Want a deeper insight into what an ICS placement looks like? Read the amazing blogs written by our past and present volunteers. Enjoy the journey!
Welcomes and greetings mean a lot in Zimbabwe. In the rural areas particularly, a smile or a nod never suffices, friendliness is shown by treating everyone as your brother or sister, so it is always customary to ask at the very least about one’s day, how the family is, and how work is going. This applies whether you cross paths with a mother carrying water down the road, or pass by a farmer watering his plot.
It is 5.30 am and the lights are on in the formerly derelict building. The dawn is about to break and Sister Edith Suazo is busy preparing breakfast with ingredients donated from the local community for the children of Fundacion Senor Jose, a children’s home in La Paz, Honduras. The children are woken for school at 6.00 am, “Most do this voluntarily, although some need an extra bit of encouragement to wake to up” Sister Edith tells us.
We arrived in Kariyangwe early on Wednesday morning; it was already over 30 degrees. Our partner organisation had arranged for us to meet two local residents, Enia and Jairos, who were HIV positive. Given it was them who were to be asked questions on how they came to catch the condition and then live with it, I was nervous. This would be the first time I had met anyone who was HIV positive and willing to discuss it – I needn’t have worried. The meeting lasted just under an hour and both Enia and Jairos told their stories with dignity, openness and humour.
It doesn’t really feel like it but I’ve been working for nearly four weeks in rural El Salvador on this project now. I have reached the halfway point of my time here and we’ve already done a hell of a lot; I’m really having fun, and I feel like the stuff that we’re doing is actually having an impact here in Bendicion.
Monile mose!!
We have just finished our second week here in Malawi. We have come a long way since a rather groggy group of us stepped off the plane in Lilongwe. We had a busy first week where we were gently eased into Malawian culture through a mixture of market trips, culture and language lessons and a trip to a local village.
Rivers run through me
Mountains bore into my body
And the geography of this country
Begins forming in me
Turning me into lakes, chasms, ravines,
Earth…
- Gioconda Belli, poet
This is a beautiful poem we found written by Gioconda Belli. Belli was an active participant in the Sandinista struggle against the Somoza dictatorship and her work for the movement led her being forced into exile in Mexico. We felt like it was a striking poem to use as an introduction for our time so far in Nicaragua.
"Fixteen."
"No, it's fifteen."
"Fixteen?"
"Sure, why not."
It's definitely a challenge, especially when you don't speak the same language. But it forces you to teach in other, often more funny ways which help you and the students to laugh and break the ice - and hopefully therefore makes it more memorable.
Our school programme is now on the roll and it is full steam ahead from here. After all the meetings and various amendments to our action plan we now have a concrete list of all the topics we will be presenting to our targeted primary and secondary schools in and around Regina. Our topics range from child abuse to waste management to HIV & AIDS basics to gender equality.
After having spent the evening with Ernest and Ethyl playing cards, and speaking at length about the wonder that is the sandwich, I sat them both down to further understand their experience so far on the ICS programme. The two of them had been with ICS for the previous placement also and I was eager to find out more. From our conversation it was clear that certain instances in the placement had made a particular impression on them, exposing the harsher realities set in their communities.
