Volunteer Global

The following story and pictures are courtesy of Alex Budak. Please do not duplicate.

I was running along wildly, my arms out at my sides as if I were a small aircraft, as the little kids chased me, their laughter booming ahead, filling the gap between us. I thought to myself they must really have taken to this new white kid who came to play with them.
It turns out they were just laughing at me, enamored with the fact that my mesh shorts kept falling down thanks to the wallet and keys weighing down the pockets, revealing my boxers-covered bottom.

"Pants! Pants" they squealed in laughter as they pointed at me. I ran for a bit with my hands in my pockets to avoid indecent exposure in front of fifty kids from the local slums, but every 50 meters or so, I would remove my hands once again, inevitably causing the shorts to sulk down on my legs, renewing the laughter from behind.

While studying abroad in India this summer, I spent many of my afternoons out at a field, symbolically located between Mahatma Gandhi's Ashram, and the largest slum in Ahmedabad, which houses 400,000. As part of a project, some volunteers -- both Indian and American -- are working to bring the game of ultimate frisbee to these kids -- and we were there to help coach them, or in my case, entertain with my weighted-down shorts.

Practice began with a couple of laps around the "field," which really was little more than a big plot of dirt. We then moved into a circle, and began some basic stretching exercises. I turned to the kid on my right -- my presence in the group now well established -- and worked with him on some basic English: LEFT, RIGHT, GO, and STOP.

After warming up -- which I thought was a great idea: teaching these kids the importance of basic exercises and stretching -- we moved into a throwing drill. The kids ranged in age from eight to fourteen years old, and all seemed quite eager to be running around learning how to play. Though I managed to keep my pants on for the whole drill, I did, also, happen to nail a poor kid in the mouth as a wind gust picked up my frisbee and delivered it, to his surprise, right to the side of his mouth. He was tough, though, and kept on practicing.

Meanwhile, I had developed an affinity for a cute eight year old girl, Alicia, who spoke perhaps the best English of the entire group of mostly older boys. I took her aside and we played catch by ourselves, counting aloud, in English, the streak we had built. Alicia managed to throw the disc about eight feet, but it took a big windup of her torso that caused her floppy hat to bounce and briefly cover her eyes until she spun all the way back around. Our record was nineteen straight, though, try as we did, we never could break that magical twenty barrier.

The practice ended with a circle and a "hands in the middle cheer," before we each went our own way -- the kids back home, and us back to our fortress of a University. It was a great experience to break free of the Indian Institute of Management bubble of academia, and be around some kids just happy to run around a bit...

and to laugh as a goofy white guy's pants fall down.

Alex Budak is a recent graduate of UCLA and is currently a graduate student at Georgetown University, studying Public Policy and Social Entrepreneurship. Check out his blog (http://unpoppedcollar.com), or follow him on Twitter @Budizzle.