CHILDREN OF AFRICA: septiembre 2010

ANNA NOGUER

Anna was a volunteer from North Spain, whose main role in Tsunza was to entertain the children with so many activities, along with Elena and Silvia. She made each of the sponsored kids to write letter and draw painting for the sponsors, she painted with them, she made bracellets with them, etc. She was also great at covering books, helping with the building tasks, varnishing, painting and distributing material to the schools. She also helped with the acquisition of school material for Tsunza, and helped distributing the material among the sponsored kids. She helped organising medicines to create a medicine store in Tsunza. We classified everything in different drawers, translated the information, and explained how to use them to the villagers.

ELENA RUIZ-CHENA

Elena, our last volunteer from South Spain, a volunteer who fell in love with Rukia Rumba, an orphan girl from Tsunza. Apart from spending lots of hours playing and taking care of this 8-year-old girl, she was of great help varnishing many of the beds that each volunteer had bought.

Before they arrived, we had bought 14 beds for them to sleep in a house in Tsunza, and they all repaid for their bed, contributing to the project of creating a place for future volunteers and visitors to stay without problem. She also helped covering books, preparing the school material to be distributed among the 51 sponsored kids, etc.

Her personal project was paying for the labour and workers needed for the construction of the library which was more than 200 euros. She also helped acquiring furniture for the roof of the library and buying school material for Tsunza. She helped painting, preparing cement, building latrines, and preparing so many games for the children such as painting faces, learning songs, playing sports, etc.

LUCÍA COBOS

Lucía, a journalist from South Spain, was of great contribution too. As a journalist she would spend hours observing the life style, traditions, and customs of Tsunza village. She wanted to become part of the community, so soon got involved in cooking, cleaning, water-bringing, tasks along with the women of Tsunza. She went to visit many people into different houses and spend times talking to them finding their most impending needs.
She also wanted to contribute with the library project, so spent more than 100 euros with very good chosen books, she bought school material, she helped varnishing beds, covering books, preparing cement, painting doors. As she was concerned about education, she also gave some English lessons under the tree, brought books and medicines from Spain.

GIOVANNA MAZZARONE

Giovanna from Italy was also a great support for the kids as she was one of the sweetest volunteers and gave so much love and care to the kids. She would play with them everywhere, dance with them, and entertain them so much. She also helped covering books until exhaustion, heleped with construction tasks, cleaning tasks, and she donated her contribution for the plastering of the library and paid for the windows and door frames.

She helped Laura Ortoneda and Dody with the painting of the library and varnishing of shelves and furniture. And the result was great! She also helped buying and distributing material for the schools with Laura and Silvia and brought blankets for the kids and nights were a bit cold.

LAURA ORTONEDA AND SILVIA MARIOTTI

Laura Ortoneda, a volunteer from Barcelona (Spain), was also very useful in Tsunza and soon realised that all the teaching areas, nurseries and Tsunza school were lacking basic teaching material. So she decided, along with Silvia Mariotti, Donatella Tarasco and Giovanna Mazzarone, all from Italy, to buy loads of school material and distribute it. In total they bought:

1800 COPY BOOKS that were distributed among a Private tuition school, Tsunza Primary School, Razul Nursery Islamic Centre, Molem Islamic Centre, etc.

975 PENCILS, 300 PENS, 500 RULERS, 425 RUBBERS, 150 SHARPENERS, 100 COLOUR BOXES, CHALK, 5 BLACKBOARDS, 6 MAPS, BIG COPY BOOKS, RED PENS AND SHOES FOR THE TEACHERS, etc.

Laura and Silvia also helped preparing activities for the children, covering books for the library and building, among many other things and despite Laura almost broke her leg twice!
Silvia was very much concerned about the studying atmosphere of the village, and she gave a small speech about the importance of studyin habits and decided to set up some tuition time every morning from 9 am to 11 am to set a model to be imitated by the all the families. So far the system has been very successful and we received news from Tsunza that the lessons continue and that now they take place in the library. They also helped varnishing, painting, building, covering books, entertaining children, etc.

MARIA DELGADO AND LAURA BARRERO

Maria Delgado, the treasurer of the association from Figueres-Spain, came again this year for around 20 days, and this time she brought her friend Laura also from Figueres, and altogether became a perfect couple, taking care of each other all the time. They were able to help buying material for the different schools in Tsunza, they helped covering books, organizing them and making the inventory of the books for the library.
They had brought baby clothes and school material from Spain and went arround the village distributing the material among the poorest families. They also bought a wheelchair for a handicapped kid that we sponsored last year, and spent a few days in the Likoni orphanage, where they bought food for the kids and supervised the construction of the classrooms at Timbwani.

VOLUNTEERS 2010

PAU AND ALEXIS

With the help of Alexis Moles and Pau Menéndez (the two volunteer architects from Barcelona and Ibiza), we could make it to build two latrines and two showers, and of course they also helped with the construction of the library, especially makinf door frames, benches, tables, preparing cement, bringing bricks, transporting materials, etc. All the hard jobs that would have taken much more time without them.

They were fixing all types of things, erecting walls, digging soil to place the pipes of the latrines, etc. They also wanted to contribute with the acquisition of a solar panel and pay for all the expenses for it

to be installed on the roof of the library. The total cost of this project was around 400 Euros. And the electrical light finally arrived to Tsunza!

They were great with the kids too and could not stop taking care of them, playing games and organising sports with those who wanted. Everybody will miss them in Tsunza!

JORDI AND ANNA

The last weekend of July Anna and Jordi, a couple from Girona (Spain), also visited Likoni and Tsunza. They had fundraised money for both places and spent half of the amount buying a lot of food for the kids at the orphanage and with the other half they paid for food for 14 families in Tsunza and bought a handcart for transport.

LORENA AND MONICA RUBIRA

Two volunteers from Spain. These two twins helped with the construction of the two remaining classrooms in Barcelona Block in Timbwani School. They also brought some kids to the doctor and brought school material and baby clothes to Tsunza village. They bought a double bed, bedsheets and matrasses since, when they arrived, there weren’t enough beds and some kids were sleeping on the floor. They restored furniture and bought new one. They bought breakfast every morning, shoes and underwear for the kids.

They paid for the monthly rent of July (250 euros) and bought food for the kids. They also bought some school material and organised some evening lessons and studying atmosphere for the kids at the orphanage. They also brought the kids on excursion and so many other things. In general, they had a great experience and were even able to visit Tsunza village for a weekend.

AINA NOGUERA

After two weeks in Kenya, the third of our volunteers arrived, Aina Noguera from Mallorca, who was also a great help both in Likoni and Tsunza. Aina was tagged as the entertainer of Children of Africa. She was great playing with the kids, and was able to make everybody laugh every day.

She taught songs, she organised football matches, Swahili-English lessons under the tree, and so much more. She contributed to the development of Tsunza by paying for the furniture necessary to roof the library and to make the shelves, as well as, varnishing, covering books, bringing stones, etc. Her energy was endless!

THE ESSENCE OF VOLUNTEERING

"Volunteering abroad is not an opportunity given to the rich and developed citizens of occidental countries in order to experience an extraoridinary adventure. In fact, I think it's unacceptable that we allow ourselves the luxury of dreaming about sensational experiences, while the people of the needy countries we want to visit can only allow themselves to dream of some piece of bread in their mouths.

A volunteer workcamp is not a selfish opportunity to satisfy our egos or our cravings for travelling; a volunteer workcamp is an opportunity that the volunteer himself provides in order to offer inconditional assistance and support, time, economic resources and efforts to the most needy ones; an opportunity to change a small, tiny piece of the world.

Therefore, a volunteer should never allow himself to become an extra burden for those he's trying to help. It would be simply nonsense. A volunteer must be a relief, water on top of fire, sugar on top of the bitterness that rules their lives, a streched hand, a balm for the open wounds, a whisper of peace...

Then, we cannot expect that a home, where we are planning to spend some time and where they already have problems enough to bring 50 children to school and provide them with food, water, clothes, etc., opens its doors for us only for love's sake, just becoming another mouth to feed. It is not the same being a volunteer in our own country or being a volunteer in a different continent in somebody else's home. Here, we can offer our time and efforts and later go back home where we are catered with everything. In Africa, to become an assistant requires something else.

When we arrive at an orphanage, we become part of it, another member, which means more food, more water, more electricity, more dirty clothes, more washing-up liquid, more bed covers, etc. It is clear that the romantic idea that Occidentals have of bringing our big love and tenderness to those people, of spending time by their side and exchanging our knowledge with them is highly praisable. But there is something that we should never forget: LOVE ON ITS OWN DOES NOT FEED CHILDREN.

I've been moving in and out of Kenya for almost four years now, living with those incredible peoples, and I swear that they really appreciate the time we spend with them, the moments we listen to their problems, the time we play with their children... But, no matter how strong you might me hugging them, if in that moment their stomachs are empty, and there is nothing to bring to their mouths, our big love will be vanished to ashes. And it is normal and understandable: human beings can only allow themselves the pleasure of loving and dreaming when the basic human needs are covered (drinking, eating and sleeping).

As a consequence, with my full belly, I allow myself a dream: to fill their bellies so that they can also dream. And among many others, the best ways to achieve such a dream are those where governments will never invest enough, building up strong and long-lasting infrastructures, with auto-sustainable projects which can bring them autonomy and better life standards and, ABOVE OF ALL, improving the whole institution of education by building up better schools, with better materials, improving teachers formation, and working on the basis of universal values and human rights.

Susanna