Spectateur du Monde

When I decided to join this program I thought that spending six months in Norway, to prepare myself to go to India, was too much. I just wanted to go to that mystic country as soon as possible…Finally I am going there and it seems that time flied here in Scandinavia.
My team started in August (Mozambique/India team) when the weather is nice and the landscape is in tones of green. We were six people in the beginning: Roman, Petr and Lenka came from Czech Republic, Andrzej from Poland, Petya from Hungary and I from Portugal.
Basically, we were all completely different from one another and none was willing to “sacrifice” his or her own personality for the sake of the team. That is one of the reasons why we never had a team spirit, for example. We were only a group of people trying to figure out a way to go through the program. However, it took me some months to realise this…
During our preparation period we attended many courses that had the purpose of giving more information about the country that we are going to and also to transmit knowledge about other subjects that can be useful in our projects such as HIV/Aids, poverty or street children in Brazil. Besides that, I also hold some courses, for example about HIV/Aids in India, the positive and negatives aspects of becoming a vegetarian, women empowerment and leadership and capacity building.
Regarding the self-studies, my priority was to know more about India, women empowerment, education of children and to learn Hindi. However, we only had a Hindi teacher in the first weeks and soon we were left with a book and some tapes to listen. I still can´t speak fluently in Hindi (  ), but I know some things and in these last few weeks I am trying to develop my skills in this area. Even if I still don´t know much, the truth is that I really want to be able to communicate with the people that I am going to work with in India because it is the way that I can reach them and maybe start gaining their confidence.
Besides the studies and courses, each of us had a responsibility area and mine was the studies. So, I had to keep on track the points that each of us had, update de DmM and agree with the teacher about future courses to be held by us. Sometimes it was a headache to understand the so called Modern Method, but in the end I think I got it somehow. However, I had always my Excel file, so that I would have a guarantee that all the data was saved.
So, during the first three months our team had more time to be focus in the studies and courses, but after the midway meeting we suddenly realised that we had still a lot of money to fundraise. So, I did a plan that included, besides the fundraising, working in clothes collection, hotel, promotion and doing sitefinding.
I am not a very strong girl (well, my muscles are not very developed yet), so clothes collection was really hard work for me. In the end of the day I was just sick of clothes and bags…
In fact, sometimes I thought it was too much for me and that I was not going to be able to finish this program. This feeling grew when I was doing, more or less at the same time, clothes collection, working in the hotel, preparing the info meeting in Portugal and trying to study a bit!
Looking at the past, I can say that the biggest problem in our team was the money because we had decided to have half common and half individual goal. It never worked out due to the fact that not everybody was doing an effort in the fundraising. Of course it is hard to be on the street selling a magazine. However, it becomes even harder when we are fundraising while others are doing nothing and, in the end, the money was meant to be divided amongst all!
The environment during the time we were outside the school was not very good. Well, to be honest it already started in the school when we had to find out a place where to sleep (and nobody wanted to do that!) or when we had to divide the team to hitchhike. In other words, it was a crucial moment when we would know with who we were going to spend the next twelve or more hours…
Hitchhiking, clunsing and fundraising were big challenges for me who had never done any of it. It seems it was yesterday that I was with Andrzej trying to get a ride to Bergen being wet until my bones...That I was selling a magazine in the streets of Orebro…Or that I was taking a shower in a kitchen of an Adventist church in Trondheim…
I had many experiences here in Norway that go beyond the ones that were included in the program. Of course I will not forget the Survival Trip or the TCE Action. The first one because I learned that there is some limits in the things that we can do and, sometimes, we have to give up. The second because it was the only time that I felt, even if it was just for a moment, that my colleagues and I were a team.
All these experiences were difficult in a way, but at the same time they made me feel more prepared not only for the obstacles that I may find while I am in India, but most important of all, it made me stronger to face life and its challenges.
However, there are also those small experiences that have a special meaning to me, like touching the snow for the first time, walking in the frozen lake, driving in a foreign country…And, of course, there is also the time spent with my friends.
We meet so many people in this program, but there are always those ones that touch us in a special way and with who we share our laughs and frustrations. I know that without their support it would have been very hard to continue. It is true that we came alone to this program, but soon we need someone that will listen to us and understand us because I think it is only like that we can keep going…
Special moments that only who is part of this program is able to understand…We don´t have so many material things here, but we learn to live without them. In fact, we are separated from the everyday life and that is why sometimes I had the feeling that I was from a different planet when I went to Lillehammer or that I had just “fallen” in the middle of a movie. That is also why we start giving importance to small things like, for me, to be able to drink a café latte or enter in a shop just to buy a postcard and, for a moment, feel that I have a normal life. It is not that the so called “normal life” is appealing to me, but sometimes the feeling is good.
Now I know that I don´t need much to be happy because here in Norway I had moments of pure joy. However, as Petya said, the feelings here are like roller coasters. So, I also felt miserable many times, but I was able to look at the end of the tunnel, with the help of my friends, and see a light…India!