{"id":19372,"date":"2024-05-14T14:48:01","date_gmt":"2024-05-14T13:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ascs.it\/?p=19372"},"modified":"2024-05-14T14:58:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-14T13:58:17","slug":"ten-years-of-volunteering-with-ascs-in-maratane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ascs.it\/en\/ten-years-of-volunteering-with-ascs-in-maratane\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten years of volunteering with ASCS in Maratane"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Ten years of volunteering with ASCS in Maratane<\/strong><\/h3><\/h2><\/div>
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I am Ennio Bindandi of Ravenna. My collaboration with ASCS began in 2010 and continued until 2019.<\/b><\/p>\n

Toward the end of July 2010, after several phone calls made in the previous months, we met Father Beniamino and Alessandra Santopadre in Loreto. We meet at a pizzeria given the time for a “working lunch,” we had to finalize whether or not to leave for Mozambique, actually they had to figure out if we were fit to face this experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

From our side, we had little to offer was very little compared to the project that was going to be proposed, three months in Ivory Coast with religious women who were primarily caring for children and youth, to give them education, care and adequate nutrition. Three years in Brazil at a Fazenda where two ladies take in orphaned children by taking them off the street.<\/p>\n

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After about an hour, Father Benjamin had explained the project as a whole to us, covering agriculture, teaching and feeding undernourished children, and hosting refugees from other countries in Africa<\/b>. He asked us if we were available to leave with the feeding project, we replied that we were ready to leave even immediately. Father Beniamino did not let him say it twice, he picked up his cell phone called Mirko the operator he had been sending to Nampula for about fifteen days to make the necessary and due inspections and verify the feasibility of the project, looking for local operators to form a team and create the first contacts with the staff of the various local institutions, Hospital, Police , local authorities etc., of course in Nampula there were two fathers who would welcome us in the mission of the Scalabrinians located on the outskirts of the Mozambican town.<\/p>\n

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We determined to leave in mid-September, asking to be able to cross paths with Mirko for at least ten days. Our stay was three months, the amount of time needed for two workers in Lisbon who were taking a course in Portuguese, Mozambique’s official language.<\/p>\n

This was our first approach with the Maratane-based nutrition project.<\/p>\n

Maratane is a former leper colony, currently a refugee camp replacing the previous one located near Maputo current capital of Mozambique, too close to the border with South Africa, considered by many immigrants to be the point of arrival.<\/span><\/p>\n

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To reach Maratane, 26 km away from Nampula, we had to travel about 20 km on the road leading to Mecoburi, and then veer to the right and enter the “mato” obviously on impassable roads and trails if you are not properly equipped with an off-road vehicle, travel time about 45 minutes and if it was raining even more than 1 hour. In 2019 after the road had been paved it was traveled in just under half an hour.<\/p>\n

Thus began the collaboration with ASCS.<\/b> From Sept. 15 to Dec. 15, we made our contribution by mainly trying to take care of the relationships with the locals, “training” the operators by trying to understand what real needs were behind the requests made to us. I will not hide the fact that for the first month there was a certain mutual distrust, this of course happens when two cultures meet for the first time without any knowledge of each other except hearsay.<\/b><\/p>\n

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They spoke in Swahili, Makuwa and Portuguese. We Italian and Romagnolo dialect<\/b> (which, moreover, is very effective because of the accompanying gestures and facial expressions), so light years away, but with the help of the Fathers and our perseverance we managed in a short time to overcome these barriers that initially seemed insurmountable. Instead, it was precisely these communication difficulties that were the cornerstone of the relationship that subsequently developed with the members of the working group. The knowledge that what we were doing was aimed at others made the need to communicate understandably a priority. We tried to get into their way of thinking as much as possible, and so did they. In this way, without realizing it, a relationship of mutual trust, in many ways empathetic, was born with many of them.<\/b> We accompanied mothers and children to the hospital in Marere for medical examinations and therapies targeted to the need of the young patients, hospitalizations in the hospital in Nampula, and collaboration with Mozambican paramedical staff for vaccinations to be given in the various villages.<\/p>\n

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In these interventions we were sometimes accompanied by some of them, especially since many of them did not speak Portuguese and so it was a serious problem to understand each other. We had become so passionate about this work that the three months passed without realizing it. And it was this passion, understood as active participation in the project and the issues we were facing on a daily basis, that prompted us to offer to return in January to avoid the closure of Marathans<\/b> for a couple of months due to a bureaucratic delay that was slowing down the dispatch of operators.<\/p>\n

Thus began the two- to three-month “pilgrimage” that annually has seen us present, always in the early months of the year from mid-January to April.<\/b><\/p>\n

So for ten years I got to see the project grow, meet many volunteers and different operators: <\/b>all people albeit young, attentive to people’s needs and professionally trained.<\/p>\n

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I wish ASCS to continue its work in every part of the world where it needs the presence of professionalism and self-sacrifice toward those most in need, and it seems to me that the slogan “More Bridges Less Walls” is a good incentive to open people’s hearts.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Scopri la Campagna Scintille di Sogni e accendi una luce di futuro, accoglienza e speranza per tutte le persone in movimento.<\/h2><\/div>
scopri di pi\u00f9<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n
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