Nurturing Our Roots: The Joy of Volunteer Exchanges in our Ancestral Homelands
Exploring the darker aspects of our ancestral stories... and an uplifting take on an alternative way to travel with intention and purpose.
Hello beautiful weavers, from Poland!
We’re 11 days into our ancestry trip now. What a ride it’s been!
We had a day layover in Reykjavik (the most expensive city we’ve ever been in - we tried to spend as little as possible, but just eating a hot dog each, some food from the grocery store, and spending some time at some hot pools/a sauna came to over $300 CAD!)
We’ve since spent time in Kraków (our new favourite little city), Zakopane (a small mountain town in the South that showcases its rich cultural heritage of the highlander Goral people), and visited Łódź, where my partner Chris’ grandfather Tadeusz was born 100 years ago.
Łódź was once the second biggest city in Poland, and a thriving metropolis known for its textiles industry. But since the Nazi invasion during WWII and the USSR’s communist control from the post-war period until the early 1990s, the city has never really been able to recover to its former glory. We were surprised to find half of the buildings in Łódź fully or almost fully derelict and seemingly unusable/unlivable. While there is much that we don’t know about that side of Chris’ family, we have a strong feeling that Tadeusz would be sad and disappointed to see what’s become of the Łódź that he grew up in, and how it’s perceived by the rest of Poland.
We explored the city as much as we could during the 3 nights we had there. We spent an afternoon walking through the old Łódź Ghetto, the second largest ghetto in Poland during the Second World War, up to the Jewish cemetery and the “Łódź Ghetto Field” - a mass grave site where over 40,000 of the 230,000+ Jews in Łódź buried during the Nazi occupation (with many more being buried elsewhere). Jewish citizens were put to work in factories and shut off from the outside world, and during the occupation, 95% of the Jewish population in Łódź was starved, killed, or shipped off to concentration camps like Auschwitz.
Wandering the gravesites that have become overgrown over the decades was heavy, heartbreaking, and somehow also beautiful despite the horrific tragedy. The plants growing through the field and the cemetery were in the slow process of reclaiming the bodies of these ancestors. English Ivy and grasses were consuming fading headstones. Nettles, ground elder, forget-me-nots, willow trees and oak trees were sprouting and growing around the gravesites - powerful little symbols, the metaphors not lost on us.
We walked somberly, speaking our respects aloud to the spirits of the people whose bodies lay beneath the Earth around us. The ones who may have baked bread for Tadeusz. Who made him laugh in the old market square, who sold him his favourite shoes, who were there to help him when he needed help. Tadeusz was 15 when the Nazis took Łódź. We don’t know with absolute certainty if he himself lived in the Łódź ghetto, or was sent to another camp, but he escaped from one of them, and was able to make it to Canada and start a family. Without a doubt, his community members were here beneath our feet. Possibly alongside other family members who we aren’t aware of. So many lives cut short due to insane, irrational persecution.
Ruminating on the horrors that were thrust upon Łódź and other Polish cities, I couldn’t help but wonder how it could possibly be considered anti-Semitic to be outraged at what’s been happening in Palestine for almost seven months now…..how the survivors of the tremendous horrors of the Holocaust can go on to justify the perpetration of such cruel violence and unthinkable war crimes on another group of people, knowing full well what happened to their very own ancestors mere decades ago….my heart is heavy and aching for all the Jewish families torn apart and traumatized during WWII, and for all the Palestinian families experiencing the same as we speak. It brings to mind a common adage: hurt people hurt people.
This is part of the journey of understanding the lives and deaths of our ancestors, and what we’re here to do. It’s not always going to be learning old songs, walking ancient trails, and eating delicious foods. In order to understand our roots, we need to explore the whole root system, including the dark, rotten parts that many would probably rather pretend aren’t there. The painful parts of history are often significant parts of the story, major plot lines that give key context to later chapters, and ones we don’t intend to shy away from exploring.
Alas. Sitting down to write tonight, this was not my intention of what I’d write about! I actually am feeling elated today, full-hearted and 100% in alignment with the intention of our journey.
Yesterday, we arrived at our first farm stay of the trip, and I’m reminded of how much I absolutely love the experience of working for accommodation while travelling. I’ve done some version of volunteering on farms in Ecuador, Colombia, and Australia, mostly through a platform called WorkAway, which is similar to WWOOFing (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms). On this trip, we’ve also found some upcoming hosts through a platform called Worldpackers, which has more diverse work opportunities than simply farms - including social impact projects, NGOs, home stays, au pairing, and work in hostels. Most of these arrangements involve working 4-6 hours per day in exchange for free accommodation and food. And this is what I felt called to share about today - this is hands-down my favourite way to travel, and I want to shout it from the rooftops!
A good work exchange experience can be such an incredible learning opportunity as a volunteer, and such a great chance for the host to rapidly make progress on their farm/homesteading goals. Not only this, but you’ll usually get a more authentic experience of life in the places that you visit, and get to know locals that may become lifelong friends. It’s a win-win. One of my favourite volunteer exchanges I’ve experienced was at a Permaculture hobby farm in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Colombia 7 years ago - where I first learned about Permaculture. In exchange for two weeks of work there, they offered a one-week Permaculture course, and my world was changed forever. I remember the feeling of my mind literally changing, cracking wide open, downloading so much new information and feeling so fired up about it all. I loved the systems thinking perspective I learned there, and felt something click - it just made so much sense to me. Being a two hours’ walk away from the nearest town of 500 people and an hour more away from the nearest city by bus, I needed to think differently about human waste products for the first time in my life - using and maintaining my first “composting toilet” (a very simple “bucket system”), and using soft plastics to make “plastic bricks” which we used for the foundation of a natural building we were creating out of bamboo and cob (clay, water, sand, and dry grass). Those two weeks in the magical, mysterious, spiritually-charged mountains of the traditional Kogi peoples completely changed the trajectory of my life.
Here, now, at this 4-acre smallholding started 4 years ago by this super sweet Polish couple, we’re in another inspiring haven, in a very different climate and context. In our first day on the farm, we worked on building up their deadwood hedgerows (which are a traditional method of creating barriers and amazing for insect and wildlife habitat), moved some tree rounds by wheelbarrow across the property, worked on preparing a new garden bed within a new greenhouse, learned their process for making sourdough bread (with grains they grow themselves or source from trusted local sources), and helped/observed the process of pressing an ancient Polish grain into fresh, cold-pressed oil. We also learned a traditional Polish method of planting potatoes with two Bobik seeds - a high-protein legume that provides nitrogen for the potatoes as they grow, and produces a bean that is 40% protein which is amazing to feed to their livestock.
Our bodies doing hard work on the land makes us feel alive and plugged into our surroundings, our sore muscles a reflection of the energy we’ve put into making our small mark on the land during our brief time here.
In so many ways, Anna and Piotr have the life we aspire to live - simply, in connection with the cyclical patterns of the seasons, tending animals, building good soil, growing much of their own food, using little to no energy for most of their activities, and having the spaciousness and freedom to live according to their values, even if many of their neighbours don’t understand or agree with their philosophies. It’s inspiring to see just how easy these things can be when they become routine in day-to-day life… we know we want to grow more of our own food, make our own sourdough, press our own oils, and heal ourselves naturally, without the need for pharmaceuticals. We’ve made our best attempts to live this way while living in a rented home in an expensive city, but out here in rural Poland, Anna and Piotr are living the dream. While we get to help them out and support their vision, they reciprocate by providing us invaluable life skills, new knowledge, inspiration, and also really delicious and nourishing hyper-local food cooked by one of their other volunteers!
By spending time in a place like this, our experience and knowledge of the region and its history are immensely deepened too, compared to if we only stayed at hostels or apartment rentals while travelling. We get to hear about Poland from the locals. We get to ask about the plants and trees that are important to them, learn the ancient wisdom, ask their thoughts on the geopolitical climate and social issues, and learn a little more of the language. (Regrettably we don’t speak a lot of Polish, and while their English is pretty good, much of our conversations are through Google Translate. It really is incredible, though, the depth and thoughtfulness in our conversations so far, despite going through a translation app!)
Travelling in this way feels to me like it offsets some of the harms that are inevitable when a foreigner visits another country. Chris and I, with our backgrounds in sociocultural anthropology, are acutely aware of the extractive nature of most tourism. A generic experience is curated for tourists, often at the expense of the locals’ quality of life and the local ecology and watersheds. And I feel that living simply, in connection to the land for much of our trip helps to counteract some of the carbon emissions of air travel. We want to be able to use the resources we do have to feel that we’re contributing to a place, and in some small way, to feel that we’re making a place better through our presence.
Ultimately, working in a place like this is a form of offering to the land. This was the main inspiration for this trip, when we decided to make this more than a quick visit… we intended to find farms where we could volunteer, contribute our energy, and express our gratitude to the land that had sustained our ancestors for so long, while learning from and connecting with them more deeply.
I highly recommend this experience to anyone seeking to travel meaningfully and affordably.
These are some of the sites I’ve used in the past and we’re using now:
WorkAway (a 1 year membership to the platform costs ~$72CAD for solo travellers or ~$86 for pairs/couples)
WorldPackers (annual memberships also start at ~$72CAD for solo travellers or ~$86 for pairs/couples, with some options to pay more for additional support and “emergency accommodation if your volunteering experience doesn’t go as planned”)
WWOOF - Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms - each country or region has their own WWOOF site, which works well if you’re only visiting one place, but for us and the 6+ countries we’re visiting, we decided not to purchase a membership for each place. We’re currently only using WorkAway and WorldPackers as they’re international platforms. Memberships cost different amounts for different regions, but to give you a rough idea…
A 1-year WWOOF membership for volunteering in Canada costs $55CAD for a solo traveller or $80 for a joint membership
1-year membership for the UK costs ~$43CAD for singles or ~$60 for a joint membership
WWOOF Australia offers a 2-year membership for ~$62CAD (singles) or ~$107 (joint)
Thailand offers a 1-year membership for ~$70CAD (doesn’t seem to offer joint memberships)
HelpX - a platform for volunteer exchanges in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Europe (offers free membership or Premium for more features, for just ~$29CAD/2 years) (I’ve personally never used HelpX)
I’m more than happy to answer any questions you may have about volunteer exchanges while travelling. For those of us looking to weave a better world, experiencing other cultures and ways of life is so incredibly valuable to expand our minds and discover what’s possible. Travel expands our consciousness and allows us to think differently in ways we wouldn’t have access to while we’re in the rhythms of our home life and living within the same social constructs.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.”
-Marcel Proust
I am so thrilled that you are a sharing your experience Anna Maria and Chris. Lots of love to you both. You are an inspiration for a new generation.💗💞🙏💃🕺