going the extra mile (2nd of two parts)

After the May 14 elections, I volunteered for the NAMREL Quezon City Quick Count. I had expected that the experience would again give me that satisfaction--that I had been part of something big and meaningful, and that I was involved for a good cause--much like when I volunteered for the quick count in the 1998 presidential elections.

This time, it was not meant to be, unfortunately. That night during the first shift, where Rina and I enlisted, the election returns were still not completed by the different precincts; hence, we had nothing to count. The NAMFREL organizers said that the counting at the precinct-level went very slowly than they had anticipated. One election return actually made it to our shift, which meant that we were going to have our hands full during that shift. But after careful inspection, the organizers said that it was tampered, and thus had to be discarded. And so, we ended up with nothing to do for four hours. Well, almost, if not for the book I brought with me, and the brief chatting with one of the organizers.

Two days after our short (and rather unproductive) volunteer stint at the QC Quick Count in Ateneo, Rina and I headed to the NAMFREL Headquarters to help out in their operations. One of the volunteers at the Overseas Absentee Voting section, who happened to be Rina's officemate, invited her weeks before the elections if she wanted to volunteer at the NAMFREL HQ. We decided to give that one a try, and so that's how we ended up enlisted there. Unlike our first shift at QC, we had something to do at the NAMFREL HQ, which was housed temporarily at De La Salle Greenhills.

They delegated the task of following-up (via phone calls) the contacts in the provinces of Region 3 to us. At this period during the counting, NAMFREL was generally way behind in its offical count. Other media counts like the one commissioned by ABS-CBN had made a better job at it and had overtaken NAMFREL's counting, which was why the COMELEC had ordered the media count to stop until NAMFREL rectified their delay. And so, in light of this, we had to ask the contacts from the different provinces at the wee hours of the night if they can still squeeze everything they've got to send in the counting results done in their area. We were successful with a few, but our calls resulted in assigning subsequent follow-ups for the next shift of volunteers. The provincial contacts were mostly asleep for lack of enough rest in the previous days. While the endeavor was not entirely fruitless, Rina and I had shared the same sentiments that they could have accomplished our tasks even without us there. Probably because there were more hands to do the work that time than there was work to be done.

I was a bit frustrated that our efforts at meaningful volunteering had not ended up as I had envisioned. I admit to regretting that I could have used my time instead for other productive activities. But now that I've thought about it (I deliberately delayed writing this post so I could think things through), could my frustrations be misplaced? I mean, both situations at NAMFREL couldn't be helped. Maybe I was available to volunteer at unfortunately the wrong time or shift. So should I be wary of future volunteer opportunities with the organization? That would be unfair.

In retrospect, I believe our efforts, despite its lack of tangible impact, should still be worth something. They called for volunteers, and we answered the call; probably the important thing was that we were there, available and willing to be of help, regardless of whether we were up to the tasks or not, or even if the tasks were not up to us instead. No matter what happened there, we should still be proud to have become part of the volunteer corps and to have rendered service.