My First Time in a Cat-Walk
Persons from all over the world were in Hornsjø, this last weekend, for a conference organized by Humana People to People. So, there was plenty of work to be done in the hotel, by the DI`s, like serving, cleaning and cooking. Besides that, we were also invited to organize a fashion show and to be the models. The goal was to promote this kind of event in other Humana shops and, of course, to sell the clothes!
In the beginning, most of us were not very interested in participating in the event, but finally eight persons were convinced that it could be a good experience: I, Raquel, Jenny, Mantas, Andris, Anti, Vala and two girls from Humana Bulgaria.
Time was not on our side and there were a lot of things to be done. It was Wednesday when we started preparing the things and the cat-walk was planned for Sunday morning. So, it was time to delegate tasks and take our body measures.
The clothes arrived on Friday and, to be completely honest, I had some problems choosing the outfits. In fact, they were not really my style, but I decided not to think about that. Just relax!
On Saturday we were told that the fashion show was going to be in that night. So, everyone was in a hurry to take care of the last details and also to do the final and also first rehearsal.
At 8h30 p.m. we met in the big classroom to put the make-up and also to do something with the hairs. At that time we were nervous, but also excited with what was going to happen.
The fashion show started at 9h30. Almost 200 people were seated in the conference room to watch the event. Most of us had never done this before, but we managed to do it alright. At least, nobody fell!
I can say that I enjoyed the time I spent preparing the show because we worked well as a team. Of course, sometimes I felt tired, but if I could turn back time, I would do the same again. I like to test myself: then I feel I am alive!
My first time entering in my room through the window
Two days ago, Lenka appeared in our classroom and said: “I have bad news”. When I heard those words I thought about hundreds of things that could have happened. However, I was far from knowing that the door from our room couldn’t be opened.
Lenka explained to me that she entered in our room, as usual, to rest for a while, but she had to leave it through the window. While she was doing that, Mantas and someone else were passing by and, as far as I know, they were quite surprised with what they saw! They must have thought something like “what the hell is she doing?”
In that night, when I and Lenka decided to go to bed, we had to go round the building to try to find out which was our window (she had leaved it opened). Then, it was time to do some exercise. After one or two tries I entered in the room, but Lenka didn’t have so much luck. However, in the end we slept in our beds!
Next morning I woke up and left my room through the window. Strange sensation, I must say. It seemed that I was doing something forbidden…
I still can’t open my bedroom door, but now I have a new plan to enter in my room. Instead of going round the building, I go to the smoking room and leave it through the window. Like this is much quicker! However, I had to change some of my routines and I also avoid going to the room because I have already broses in my legs. This situation is so unreal that I don’t no if I should laugh or get irritated.
Breaking news: Lenka appeared in the classroom and told me that Henning fixed our door! Well, not exactly… It is true that now we can open it, but we can’t close it. In the end, it really doesn’t matter. I am glad to be able to enter in my room through the door!
First Week Fundraising
Before going to Bergen, I already knew that I wouldn’t forget my time there. In fact, I and my team hitchhiked 400 km, fundraised, clunsed (begged for food in restaurants) and slept in a crypt for seven days. During our stay there, I was the responsible for the team’s economy and also for the shopping.
When we were still at the school, we divided ourselves in 4 groups: me and Andrzej, Raquel and Peter, Mantas and Roman, Lenka and Petr. On Sunday morning, we left Hornjø. It was raining cats and dogs and I started getting nervous.
Jenny and Marco drove us until Dokka, the place where we should start hitchhiking. I opened the door and went to the back of the van to take my stuff out, but Jenny didn’t see what I was doing and started driving. I screamed and ran after her and eventually she stopped. At that time, a car passed by and I got completely wet. Andrzej looked at me and started laughing, I wonder why…
We were in that place for two hours and, during that time, it didn’t stop raining. The biggest problem was that we couldn’t find any spot where we could protect ourselves from the bloody drops. I was feeling very cold and Andrzej gave the idea of started walking, not only for us to get warmer, but also to try to find a petrol station or something like that.
After walking 2 km, we found Raquel and Peter who were also trying to get a ride. They were not very wet because they had an umbrella, but they were tired of waiting. We asked them if they wanted to come with us, but they preferred to stay there. So, we continued walking until we found a church. The parking area was full of cars and we tried to hitchhike again. Nothing…We were feeling miserable and we decided to enter in the church. When we were almost reaching its door, we saw fancy people eating and drinking. So, I decided to ask a lady, just in case, if that was really a church. She answered affirmatively (a Lutheran church) and also said that they were celebrating its new organ.
After knowing what was going on there, I told to Andrzej that we couldn’t enter in the church because we were completely wet and with practical clothes. Just one detail: we were having this conversation in the middle of the rain! However, he told me that everyone is welcome in a church. Those words started making echo in my head. It is true!
When we put our feet inside the place, everyone started looking at us. Then, a nice lady asked us if we wanted anything to drink or eat. Of course! So, we took off our wet jackets, sat on a bench, drank coffee and ate cake. It was such a good feeling to be warm again! After a while, the priest had a nice, but brief chat with us.
The time was running and Andrzej said that it would be better to try to find out if someone was going to Bergen or, at least, in that direction. I explained to that nice lady that we were volunteers who were going to do fundraising in Bergen. However, to get there we had to hitchhike because we don’t have much money. So, she asked in the church if someone could help us and one of the musicians, Anne, said she could drive us until Fargenes.
While she was driving, Anne started making some phone calls, but I couldn’t understand almost anything because she was speaking in Norwegian. The only word I understood was “Bergen”. After making the last call, she said that we didn’t need to worry because she had got us a ride to Bergen. I couldn’t believe in what I was hearing! Anne explained that her cousin’s boyfriend, a lorry driver, was going to that city at 6 p.m. Until then, we could stay at her sister’s house. I felt really happy! In fact, before entering in that church I thought that I would never reach Bergen. However, I met all these nice people that put a smile in my face.
So, we went to her sister’s house and the first thing I did, when I arrived there, was to take a hot shower and change my clothes. When I finished, Anne and Kristen (her sister) had prepared tea, bread and soup for us. What could I say to them? Thank you!!! Then, Kristen turned on the fireplace and we just talked about our lives and plans for the future.
Then, it was time to keep going and meet their cousin’s boyfriend. We said goodbye to Anne and Kristen, our guardian angels, and we started our trip to Bergen. It was my first time in a lorry and it was quite interesting because I was seeing the road in a different perspective!
The landscape between Fargones and Bergen is breath taken, but, to tell you the truth, that didn’t stop me of falling asleep a couple of times. At 10 p.m. we stopped because a lorry driver can’t be in the road up to 4,5 hours. So, it was time for him to drink a coffee and eat something. He was so nice that he even offered us dinner and coffee. I didn’t know how to thank him and again I just couldn’t believe that it was possible to meet such nice people in only one day!
When we arrived to Bergen it was almost midnight. The driver dropped us in the bus terminal and we walked until the church where we were going to sleep during the week. We felt so good for having arrived to our destiny that there are no words to describe it. We had done it!
In the city, our daily routine consisted of waking up at 8.30 a.m., having breakfast at 9 a.m. and preparing our lunch packs, start fundraising at 10 a.m., having lunch at 1 p.m. and clunsing at 6 p.m. After dinner, we would also try to sell the magazines door to door. Then, we would go back to the school, count our money, take a shower (we could only do it until 11 p.m. because the alarm was activated at that time) and go to sleep.
What can I say about fundraising? I really like to communicate with people, but sometimes it can be very hard to reach them. Some are not interested at all in what we do, others have neither time nor money (“only credit card”) and there are also people that are tired of being disturbed on the street. So, I spent a lot of time just hearing “nei, takk” (no, thanks), but always trying to have a smile in my face and the words “thank you” in my mouth. However, when someone stopped to hear me and help me it was like being in the clouds. Then, I could say what I am doing in Norway and what I would like to do in India. In fact, that gave me strength to hear again “nei, takk”. Besides that, I also tried to find out other things that could put me in a good mood. For example, I like to fundraise next to someone of my team, so I can communicate with him or her, even if it is only by gestures. I also try to challenge myself: “see if you can convince this one to buy the magazine!”
After fundraising, it was time to clunse and to do that we had a good teacher: Sissel, the school’s headmaster. Before doing that for the first time, I thought it would be humiliating to ask for food, but, in fact, it can be done with a lot of dignity. So, during the week, I ate things that I hadn’t had in my mouth for a long time: pita falafel, pizza, seafood pasta and vegetarian sandwich with feta cheese…Nham, nham! The team also asked for bread in the bakeries (it gave us a lot of good things to eat) and, of course, for coffee and tea in different places.
At 8 p.m. it was time to sell the magazines door by door and that was really important for me and also for the rest of the team. In fact, we won a lot of money just by working one hour in the evening. However, to be totally honest, I was not very interested in knocking on people’s doors, but Sissel told us that they were used to that… If I was to do that in Portugal I could start preparing my armour! But, in fact, the Norwegians were, in general, nice to us. They were more willing to listen to us at their homes and that really helped a lot!
I spent six days in Bergen, fundraising in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. The best results that I had were in the beginning of the week, but I always tried to do my best. However, there were some days when I felt more tired and that probably had an influence in my results.
When I arrived to Hornjø, on Sunday, I really needed to rest, after being in a bus for nine hours (we saved some money from the food budget). But, on Monday, I realized how fragile I was after fundraising for a week. During my time in Bergen, I had to control my emotions and sometimes it can be difficult to find the right balance. I needed to take out the bad energies from inside myself, so I cried for the first time in Norway.
TCE Action
This week was almost entirely dedicated to prepare the TCE Action day, that took place on Friday, in Lillehammer.
First of all, Sissel gave us a course about the programme, so we could start thinking about the best way to present it to other people. One thing that was good, was that everyone had a lot of ideas: sing and play, drama performance, do posters, leaflets and cans to collect the money, construct a tent…We were getting somewhere! However, my team is composed by 6 totally different people and I knew that we with face some challenges. To make it easier, we decided to have a leader for this action: Andrzej. But it didn`t go beyond theory.
I have a problem: I like organisation. So, if I don`t see that things are in the right track, I just try to put them straight. But it is hard when I have to do it over and over again, sometimes feeling that some people just don`t give a damn. In fact, by the end of the week, I was nervous and tired. We had many discussions and we were getting less motivated day by day.
However, there was something that made us feel like a real team, even if it was only for a moment. In fact, when we had to rehearse the songs, specially one from Zambia called Tiende Pamodzi, we were more relaxed and close to each other. None of us has a good voice, except Roman. But that just didn`t matter. Everyone was doing an effort and that is what is really important. We can`t be good in everything, but at least we can try. And we were trying!
On Friday morning we did our last rehearsal and we went to Lillehammer. We found a good spot in the main street and we started putting everything in place: tables, cakes, info, balloons, cans…And then we waited. There were not many people on the street and, to tell you the truth, I was already expecting that because it was a working day. Once in a while someone stopped, but it was not enough.
We decided to start singing to call people`s attention. The first time was terrible, but it was also funny because some of us were singing in the middle of the street for the first time! So, we decided that we needed to sing more and also play some instruments. It was a good idea because people we paying more attention to us, but it was only that. They just stopped for a while and then left without giving money.
After a while a police woman came. She wanted to know if we had paid to be there. We told her that, as far as we knew, we didn`t need to give any money to be there because that was what happened with other teams. So, she said she was going to talk with her superior and we gave her the school`s contact. Half an hour later she came back and told us that it would be better for us to move to other place because we were making a lot of noise. We told her that we were only going to be there for a couple of hours and that we would spend a lot of time just moving our stuff. So, finally she said that we could stay there if we didn`t make much noise because people from the stores were complaining.
Time was passing by and money was not getting in our cans. We were loosing motivation and we didn`t know what could we do. At some point, I grabbed a collection can and, together with Andrzej, started talking with people that were passing on the street. After some time, Lenka and Peter did the same and I think that that was our salvation!
However, the problems continued to appear. The owner of one store was furious with the noise that we were making and said that we were ruining his business. And then he said that if we didn`t move he would call the police. So, I told him that we were sorry for what had happened and I also explained to him that we were volunteers trying to fundraise money for an HIV project. In the end we made an agreement: we would stop making noise and he would let us be there for one more hour. However, he made it clear that if we appeared there again we would get in trouble.
Fifteen minutes later it started raining. The cakes were getting wet as well as the posters and the info. It was time to go back home.
When we arrived at the school we counted the money that we had: 870 NOK plus 100 SK. It was not much and it didn`t reflect the work that we had to prepare the action. Of course I felt a little bit frustrated, but I can also say that some of us did our best. Maybe next time things will run better because now we have a practical knowledge of how is it to prepare an action. It was hard work and sometimes I just wished to run away to my room. But I also remember with tenderness the image of us singing together the Zambian song Tiende Pamodzi.
