Beautiful People in Nepal

One of the great thing about my job is that it brings me to places full of extraordinary people. 

In July I got to go to Nepal to work on the child protection response of Goal and its partner, the Umbrella Foundation.

 

Airports and planes are always full of empty moments. Nothing new

Kathmandu in the rain. the signs of the earthquake are obvious everywhere, piles of bricks, bamboos and metal pillars holding cracked buildings. Lots of scars. Many people whose life now has a before and an after moment. Through the rumble and stories, there is the incredible beauty of people's humanity,  the story of their love and care for their family and their community. 

Makeshift camps and plastic tents are spread all over, in luxurious hotel grounds, on the lawn of the palace, on the banks of the river, between houses... and through and through the will to get going, back to normal. 

 

I mainly got to spend time in Nuwakot region, in the hills a couple of hours away from Kathmandu. I was hosted with Umbrella's team there. The team is composed of a dynamic group of youngsters with a fricking enormous vontade to do something and make life after the earthquake as good as possible.
Their job is not easy, they all went through the two shakes, some lost their house, or a family member.
All saw something deep crumble.
Then they stood up. Some of the guys responded immediately, not sleeping or caring for themselves for days, solely focused in helping others.
Now, months after the quake, they are still there. They go to places that are extremely hard to reach, walking for hours and days on mountain slopes, facing the real danger of mountain slides, for the ground moved and the rains are making it even more unstable. They go to remote villages to check on people, the state of the schools, orphans, how people survive... They are the real life souls who, collectively, enable the government's emergency response to reach out everywhere, as quickly as possible and in the best way as possible. Natural disasters today are killing five time less than a hundred years ago, thanks to professional responses, preparedness and the improved possibility we now have to bring assistance and organize support.
These youngsters are employed by Umbrella, to implement the government strategies, paid by a UNICEF fund raised all over the world, and their interventions is similar to the one of hundreds of other volunteers involved in dozen other organizations. Pretty impressive.  
Aside from working in the villages, at household levels, they also set up and support Child Friendly Spaces. CFS are places, tents really, set up in camps or in neighborhoods when normality stops, to offer children activities, possibility to talk, to address protection issues, to get back to a routine...
Child protection organizations have shown all over the world that people, communities and families are really needing CFS or education facilities in places where normality disappeared. They even value it more than health, hygiene and sanitation facilities. School and play-places bring back a sense of normality, a routine that is extremely important. It calms and makes people feel better.
It gives perspectives.
I get to meet the people that are working in creating perpectives when things are bad.
How cool is that? 

 

In a CFS we play, we draw, we talk and learn. Teachers and assistants are caring for the kids every day. Umbrella is assisting them with ideas for activities, and ways to detect when a kid is struggling,  and how to respond to stress or abuse. For that job their team is made of seasoned social workers but also teenagers -some with difficult backgrounds- and... an Irish women! Aideen is a math teacher in Khazakstan who travels by taxi and takes her holidays to train youngsters without families to help kids smiling in camps in Nepal. She is beautiful. Seems that umbrella is successful in gathering inspiring people, working with professionalism and passion. Respect to all the Caroline, Tsewang, RajKumar, and the others. 

Social Workers in Kinshasa

Back to Kinshasa and work with the social workers of Anuarite and War Child.
I had an incredible time seing the social team discussing about their work, addressing their concerns and finding ways to address their difficulties.

I also had a bit of time to sketch and info-doodled my presentation of the study about girls living in the street, their activities and their relations with the social workers/ or, how to address socio-economic integration of the girls.
I am often surprized that the same recipes to get the girls off the street/ prostitution... are still in use when people talk about "re-integration". The same model that is bringing the same rates of success since they have been monitored end of the 19th century. And the same complains of the social workers can be heard today or read last century.

Girls are in the street for some reasons, and the street can give them a balance, support and understanding. As social worker, if we want to help them change, we have to make them dream of change, and help them in finding another balance, better than the one they have in the streets. There are no quick fixes nor recipes that fit all. It takes time, and grounding, and -for the social worker- to accept to let it go, work in teams, work where the girls are, understand the risks they take and the unknown they face getting out of where they are. They have done it once, leaving or being kicked out their families.

What is the better deal for them? What do they dream to reach?
Now we start to discuss. There are no problems to fix, only a bright future to build and reach, step by step.  

 

And Airport people, tired, waiting for the plane.

Welcome to Zimbabwe

 

Louise and I lived for 3 years in Benin, 3 in Togo, 5 in Mozambique, had 4 kids between borders and had lots of things happening to us, by us and for us. I always could manage finding a job that would work for me in places where we wanted to be, or sort of. My work books are filled with notes from meetings on the right page and doodles, sketches and cartoon characters on the left one. I feel i want to start paying more attention to my left pages.

From the first of January, we are now on our own. I am working as a consultant in child protection and other services, opened a sociedade unipessoal limitada in Mozambique and Louise an enterprise in Zimbabwe, she will focus on conservation and bamboo. 

And we moved to zim with the firm intention to stay there, develop roots and see our kids growing with family, and friends that are not moving to the Congo or Angola every second year. Big jump. Million of stress material, in the aspects of administrative procedures, schooling, house hunting, travelling etc. 

To resume a hectic semester, lou had a beautiful baby, Elena, we have a astonishing house on the top of the world, kids love their school, family has christened the bar many times, and we still smile and wave when people ask us the job question. Lots of projects, and small/big steps to turn them into reality. 

As for my left page dreams, this is the beginning of my blog, gathering sketches made along the way. It starts as it should, with wise words from our first night in Harare. Ambiance!