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Hello My Dear Flickr Friends.

This post is about one project that I did with my Korean friend (Sim).

“Saturday Club” was a project with one very poor community of Mpika North of Zambia. They live very far way, without electricity and water potable. The “Tazara Comunnity” was the place that we used to worked with Water and Sanitation. During the weekend we created a “Saturday Club” for spend some time with the children, who doesn’t have many things to do.

There they use to play games with stones, (kabulila), play with tires they love this and most of the boys play soccer with a ball made by plastic bag. During the “Saturday Club” we had clubs or sometimes class about Geographic, Art and Sport. Just things for have some entertainment for the children, the subject Geographic they choose, because they love to learn something about the world outside of Africa. Specially because Sim is From Korea (Asia) and me from Brazil (South America) two different place, peoples from where they didn’t know, just old man knows Brazil because of Soccer “ Ronaldo, Pele.etc”…hehehehe

For the clubs we didn’t have any support, because the clubs was just in the weekend afternoon, (our free time) our NGO worked just until Saturday but morning and just for make week meeting.

Anyway we loved those children so we decided to do something with then, not just working with water and sanitation. Of course they need this, but we also had some extra energy (volunteer heart when see Africa children..hehehehe) and wanted give some fun and entertainment to then.

The problem was support. But we got permission to use some place on the village that we could made the meetings and the material we bought at Usa, by a cheap price.
The ”problem” later I will write why (“), was the language, most of the children knows very few English, because they live very far way, many of them can’t go to school, because is far, some they are strong and they go by walk, but they suffer with the problem in the school has no food and they can’t bring food from home, most of them have just one meal in the night. There children use to eat, sugarcane, guava and caterpillar. So the most smart and strong, they bring these things and go to school, so they know English a little bit better.

So this children who knows English better, they helped us to translate what we say and they couldn’t understand, because of there they speak ” Bemba” local language.

As I said “problem” with this (“), because of me and my friend from South Korea. Before we went to Africa, we did a promise to each other, let’s never complain about any situation, or think that we have a problem or life is hard. Yes life at there was very hard for us, but we got used, we learned there, that the human being can get used with everything. So we never believe in a problem, if we had a problem we could have a solution or try to do something.

And we tried to do something for that very far community, where has some children who never saw a white man or never saw a digital camera, mp3 and this kinds of electronics things that we made a extension of our body or some peoples doesn’t live without.

In the beginning we thought. “ OH Daam We can’t do anything nice for then”. But that time we didn’t know that much about how powerful the simple things can be. Uaaaaauuuu I swear that time we have one old geographic book, with a world map, 500 white paper ,5 box of colors crayon and 5 box of pencil and pen and one soccer ball. This was for 40 children, but this
was more then enough that time. First time that we just draw, We just gave the paper to then and crayon, and they got crazy, really happy, and they started to draw and draw, and put so many colors in the draw. We couldn’t give any subject to then or even talked about something with then..hehehehe..So we decide the club is “Just do it”…hehehehe..After 1.30 hour they started to show up what they did and show to everyone there and talking a lot in the local language, some of they run to then house to show the draw to the parents and comeback.

Was very funny situation our first Club…hehehehe..And the good point they did this everything in the floor, me and SIM we couldn’t stay more then 30 minutes drawing in the floor, this was so difficult and painful…hehehehe

Anyway we loved this experience with the children, the community was so far (23 miles by bike) under to the Africa sun..heheheehe. But when we just saw then smile, ohhhh man this was too much nice, we just forget about everything, and “Just do it for then”.

This was a part of my amazing trip at Africa…..I hope you guys like

If you think you have a problem, or you are a problem, just look around you and try to think again….

“Nobody Can't do everything, but Everyone can do something”

The evening happened to be a great one and the roof terrace gave me the shot I had been looking for all night. This was where our exploration would end on this first day, on a roof, around a beer, happy and tired. We had arrived at a deserted airport, in the middle of the night, had made our way through the outskirts of a city of 17 million, had mastered local public transportation, found the best hostel in town, slept in a Starbucks despite hang found the best hostel in town, explored the city, tasted its delicacies and followed destiny all the way up onto this place, to have this view and a pint of lager. It was quite a a fulfilling experience I must say.

Aside from that, we had been able to overcome all of what we had expected and be humbled in our naive a-priori of what we would find. This place was as little "cliche" as any other and trumped in cheesiness by any European capital's tourist attractions. This place was real. And yes, there were a lot of tourists, and yes there were a lot of cheap cheesy tourist shops, and yes you could buy counterfeit fashion and watches on every street corner. But between all this lay a couple million people's every-day life, the economical nodal point of two continents and last but not least, one of the oldest centers of civilization and religion known to the western world. And that is what made Istanbul so vibrant, so fascinating and so unlike what anyone of us could have imagined. There was no more religious frenzy than around the vatican, there were no more burkas than in the center of Geneva and when the Muezzin sung, it filled the streets with a magical atmosphere that was in no way the menacing demonstration of power certain political figures at home would've liked us to be afraid of. It became more and more apparent that we had been mislead by what we had been taught by the media, politics and as of recently, our very Constitution. This was a city of islamic majority and it was noticeable all across, it had however no more mosques than an average Italian town has churches and chapels and people went about their lives just as we usually do. Why do I mention all this? Because my visit of Istanbul was my first visit to asia and at the same time, my first visit to a place of mainly islamic belief. Even though I do not have and never had a particularly polarized opinion on the issue and like to think of myself of an open-minded individual, I did notice that all my growing up in central Europe had left its mark. I arrived in Istanbul with an apprehension of what I would come across and even though I'm not necessarily proud of it, I did feel quite surprised at the deepest of me, regarding the entirely different reality I had found. The fact is that I could live in Istanbul every day with having to learn nothing more than the language. The cultural differences, although existent, are minute to the point of being mere nuances when you come to think about it. I guess one only really can see up to the horizon. Whether we want it or not, our image of what lies beyond will always be colored by those who report it. It is therefore essential not to leave it at hearing the stories. If the enlightenment won't come upon one's head, one has to bring oneself closer to the light.

This is what we had inadvertently done and while contemplating the sheer beauty of the golden horn's entry that night, I was seeing that much more.