With the year coming to an end, I would like to
describe my personal highlights, challenges, feelings and express
what I have learned.
First of all, my experience at Dance for All has come
to new heights especially in my last three months. As I was unable to
spend my time there dancing and teaching dance (due to a knee
injury), my tasks changed slightly. Since the CEO and the fundraiser
were happy with the fundraising and marketing work I was doing, I was
given the offer to work as a photographer and blogger of Dance for
All. From there on, I went to all different classes, took pictures of
the kids and interviewed some of them. Then I uploaded the
outcome/final articles on the DFA website.
I was very grateful for being given new challenges
over my whole time at Dance for All. I feel like I grew with my
challenges and were able to take on even greater tasks with the
months going by. I felt welcome and trusted during the whole year
which really helped me to rise to my potential. There had definitely
been an amazing exchange – I, as a volunteer, supported DFA, but
they supported me as well to a great extent.
Regarding my personal life in Cape Town, I felt
completely at home after about 5 months. In the beginning, everything
seemed to be a dream and just a big adventure. After a while, I began
to settle and feel that I adapted to a certain routine. It has never
been too much of a routine though – through many changes at work
and at home, there has never been a single moment of boredness.
I really liked my home in 6 Milner Road, but there
have been so many changes that at the end of the year, only two of
our initial housemates still stayed there. That made it quite
difficult to build a community in the house and it was sad to see so
many of my housemates leave.
I also found it hard to establish a “circle” of
friends. I got to know so many people during the year and established
some real friendships, but I didn't really have a concrete group of
friends to be around with.
I learned that it's important to have friends indeed,
and I had a lot of fun with the people I got to know, but especially
in the last months I learnt to really appreciate “me-time”. I
needed time to reflect, to think outside the box, without influences,
and come to some conclusions myself. It was the time of decisions –
what am I going to study, where am I going to move. I also started
the thinking process of saying goodbye to South Africa quite early,
as I knew it would be very hard to go and it will come as a shock if
I don't prepare myself a little. Thinking that these are my last
months seemed unreal and I almost gave up to realize it.
In my last three months, I often felt the urge to
reflect on things that I saw or experienced. South Africa and the
people I met taught me a lot of consciousness regarding stereotypes,
racism, feminism, the environment, healthy eating, the meaning of
life and the importance of opening your own horizons. In my thinking,
I also naturally came across South Africa's national problems. It is,
of course, a wide and extremely complex topic, and it was hard not to
get lost in the complexity. I also, subconsciously, tried to think of
solutions which was even harder than understanding the problems.
Then, 365 days came to an end and it was time to say
goodbye to everyone and everything. I was quite sad but tried not to
let the sadness take over in order to be able to enjoy my last days.
I was extra aware of my surroundings, tried to absorb everything
around me and to enjoy all the little things that I am going to miss.
Being back home now, I feel like I have never been
gone. I believe this is a way of protecting myself to not become sad.
It doesn't feel like I was in South Africa for a year because almost
everything here stayed the same (except for me).
I think it takes a few weeks now to realize everything and to settle again. I hope to always keep my memories alive and especially hope that one thing won't change - the gratefulness of being extremely privileged in Germany.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen