Volunteer experience spotlight: Grambi Dora

April is Volunteer Appreciation Month. What better time to spotlight our HVAF volunteers as well as employees and volunteers as they share, in their own words, their unique volunteer experiences in the community. All month long, we'll be sharing their stories on the HVAF blog.

Meet Grambi Dora, HVAF volunteer

Out of my duffel bag of volunteer experiences, a few that I am fond of were during my fifteen month deployment to Iraq. I moved like a vagabond from mission to mission, but some of the most memorable events took me beyond what was asked of me by my supervisors and battle buddies. I volunteered for the pure sake of wanting to help others in need. I taught foreign contractors how to multiply and how to read. I wanted to help educate them so that they could become more knowledgeable of the world around them. I put together and distributed care packages for Iraq military soldiers and civilians with hygiene products like tooth brushes, tooth paste, and hand sanitizer. Shortly after my tan boots hit ground in Iraq, my main objective besides keeping my weapons clean, and the battle buddy to my left and to my right safe, was to find a guitar. I found a figure eight shaped wooden guitar at Camp Taji, 12 miles North of Baghdad. After reaching this goal I began to play the guitar in the midst of incoming Rk-47 rounds and RPG's roaring off like thunder. The sounds that brought a trained gunner like myself, praying to my knees. My mind floundered the poetic word from time to time, and sometimes when I felt the most vulnerable, I shared my soul through the spoken word with fellow comrades. We would sit around burn pits in an attempt to escape the war that we breathed in and out like fumes of a Holocaust.