Feet
After many trips I have decided the best thing you can bring with you is Tevas sandals. These things are awesome! I’ve hiked mountains, crossed rivers, and even gone to very upscale restaurants with these puppies. They are amazingly durable; I think the best way to describe them would be hiking shoes with holes.
I don’t believe in the non-sense that is shower sandals. If I can walk across a rice patty barefoot, I am sure my feet can handle the assault of soap and water from the shower without the protection of a piece of rubber.
Clothing
Best advice I can give is this: 2 sets of clothing in your bag and wear the third. Every day you can rotate and mix/match your clothes to fit whatever you have to do that day. This might seem very minimalist, but really when you are lugging your clothes (and as a volunteer, you will carrry everything) wherever you go, its always better to be minimalist.
Second best advice I can give is layer. Instead of bringing a jacket, bring a long sleeve shirt. If it gets cold, just add more layers, when it is warmer just strip off layers. Big bulky clothing is really useless since it serves only one temperature range, so bring lighter items you can double, or even triple stack on yourself to keep warm. Of course if you are assigned to Siberia I suggest you bring something warmer.
Third best advice is to bring multipurpose items; convertible pants are great because they fill both the role of pants and shorts, thus saving weight (which is the goal of good packing). Also, the long sleeve shirt I brought has a collar and could pass as being a dress shirt so as to provide me an outfit if I needed to look smarter than a normal volunteer would. I brought plain khaki swim trunks that I can easily use as regular shorts, best purchase I ever made. Remember the more uses an item has, the more weight you save!
My final piece of advice to bring clothing that is easily washed, with only three outfits you are going to have to wash your clothes pretty much every day. It will only be 1-2 outfits per load(you’ll be wearing the third) so it won’t eat much time, but items such as jeans and cotton sweaters take forever to dry and are really useless in the field.
This is what I brought in the way to clothing:
3 short sleeve shirts
1 long sleeve shirt
2 pairs of convertible pants (they are pants and shorts)
1 pair of swimming trunks (can be worn as shorts)
1 pair of socks (socks with sandels is perfectly acceptable)
6 pairs of underwear (I can survive wearing dirty shirts, but no way I am going to wear dirty underwear)
1 Timberland Hat
1 Anorak style rain jacket (the type that folds up into itself)
Equipment
I tried my best to maintain the idea of multipurpose when picking my equipment to bring.
1 REI 110 piece medical kit: I know quite a bit of first aid so a larger kit is more helpful, if you do not know about first aid, then a basic kit is all you need. Just buying a first aid kit is not enough, make sure you know how to use it or else it is just a paperweight.
Key chain LED flashlight: When buying a flashlight, always buy an LED light. Just as much light is produced, but far lighter and has longer battery life. Also, bring extra batteries!
High Strength Bug Repellent (50%+DEET solution), I placed this in a special bag so it would not spill onto my other items.
Monocular
Swiss Army Knife
Travel Alarm Clock
Ziploc bags (Just in case of bed bugs)
Small camping roll of duct tape
100 feet of reflective cord (can be used as a clothes-line)
Conclusion
And that’s it! Does it seem really small? Of course it does, that is the point! Remember you can always purchase items you need out in the field, so keep it simple, keep it multipurpose, and keep it light! Good luck!
