AARON'S EXPERIENCES

Hello, my name is Aaron and I am 20 years old. I come from a small seaside town called Bangor in Northern Ireland . Just over 14 months ago I was working as a Chef in a busy restaurant - I enjoyed my work but I always thought that there was something missing; I wanted to work abroad and travel. One afternoon my father came up to my house with a newspaper clipping, he handed it to me and said "Son, I think this could be your calling in life".

I took it off him and read - it was an advertisement for an NGO called Humana People to People. They were looking for people who could spare 14 months out of their life and take part in a six month training course at one of their schools in Denmark, then after completing the course become a Solidarity Worker in Africa for a further six months, implementing what they had learned to the local people. "Why not" I said, and that's when my adventure began!

I phoned the school and spoke to one of the head mistresses. I told her that I was interested in joining the programme and she invited me to an information weekend at the school (Lindersvold). This was brilliant, they didnīt even ask me if I had any experience in this field or what qualifications I had. I went to the information weekend, where we attended different talks and courses about the whole structure of the 14 months and what it meant to be a solidarity worker. All the students were very nice and friendly - they were from all parts of the world; there were even a few from Ireland, which surprised me as I had never heard of the organisation before. After a fun and informative weekend I decided to join, starting as soon as possible.

As soon as possible, my new team started to arrive before I had even left the information meeting. It was a very exciting time for me as I was about to start something new and I faced many different challenges ahead.

At the school we had Portuguese lessons most mornings as our team could choose between Angola and Guinea-Bissau as a country of work and Portuguese is the spoken language there. Each of us had our own computer on which we studied about the country we wanted to work in, Angola in my case. We were given different job descriptions from which we could choose which project we wanted to work at. I chose the Family Programme within Child Aid. We studied all about our projects by completing different tasks that were already on our computer; if we wanted more information about anything basically, there was a library at the school. That was good for me as I had never used a computer before I came to the school and it gave me a break from that eye numbing machine.

At the school we do everything ourselves from our studies to cooking and cleaning - this is good training for learning the skills of team work and organisation, which is vital in Africa. Then of course we had the fundraising - this was to pay for our school feeīs, flight tickets and the different vaccinations that we needed for Angola. We fundraised by selling newspapers on the streets of Copenhagen; this was the first big challenge that I had to face - it was very difficult and we worked long hours. Each day we set a target of how much we had to reach, the goal was normally 1000Dkkr. Although we did not always reach this amount.

It was sometimes hard to keep up the motivation when out on the streets as hearing endless "Nej Taks" (No Thankyou!) and "sorry canīt stop" can bring you down, that's why (we discovered) that working in groups was a much better solution as when you do feel that you just want to pack it all in and go home there are people there to cheer you up again. Fundraising taught me to be motivated in doing things that I donīt always enjoy and also I found that it gave me more confidence in talking to people that I donīt know. We fundraised approximately six weeks out of the six month training period at the school.

At the school there are always lots of different events to participate in, of course it depends on the time of year that you are at the school, our team (the October team) was here from October ( hence the name) until April.

One event that I enjoyed was the Winter Olympics in Norway. We all went to the school up there to compete against each other in the different sports events that they had set up for us. This was an experience for me as I had never been skiing before and coming from Ireland, where we donīt exactly have that much snow, (rain yes, lots of rain but not so much of the white stuff) to be suddenly standing waste deep in snow, surrounded by mountains covered with this crisp, white, softness was totally amazing. We took part in everything from the bobsled to skiing. I found that skiing was not quite as easy as it looked in fact just to stand up proved a bit of a problem for me - if you have ever seen Walt Disneys "Bambi" then you will know what I mean. Although Lindersvold did not come first in the games the whole trip was worth it as we had the time of our lives.

The different schools also arrange building weekends where all the schools take part in helping to fix and decorate whatever is needed at the particular school hosting the weekend. These events are fun as you get to meet lots of different people and as we say in Ireland "the cracks great".

We also took part in different conferences in Copenhagen and other schools etc. One I enjoyed was an African Conference at a University in Copenhagen; it was very interesting and we got a lot of facts and information which was useful for us in Angola.

Of course not all of the events that I took part in I enjoyed but again that's all part of the training.

As I said before all the organising at the school was done by the students, this included applying for our visas and booking the flight tickets from Denmark to Africa (the least expensive of course). We had to apply for our visas only a couple of months after we started at the school as it takes a while to receive them. There were quite a few problems with our visas but finally after a lot of phone calls and panicking that we were not going to get to Angola they arrived, just a couple of days before we where due to leave (phew!). Our flight tickets were not as big a problem as the visas but still we were not able to get the cheapest, in fact we paid more than we thought we would have to.

Now we had everything we needed; our injections, mosquito nets, malaria pills, visas, flight tickets and most importantly of all a bottle or nine of sun tan lotion. All that was left for us to do now was have a good bye party at the school, which we did. The other teams and the teachers took us of for a mystery day trip, we had no idea where we were going to, all they told us was pack a towel and get on the bus, this worried us a bit as it was only April and the weather in Denmark is not exactly the warmest then, so if they were going to take us to the beach and throw us in the sea it wouldn’t have been all that funny.But they didnīt, we went to Møns Klint, donīt ask me what this means in English as I don't know. It was a very nice part of Denmark with lots of cliffs and woodland. After we had walked around the cliff tops for a while they told us that it was time to get back into the bus and on to our next destination, this was an inside water park with lots of shoots and slides and other wet things like that; it was a good laugh. To end the day off we all went for a nice meal where the teachers and some of the students gave speeches for us wishing us good luck for our next six months in Angola, but best of all they gave us a present. It was a very nice day and a good way to end the training period at the school.

We left for Africa on the 14th of April. Everybody was very excited but also a bit nervous about the trip ahead, I donīt think that any of us actually realised at this point that we were on our way to Africa but we said good bye to everyone at the school anyway and headed for the airport. We flew from Denmark to Bulgaria, where we changed planes, then from Bulgaria to Kenya where we stopped for an hour. I think we realised then that the dream we had worked for for six months was about to become a reality. When we stepped of the plane it was like we had stepped into an open oven.

The heat was powerful, we could hardly breathe. One hour later we where on our way to South Africa (Johannesberg),where we were stopping for a couple of days as a team mate of ours (Darren) was from Jo-berg. This was our first taste of Africa and it was very exciting although completely different to what I was used to. All the houses were surrounded with high walls and electric fencing; Darren told us that Johannesburg is not a very safe city - there are car-jackings every night and it is a fact that every 28 seconds a woman gets raped, so although we were happy to be there at the same time we where a bit cautious of the city.

After a good couple of days it was finally time to go to Angola. Now I was nervous, this was it, all that I had worked and studied for for the past six months was inching closer and closer by the mile as we soared towards Angola's capital, Luanda.

I can not honestly say what my first impression was. I was in a daze - the airport was packed with people all shouting and pushing past each other, there where children lying on the ground crying. I can remember being distracted by what seemed to be a riot going on not far from where we were standing, as I looked I could see two security guards beating a woman with batons to try and restrain her from passing through the check-in desk. She was screaming and shouting at them in a language that I could not understand. The whole room was unbearably hot and there was a strong, distinctive smell of sweat that choked us. It was more like a goat market than an airport.

Driving through Luanda was an experience in itself. On our way through the city we saw many people maimed either by war or land mines. Men, women and children came running up to our car begging for food and money and anything else that we had. One man I remember came up to us when we had stopped; he could hardly speak. It appeared that he only had half a face due to an earlier accident. This was the first time that I had ever witnessed anything and it was very hard to take it all in.

We spent two nights in Luanda, slowly being introduced into the way of life in Angola, before we finally flew to our destination (Benguela).

When we arrived in Benguela, we where driven straight to our camp which was set in the heart of the Cavaco Valley. It was very basic living conditions, the house had three bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. The bedrooms were nothing more than old metal containers with beds and a dressing table in them, The living room was made of mud with a tin roof and some furniture and the kitchen was built in the same way, except that it had a gas stove, a sink and a kitchen table. We had a garden with a straw fence all the way around it. At the bottom of the garden we had a latrine and a shower ( a bucket of water and a bar of soap). This was to be our home for the next six months.

We were shown around the different ADPP projects that we would all be working at. The last stop was mine, Child Aid or as they say in Angola "Ajuda as Criancas." I met my project manager Toby and my partner Cabo, who later became my best friend in Angola, and of course I was also introduced to my colleagues.

Two of my team mates were also working in Child Aid ( Ariell & Klara) in the Children's House and the Literacy Programme.

I was working in the Family Programme. The Family Programme is a five year project that educates and helps mobilise families in the local community to better their living conditions for themselves and their families. They attend lessons in farming, health and hygiene, family planning, keeping domestic animals, nutrition, AIDS/HIV awareness, malaria prevention, building latrines, and the importance of clean drinking water, etc. The aim is that the families should be equipped to take responsibility for their own lives, to face their problems and find solutions and to take care of their children, who need to grow up healthy and strong, with access to the basic necessities and schooling.

My first couple of months was spent out in the bairros with Cabo ( my partner) talking to people about the family programme and inviting them to join. We organised a big campaign in two of the largest bairros to enrol new families to the family programme. All the workers of Child Aid and the Solidarity workers came and helped us to interview the local people. We had a lot of success with this as in one day over 400 new families joined the programme.

I learned a lot in my first couple of months as Toby basically threw us out in the middle of everything and we had no choice but to adjust to the way things are done in the Cavaco Valley. I got to know the culture, the way of life, and my Portuguese improved also.

In July a new line (line 4) was introduced to the family programme which came under the tittle "Children as Active in the Political, Economical, Cultural and Social Sphere of Society." (Children's Rights). It was under this title that I was given the task of creating a new programme within the Family Programme that concentrated mainly on the welfare of the children living in the bairros. Together with my Project Manager Toby, we came up with the idea of starting up a sports club. In the Cavaco Valley, Child Aid works in all 4 of the following Bairros. Mina, Cambangela, Calomburaco and Graca. The idea was to start up a sports club in each of them, to have a place were the children can come a participate in different sports and activities yet at the same time have the chance of a further education. A place were the children can come and learn but still be active and have fun in doing so.

Together with Cabo I sat and made plans on how to actually go about starting up a sports club . We decided to take things one step at a time, meaning, to start up one club at a time. And Calomburaco was the chosen bairro.

We arranged a meeting with all the mobilisers (mobilisers are the people that give the lessons to the families who are members of the family programme) of Calomburaco to explain our idea for a sports club in their bairro. They all liked the idea and showed a positive interest in creating an activity such as this for the children in their village. Then it was the Sobaīs turn to have a meeting (the Soba is the head man in the bairro - what he says goes), again we told him our plans and again we received a good response. He even said that we could use his garden as a meeting place for the club which solved our first problem.

Now that we had been given the go-ahead from the Soba we could start forming the club. First thing we did was find a trainer to be in charge of the sports. I wanted it to be someone who lived in the bairro that the children knew and could trust, and also someone who would take a interest in the children and treat them fairly. After a while we found the perfect man - his name was Carteca and he, like most of the African people had been playing football from the moment he could walk. I gave him the task of gathering up all the children that were interested in joining the club.

As the club was just starting up I thought that we should start of with a small number of children to see how things went so I asked him to round up 24 kids all aged between 10 and 14. On the following Monday I would meet with them and we would explain all about the club. This he did and when we went to the Sobaīs house the following Monday I was very surprised to see that his garden was full of children (more than 24) - some of them didnīt look more than 5 years old. Of course I was very happy to see so many smiling faces but I did not expect to see just so many of them. We explained all about the club and what we wanted to do and why we wanted to have the club, and also what we expected of them. All the children sat and listened -  they all seemed to be pretty excited about the whole idea.......