Volunteering in the office

Adhisthana, April 2024

I started my volunteering at Adhisthana, the retreat centre where I'm now based in the office on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday until mid-June. I'm staying there for the two nights rather than commuting back and forth, and I've been given a bedroom in the resident women's community so I don't have to worry about moving rooms. The usual occupant is on sabbatical in Australia, but has left most of her things in the room, which is a bit odd but not a problem. The main challenge is finding my place in the hierarchy of the community - having a room there is a tacit acknowledgement that I'm now accepted as someone worthy of living there, but not completely integrated as they still have a few community events that I'm not invited to. We eat meals together, but at least for the first week I retreated to my room in the evenings to get some of my own admin and work done.

When I arrived there was a mini-emergency as the most enormous food delivery had just been deposited outside the kitchen, so I helped to put that away. Then there was a serious shortage of labour in the kitchen with 100 retreatants expected that evening, so I eased myself back into the life of the volunteer with some vegetable chopping. But then I made a good start in the office, reminding myself of what I'd been shown and what was ahead of me.

I have an adjustable standing desk! and thankfully no phone nor any expectation that I would need to answer a phone. I have access to the 'communications' email address so I had a look at that first, and all of the messages waiting just needed to be forwarded to the 'admin' person who deals with all the bookings and queries about bookings. There's an 'Out of Office' response on the comms email address saying that the usual person is away and giving alternative email options, so I don't feel too much pressure for that part of the job.

I won't write about other aspects of the role yet because there will be ten weeks ahead of me for which I will need to find some content, but some of the most interesting aspects of working in the office rather than the kitchen are glimpses behind the scenes. Although in theory there are about eight people in the 'Operations' team who do the practical work to support retreats, there are usually no more than three in the office at any one time, and most of the time I was there on my own this week (but with good access to people if I needed to ask questions). So I was on my own when the pest control man came to hand over his short report - good news on the whole.

On Friday I drove off to London to spend the weekend with Lola II and Mr M, but with one of the Adhisthana residents in the car because she was also spending the weekend in London but had missed her train! On Saturday Lola II had booked tickets for us both to go to a special exhibition about the Roman Legions at the British Museum. [When we arrived the entrance line was around the block, but with our tickets we could jump the queue.] Mr M joined us for lunch at a Burmese restaurant, and then left us again while we went to the cinema (Civil War - very good but with a lot of shooting and violence). The next day I was needed to help move furniture and all sort of other stuff in advance of carpet fitting this week - Lola II and Mr M both have shoulder problems and only have a couple of good arms between them. They rewarded me with Chinese food for lunch.

Now I have two days to catch up with everything at home, and go to my U3A board games afternoon, go to Monday badminton, take a call from the Homes for Ukraine scheme organisers to mark 18 months that UJ has been living here and check that all is well, prepare for Tuesday evening when I'm in charge of the local Buddhist group programme, and then it's off to Adhisthana again.