Wonderful country!
The cabana we lived until the 1st storm comes...
Forget about being shy...
Yes, those are my hands removing mataquenha.
Our garden.
New shoes for the children
And if you thought you wouldn't have time for fun, you're wrong.
Hello IICD!
My name is Danillo Arraes (for those who don't know me yet), I'm an IICD volunteer from the November 2010 Africa team and I decided to do this good deed for you guys because I had some hard times in the United States for several reasons and on that time I think it would be nice to hear some encouraging words from people who had passed through the same experience. So, it depending on what point of the program you are right now, you can be OK... or maybe you want to commit suicide, maybe you want to leave the program, maybe you don't know what to do at all (my case at the time). Anyways, what I'm going to do is just tell you about how it's been my experience, what I've done since I arrived, how is the project, things I like, things I don't... Remembering, I've just been to one specific place, one project. There are lots of projects in several countries, I'm not saying that you shall pass through the same things I did, what I'm trying to do is to give you some information from my specific and limited point of view, so you can add it to your "Hard Disk" and hopefully it can be useful in some aspect...
So, I got to Mozambique on May by the South African border, from there I went to Maputo, spent something about one week in there (Visa stuff) and finally headed towards Chimoio, where I still am so far. My project here is named "Escola Formigas do Futuro", it's a school for orphans and vulnerable children and my main function is to teach English and Portuguese as well. It doesn't seem to be a lot to do, but at first I decided to focus on that in order to better understand how the project works and to get to know the real necessities of the children. As time goes by you can realize in the details what is wrong, what are the things you can do in fact, with what you can help and so on.
Well, within one week lots of things already start to blow up. Something that you might pay attention to is the low self-esteem which is deeply rooted to Africans head. I could mention many reasons for that, I want to focus your attention on one specific, though: The colonialism. Through so many centuries these people have been under the total control of European countries that then they got used to put themselves under the white. They really think they are different, less skilled, less smart, I've already heard: "Do the brain work, I'll take the manual". It's sad, but it's a fact, you have to figure out ways of trying to change this mind. What I've done is to be next to them the most I can. I talk, listen, play soccer, do questions about their cultures, dialects (things they know more than me so they can realize they also have something to transmit), I have my garden and they help me how to grow the vegetables, among other things...
Besides, we can easily find the tangible things. There's a "thing" which I don't know how to name in English that here is called "mataquenha", it's a parasite that goes into your foot and multiplies itself in there (take a look at the pic number 4), if it's not rightly treated the child can lose his toe. Since the beginning we've been fighting against it, firstly bringing the worst cases to the hospital or doing the "surgery" ourselves, then we raised some funds in Brazil to be able to give to those children the chance of being safe of the villain "mataquena", with that I mean we gave them shoes. Not only shoes, because people in Brazil was very moved by the facts we let them know we could also offer to the children clothes, hygiene products and school supplies. Thanks God we could provide this material for 300 kids in our school.
Another thing that was put on our hands was a group of about 30 children, from different grades, who were diagnosed (by the teachers themselves, according to a not really reliable analyse, for sure) as if they had mental problems. We're asked to work with those children and try to find out what was the problem with them. It was, undoubtedly, a challenge. I had never dealt with psychology problems, especially with children in between who were some that didn't even speak Portuguese. The thing was that, believe it or not, we were the most trained people to take care of the case. We start it up with meetings, we sang songs, played games and slowly we got them to trust on us. As time passed, we introduced some lessons of reading and writing and the children were responding pretty nicely. We had a meeting with the principal of the school to tell her that those children were as normal as we are, but, since they are children, we should somehow get them motivated and excited to learn, what is not the method used in here. The teachers use the one way method (I say you listen) and if it doesn't work, if the kids are not learning, they are diagnosed as if they have mental problems, so they don't have to do the tests, don't have even to pay attention to the classes.
We are not done yet, we still have some issues to solve, one is that the school doesn't have who provides food for the next year so we got to find any partnership with some organization in here to have a nice ending, anyways I'm already glad about the time I've spent in here. If you want an advice just come open, don't be afraid about the challenges, face them all. It's for sure a life changing experience and that's why I came here for, not only to help others or change their minds, but let them help me and change me as well. Before coming I had the wrong idea that I could "change the whole world" and when I arrived I was kind of frustrated because I was spending too much time to solve "small" problems... It was a friend who opened my eyes while talking about a child who had mataquenha and we helped. I want to close my modest report with her words: "Maybe you cannot change the entire world, but you did change the world of that child who would lose his toes and didn't".
Take care and stay warm because the cold is coming (be thankful you're not in the November team!)
Good luck you all!
Danillo Arraes.
