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Chiara Pozzi, volunteer worker |
Inside of me I have always wished for the courage to say: «I am not happy here. I am not satisfied. I cannot explain exactly what it is, but I know my life is not how it is working out now». I kept thinking that I should go far away and discover how other people live, experience how they feel, maybe even try to dedicate to the poor a little bit of my time and share my good fortune. One day, by chance, my aunt told me that her friend Sharon was going to Nepal and needed someone to help her with the work of «Help in Action», a non-profit association for which she works. I realised that this was my chance and one week before the departure I decided to go, I organised everything and on the 2nd of August I arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal. Twenty-four days, full of new experiences, emotions and feelings which are difficult for me to explain. Since my return everything seems somewhat absurd; I myself feel absurd: I who rush around all day complaining I have too many things to do and above all of not having the time to do them. Running in the middle of neurotic and stressed people, in a life which I believe owes me everything. But, what should the people in Nepal do? Cry all day? They have no clean water, no light, they live in small dingy rooms, where I have seen five people squashed together on one mattress to sleep; and they are fortunate: they have a mattress! Nobody has a bathroom or refrigerator. They eat rice and legumes; they do not choose the cheapest meat on offer in the supermarket to save: they just do not eat it, like they do not eat fresh fruit and vegetables... They haven’t got any of the things which we have. But for me they have that «something» which personally where I live I have never met: an essential sense of life. In my twenty-one years I have never received so many smiles and friendly looks, which open the heart and make you aware of the joy of life. The people of Nepal don’t cry and complain, they work for whole days in carpet factories, in the fields, in tiny shops to survive. Everyday they pray. Buddhist or Hindu, religions different in belief, they worship side by side, their tollerance demonstrating how it is possible to have respect while being different. The children so dirty, wearing the same clothes for months, without shoes or toys, with sicknesses caused by malnutrition, showed such joy for the sweets I gave them, it was as if I had offered them a lorry full of toys. I accompanied Sharon around the Kathmandu Valley to meet the families helped by Italian sponsors. I hope I gave to each one of them some moments of joy and happiness. They certainly, unknowingly, made me feel satisfied and priviledged. The truth is that this experience enriched above all me. Chiara Pozzi Student of the Bocconi University, Milan, Italy |
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