CLAUDIA`S FIRST MONTH IN ANKARA

For the first month in Ankara I have to say many things. 

I came here with the purpose to change scenery and make myself useful for a good reason, and so far I can say that I succeeded my will. 

Turkey is another world in every feature: people, language, food, tradition and everyday life. I feel like I’m testing my skills and knowledges. Being here is improving my independence and even if I found many barriers I can say that I’m really happy and proud of what I accomplished so far.

One of the most evident difficulties is the language barrier that we have to face everyday. In Ankara, people, rarely speaks english, so for everyday tasks we have to find ways to communicate, with hand gestures, translator or just the few words we know in turkish. 

My experience with the language barrier was eased by the kindness of Turkish people. They always try to help you understand, even if they don’t speak a single word of english. I, twice, had a chance to meet Turkish people who were fluent in english and they immediately offered to help me with what I was doing. 

This, honestly, left me happily surprised, because one of my biggest fear, before coming here, was indeed, language barrier, but now I feel better and more comfortable with the possibility of speaking with local people.

As soon as I arrived in Ankara, I had the amazing opportunity to participate in a youth exchange during my first week.

It was a really great experience, many fun group activities that made everyone communicate and mix with the others. 

We had so many different cultures and it was amazing and really interesting discovering their traditions, food, knowledges. 

Also with the activities we tested our skills in several things, for example, project management, teamwork, creativity, performances. I feel these project really helped me get out of my comfort zone, getting to know new wonderful people and making important friendships that I will carry with me.

I am deeply thankful for this amazing and enjoyable week.

I also had the chance to meet the people from the following training course, but since I didn’t fully participate in the project, we managed to talk twice or three times. Despite that, I can say I enjoyed the little time spent with them, since they were really nice people.

Right after these two amazing projects, I had some free time to recharge and get ready for the usual activities of my main project.

I started with food delivery on Tuesday. 

In the beginning, other volunteers warned me about it, since there are things that I can or cannot do. For example, I shouldn’t give kids food, but only to their parents who are waiting respectfully in line, because they can wisely split the food for every member of the family. So after sealing the food we went to the several locations where refugee families were waiting for us. 

Even if the food delivery volunteers speak very little of english, thanks to hand gestures, or simple words in english or turkish I managed to help where there was the need. 

I helped distribute the food, I danced with the volunteers and the kids and I split the remaining tulumba between the kids who were more than happy. Honestly, food delivery is an activity which left me with two opposite feelings, since I am an extremely empathic person.

While sharing the food you have to bear with hungry people, their behavior is completely understandable, and hard to ignore. Kids kept calling for me and adults too, they want double portions or just sweets. 

Obviously we cannot make many exceptions or it wouldn’t be fair to everyone. I feel bad ignoring their requests but I am aware that that’s all I can do. 

This sad feeling is revived by other beautiful things though. Dancing with kids, giving them sweets and seeing them smile is one of the most wonderful things I ever experienced in my life. I really feel happy and proud thinking about it, I can say that is actually healing to me.

The last time I went, a kid gave me a pink flower as a present, warming my heart sincerely. I will always remember this detail and carry it in my memories.

Regarding the kindergarten experience I can only recall happy and funny feelings. I really love being with kids, helping them learn basic numbers and english.

Obviously the language barrier is thick, but since they are used to watch english cartoons, they understand a lot of what I’m talking about. To me, it’s a little harder to interpret their needs, but after several days I started to understand what they want to say from little words or just gestures. 

Also the teacher, who speaks good english,is very nice and kind and she helped me with tasks, offering me a lot of food for which I’m grateful, because the school's chef is amazing. 

In my opinion, going to the kindergarten is one of the best activities, for the kids, who are learning english so soon, something that I think is really important and worth it since one of the main issues in Turkey is the language barrier, even young people can rarely speak english. 

And to me is one of the best activities, because kids are still learning basic Turkish and I can learn with them while teaching and I think is very useful and beautiful. Kids are also really repetitive, and this help me to understand new words and sentences. 

In conclusion I’m very happy about this first month and I have many expectations for the next one, one of them is to travel a little bit, to see what’s outside Ankara. 

I am very curious and I hope to enjoy the next month too!

Aldrighetti Claudia