Hola! I am Begum from Turkey and I have attended to DeAmicitia in 2018 as an European Voluntary Service (EVS) member. I was a camp leader in the Donkey Caravan and Rio Algar projects. I chose Spain because I was interested in Spanish culture and language. Honestly, I have found exactly what I was looking for; the joy, friendship, art and nature.
Managing a leadership in the camp was tough. It requires both compact attention for the affair between each camp member and for the work to be manifested. I also realized the communication within the leaders directly reflects to the camp volunteers and the functioning goes backward. Therefore, sincere and correlative talk between leaders was a golden rule of voluntary camps. However, when the good correlation is obtained; the relationship continues throughout and outside of the camp. I have few ‘very good’ friends that lasted beyond the camping period. We luckily met again in different country and hosted each other in our local countries.
Donkey Caravan, the first camp, was about creating a street circus around the south-eastern part of the Spain. I believe this can be categorized one of most difficult camp theme in the history because there were extremely talented people gathered from all over the world, but on various branches of art. Some were dancing, some were acting, some were playing, some were singing, and some were juggling. As it can be guessed, the connection of those talents in one show was extremely hard mission with insufficient technical sources. However, we executed very satisfied exhibitions and took pleasing feedbacks.
Rio Algar, the second camp, was about cleaning activities carried on the path of Algar River. It consisted of a physical work such as removing the branches on the water, eliminating weeds grown and collecting unwanted algal communities from the passage of water under the sunlight in August. We were rewarding this exhausting occupation with weekend trips. The trips were organized along the seaside of neighbor towns and we have met with volunteers from other camps of DeAmicitia. The residence conditions of Rio Algar were quite satisfying because we had very large villa in the mountains of Altea. We had a van and it was 15 minutes to reach to the city center of Altea. That van is very precious for me because I was driving the camp members on the roadway and the music on the van radio was always on. We had one very funny moment: our house was having a veranda with a beautiful view. Once, we were driving from Altea city center to our mountain house and on the way we came across with a very good-loking couch. We thought it might fit well in our veranda and we doped it to our van; but it did not fit! So, some volunteers on the back were holding the couch while we were driving to the house and it was so funny that we arrived to the house without dropping it.
All in all, despite every little or serious trouble that has been happened throughout the journey, I am feeling strong to stand up and face them all. I had unforgettable memories with unforgettable friends. I am feeling lucky to still continue talking with few of them. I am feeling worthy to have some Zoom chats in this pandemic period. I strongly recommend who wants a little bit of excitement and adventure in their lives. Thank you DeAmicitia!
