Giving feels so much better than receiving!

Hello!

I am Paris Nikolova and I have been blogging my voluntary experience in India for the past 7 months! Now it is time for Africa! Welcome!

You barely can imagine how many things I would like and I am going to share with you for the next few months! Your head is going to be blown, just like mine, by all the information and all the situations I’ve been through on the “Black continent”. This experience felt more like an explosion, because in spite of the fact that I am 22 years old and I have been doing voluntary work ever since I was 13, let me count 9 years, I was not even close to prepared for all the things that happened. But I’ll keep it simple. I will start with a note I wrote on my phone 4 days before I left Africa, while being in a hospital in Kenya with one of the kids I was working with. Here it is: “Africa is the worst experience I have ever had in my life! For the whole 8 years dealing with people in the voluntary field I’ve never seen so much problems that people hide and are afraid to confess they have, so much corruption, self-interest and ignorance of the needs of the society. I have never confronted such kind of people who are just blaming everyone else for the problems, transferring the responsibility with ease and never asking themselves if they can do better, or whether their work is beneficial. I have never seen children(adults) almost my age, that cannot properly write simple words, that cannot read, that even don’t know how to spell their own names. Children who are in orphanages, but they are still been neglected. This is Kenya! People are not working to resolve all the problems and all the issues, but instead they are just ignoring them. As I told you, I couldn’t imagine it was going to be so hard for a young volunteer to help, because these people don’t want help, they want money, because they believe that money resolve problems, but I can tell – money cannot help you, the only thing that could help you is you. Kenya – this is the worst experience in my life, but paradoxically, also the best one. Because for this 1 month I’ve learned and I have experienced so much that I maybe never will in Europe within an year or even more. So I am happy, I am happy and thankful. My last days go like this: I wake up at 6:30 every day and I am going to the orphanage to pick up one of the children and take him to physiotherapy in the hospital, and then return him back. After that I have morning lessons at the second orphanage. After I finish teaching, without any time for break, I go straight to the social workers to discuss with them the possible ways we can help improve the work at the first orphanage. Then, I have lessons with the kids at the other orphanage and after that I go meet the headmistress, so we can talk about all the problems she is promising to resolve for the past 3 weeks, but…

There is no but for me. I am left only with the hope. And I am happy because now, being so close to my departure on the way back to Europe, back home, I know I did the best I could. And hope only is the only thing left in me, hope that there is going to be a change and the kids will be better in a while. It was difficult, but if I had to, I would do it 100 more times, until I see the difference. I want to ask you, dear readers, dear friends, no matter how difficult it is, or whatever you are doing, never give up, never lose your hope. And I want to tell you the problem is not in Kenya, in Bulgaria, or in Italy, or India or whatever part in the World. The problem is in us. I will tell you to stop blaming the others, to stop complaining and start working, start moving. If you want a progress, do the best you can to have it. No matter what people say, no matter if they judge you. Because people lie, because people are neglected. Don’t be angry with them, but use your energy and do the best – for you, for your love ones, for the society. They say: think globally, act locally. Stop waiting for help, but be helpful! Because the change starts from the inside. Because I can go in Kenya again, maybe 1000 more volunteers will do the same. But if the Kenyans don’t realize they have problems, problems with their own children, with their own generation, nothing will really change. The answer is hard work and transparency – for the Kenyan children, for the children of the mother Earth!” What led me to this consequences and what happened my last days, well, read every Monday on my blog! Because this is Kenya- this is FEED YOUR HUMANITY- AFRICA edition!

Paris