Experiences: El Shadai

Joëlle Solinger volunteered at El-shadai in 2006/2007

When I came in September I was quite insecure to start working with the women. I was just graduated as a social worker in Holland, but had not much experience with groups. I did work with refugees, so there was no fear towards the African women. Only that I thought: “How can a 21 year old teach all those women, mothers, with life experience?” I was busier with what they would think of me, than what I had to offer.

Stephen and Hanna [a fellow volunteer] helped me to overcome those thoughts and supported me that I had much to offer. Stephen went with me to some of the first meetings, which was encouraging, and it was also good that he gave me space after that, to go by myself and just do it.

Eventually it went very well, and I am happy with all the time I spend with these women. I did Wairaka and Katende group, fine groups with great women. Still it was quite hard that besides the supervising of the groups, Hanna and I also had to plan the topics and make a timeframe. There was no such thing at all to work with. So besides going to the group meetings and working with the women, we were also very busy developing the topics and
setting a timeframe.

A thing that bothered me personally was the language barrier. I could not understand all the words that were spoken, all the discussions that were going on between them and the jokes they laughed about. That made me feel still an outsider sometimes, even though I had one of the kids as an interpreter with me. But this is something I think is personal, nothing that
we can change in the future, but good to take as a challenge you can face as a volunteer.

The things that can be changed also concern working with Stephen, the director of R.O.I. He has much files, documents and papers, which could help us to prepare the topics for the groups and do other work. He did a lot of writing and putting up visions. But most of the time the papers were ‘somewhere’ or we found them later in a folder, after we were finished
already. That could be frustrating. Also the communication of Stephen is not always clear. He can be gone for days without knowing that he was going and where, and especially in the beginning we were ‘fighting’ for a moment with Stephen to ask everything we needed to know and to share our idea’s and experiences. We tried to help Stephen to get used to a schedule, but it didn’t work out so far. For example: we planned for a week reflection
meeting every week on Friday, but sometimes he just planned other things. We are happy with the meetings we had, but structure and frequency are still being missed.

In the end, I had the greatest experience! I don’t want to change anything about it, because also challenges makes people grow. Like the challenge of me being too young to teach: I just had to go and do it, and it made me grow with more self-esteem. Also the communication with Stephen, and the African time (how we call it) made me be more relaxed and creative as a person. The culture and goals they set here are much different from our westernised way
of living and working. But there is nothing wrong about it! That is what I know now, what I learned here.

I had a fantastic time and find it hard to leave. But we have to. And other people will take over. I hope this report will make something clear about our experiences and challenges, so that others can prepare better and take Rejoice a step further when they come to work here.

Joelle