Volunteer or Doormat?

There is a fine line between being a volunteer and a doormat. For every volunteer that line is different, but we are responsible for setting our own boundaries for what we are willing to do to help others. Peru is a society that is used to hand outs and NGO’s. A lot of people are looking for some one to come and solve all their problems for them. So as PCV’s we spend a lot of time explaining our role in the community and the services we are willing and not willing to provide.

Things constantly come up and I have to decide what I am willing to do for others on a day to day basis. It doesn’t matter what type of volunteer you are: Youth, Small Business, Health, Environment, most volunteers are sought after to be one thing, an English teacher. Whether the teaching is formal or informal, Peruvians somehow expect you to teach them English overnight without having to put any real work in.

I draw my line here. I will offer to help kids with there English homework, but have successfully avoided teaching English in a classroom setting. By reading my blog you may notice that I don’t exactly have a master on my native tongue and therefore don't feel confident teaching grammar and spelling.
But the other night a friend in town asked me if I would be willing to help an old lady translate some forms she relieved in the mail. He said she needed to fill them out but didn’t understand any English. I figured this type of service didn’t fall on the doormat side of my boundary.
So this morning I went over to the old ladies house, who graciously sat me down at her kitchen table and brought me a stack of papers. There on the top of the stack was a 1040A US tax form. And beneath it was a whole mess of other tax forms and papers explaining how to do it. I couldn’t believed I was suckered into doing some old ladies taxes. She gave me her peruvian ID and pen and told me to start filling it out.
I explained to her that it wasn’t quite as simple. First off,
“what’s your social security number?” I asked her.
“My what?” she replied.
“tu numero de seguro social”
Along with all the sheets of paper she had handed me, where a whole bunch of translations for all the technical accounting terms and even translated proper names.
“okay, let’s back track. " I said "Why are you even filling this out anyways? Did you earn any kind of income from the United States in the past year?”
She said no, her husband did. But her husband was dead.
In the marital status column, there isn’t even a box to mark for widowed, filing for your deceased spouse. And instead of a W-2, there was some other form I had never seen before that was all in Spanish and contained the numbers necessary to fill out the 1040A. I shuffled through the papers reading the English and Spanish forms that explained how to manage everything.

I didn’t even fill out my own taxes this year. My dad wanted our family friend and accountant to do it seeing as things were a bit more complicated now that I’m living and earning my income abroad. And I’m pretty sure I’ve messed up my taxes every year I’ve ever done them on my own. Accountability is so not my thing. And the papers spread out on the table bewildered me. I tried to explain to her that I had no idea what to do and that she should call a professional. But she wasn’t’ haven’t that as an answer. She wanted me to figure it out right then and there and get her taxes done.

I did try to figure it out. And I think I could have if I worked on it for several hours and had access to the IRS website. But this was officially way past my boundary of things I was willing to do in the name international development. After a half hour of looking over documents I basically told her I couldn’t do it and was going to leave. She was not very happy with me and wanted to know to do then, if I couldn’t’ figure it out. I told her to call an accountant. or better yet, her son who lives in the states. So even though I thought I was doing a neighborly thing by translating a few documents for an old lady, I think I may have made more of an enemy than a friend. Out of all the things I imagined doing as a peace corps volunteer, filling out IRS tax forms was definitely not one of them.