electricity supplies in a developing country. If you don’t take a laptop overseas, you
can still avoid writing lovely long emails only to lose them when the internet connection
drops out: write in Word, then copy and paste the text into an email when you’ve finished.
Ann Noon, who volunteered in Peru, used internet cafés as chat rooms – but she wasn’t
chatting to strangers:
Thank goodness for MSN Messenger. It makes you feel like your family are just across the
road somewhere rather than thousands of miles and three flights away. Skype’s another
handy invention...
Indeed it is. Skype (www.skype.com) has revolutionised the way we keep in touch and is on
offer at an increasing number of internet cafés worldwide (look out cafés with headphones
attached to the terminals). The main benefit of Skype for volunteers is that you pay almost
nothing for making international calls from internet cafés: you just pay to rent the termi-
nal. (For more information, see p75.)
The question of whether to pack your mobile phone is not straightforward to answer. If you
have a tri-band GSM handset then it will work in most parts of the world, including some of
North America. If you’ve got a dual-band phone, you may want to think of upgrading before
you depart. For more detailed information on where your phone will and won’t work, check
GSM World at (www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtml). This will also let you know if the
country you’re volunteering in has a GSM ‘roaming agreement’ with your service provider.
Having said this, Phil Sydor, who volunteered in Lusaka, Zambia, had no problems:
We walked down to the end of the garden and the reception was quite good. Land lines
were terrible, but many people had mobile phones. We bought a local SIM card and used
that as it was cheaper than ‘roaming’.
Unless you want to shell out a fortune paying an ‘international roaming’ tariff, local SIM
cards are a must for international volunteers. Before departing, find out whether your
mobile is SIM locked. If it is, get the code to unlock it so that you can purchase a local pre-
paid SIM card when you’re abroad – it will make your mobile calls significantly cheaper.
You can buy local SIM cards almost everywhere in Asia and Africa and in most other
places from telephone or service-provider shops.
However, if you’re volunteering on a conservation or wildlife project, your mobile might
not be so useful. Robin Glegg, who volunteered in Siberia, Namibia and Oman, points out:
In the Altai mobile phones did not work in the mountains, as we were fairly remote from
civilisation. Biosphere Expeditions operates a satellite internet and phone link, so you can03: The Practicalities:Keeping in Touch