reflections on volunteering I think it's time to start thinking seriously about whether to go to Africa to experience the skin of people barricading behind the word "voluntary." It is not ethically correct to take me home "the breath of Africa," the "smiles of the children" photos of derelict and then get a good conscience with some sponsorship. I'm sick of hearing people say that Africans seem to be kids! I'm sick of hearing people say: "I needed this experience." I do volunteer work means to serve one's neighbor and that we must be able to do. If we only give orders, to take pictures and soak in the exotic we can call it voluntary? We use another term, please, and the problem is solved. I returned to Ivory Coast after six years, for the third time. My professional relationship with Africa is contained in construction: plumbing, electricity, carpentry and everything that contributes to putting up a structure. This is my job and put my nose in nursing, education in general or things that are not within my competence. In the meantime "we have" built a lot: the walls, bathrooms, missions and houses, but everything, everything I say, it seems only a "practice" of pupils listless. Construction finished just seem older than thirty years and have need of drastic renovation. Just enter a room, the bathrooms are emblematic, to understand that it's miserable attempts to carry out, without conviction or preparation, something that you do not understand the essence. I suspect that if as some bathrooms have to be an example is really difficult to convey the concept of hygiene. I will always say that the problem is cheap and you need to complete projects with little money. I am not convinced that the real problem is money, but rather the basic motivations, the lack of respect for others and also the technical expertise, if the economic resources to a construction site are not operated by a surveyor who is able and knows the environment and local culture where employees are unlikely to work well. If a site runs a missionary myself, apparently without special skills, while claiming to be ubiquitous because it is convinced that the "niggers" did not want to do anything and are unable to do anything, we hardly can expect great results both on construction plan or human. Furthermore, it seems short-sighted to consider only the cost of establishment and without considering the cost of maintenance and upkeep. Costs that inevitably there will still depend on the quality and the project. Often we go to Africa to help out ... but who created it? Other times we just set the work to make the most difficult part, not within the reach of the poor ignorant little black and almost certainly do not speak a word of French, let alone strive to at least say hello in the local language. E 'share this? And 'human development? Let's go for the scientists among the sites and never a time we were trying to explain what a 90 degree angle, a straight line or an overhead, but then, and is the norm, I could cite dozens of examples, we complain that the walls are all crooked, it rains inside the house, the floors are all crooked and the doors do not close, that Africans have used a life jacket to put four tiles and placed them too badly. Try to put your tiles on a wall wrong! Do not have a cost base in all this money? I'm not doing a sterile Treaty of building small change at this point I'm just talking about money diverted from more important activities. We are always with the belief that there is nothing in Africa and we bring all of Italy, often indiscriminately, things useful and useless, with the disadvantages that it entails. My proposal discounted, trivial, naive and, when we take the pains to verify that Abidjan is everything you need? When we sit down to do the math to find out that it is uneconomical to continue using Chinese products bought in markets that will not break even before you mount them in your hand? But above all I ask, when was our association with Africa? (I speak of volunteering). We continue to complain that in Africa there is a plumber, an electrician capable, that they are masons ... apart from the fact that it is not true, why do not we study the local boys instead of continuing to put the "pieces" and satisfied with facilities with bathrooms that do not work or suck? A bathroom tiles is not without a bathroom. No wonder then if the people, instead of entering a tomb of concrete approved bathroom, prefers to continue to wash into the basin of all time. A bath does not come out where the water is not a bathroom, is money wasted and that this conclusion is complaining. If you need to spend money on a bathroom that is not, then we study a boy, bathing them will be in five years. If an electrical installation does an African in his home without providing a circuit breaker or fuse I have nothing to argue, but if it creates a European then I am convinced that it is unethical because I do not understand just like the skin of an African who is lightning can assert 30/40 € a lifesaver. From 11 years in various capacities attend various African realities, but I never had the joy of seeing a missionary who has taken the trouble to study a technical. But the Africans are really so unreliable? All this talk may seem marginal with many different problems to tackle and resolve, yet it happens all the time to see missionaries and nuns forced to devote time and resources to practical problems such as maintenance of a house ... then we build properly: saving money, by example, by technical and human, and then also dedicate ourselves to more important things. It is certainly not doing things the African (as some would say) we give a good example and aim correctly the money on offer. How many times I've seen foremen improvised due to lack of skills and claim to have spent twice as hard to save results to say the least disappointing! Mine is not controversy, knowing that money is not flowing like water, it hurts to know that a poor creature can not be cured or go to school because the money ended up in the shipping and customs clearance of a container that does not contain any good, or ended up in the coffers of the airlines for on-going and down to volunteers who would experience that changes our lives (to us, not the other). A good time, I'd like to make the sum of money spent on air tickets to all these engineers came from Italy and see how many African children could learn by surveyors and engineers. It is no good answer that the house or infirmary is needed now, because time passes and the problems remain the same. We want to continue to live and to live in an emergency? And the much-heralded human development? Precisely because of this I am not saying that we should not go to Africa, but at least let's do it on tiptoe, with humility. We are already so pale and we recognize at once, then if we do everything to draw attention to and making fools of ourselves ... Somebody comes to the inevitable collateral damage, we try to explain it to those who do not have the money for medical care, or who have created expectations that Feels like a monkey at the zoo photographed shrapnel as if he were an animal circus.
