PS! 15 years ago phones did not take pictures and cameras was not small enough to have in your pocket. I didn’t take any pictures before departure, but more pictures will come in later posts. This is from Zambia, but with people I met in Norway before departure.
15 years ago I studied to become a physical education teacher and lived in a student home. During the Christmas holidays in 2005 a girl in sthe student home got a visit from her boyfriend. He told me he worked in Namibia as a volunteer and said it was amazing.
I didn’t think more about this untill I saw an advertisement when looking for some handball results on internet. It looked interesting and I tought there is no harm in applying. I don’t think I told anyone about it and I didn’t think more about it untill they asked me to come for a weekend with information and interviews.
After gettting more information I became exited and hoped I had impressed them enough to select me. We were 12 appliers and everyone but one was selected. Luckily it wasn’t me who had to stay at home. I had just finished my teacher degree and had no job or idea of where I wanted to live. I had loved living three years in Elverum, but now I had to do something else.
Before leaving I got training from Fredskorpset (peace corp, official excange program) by very profesional people. I was “employed” by The Norwegian Olympic Comitee and Sport Federation (NIF) who paid for tickets, insurance (very important (read more about this in later posts) and expensive when staying for more than 3 months) and arranged housing through their partner organisation in Africa, Sports Coaches Outreach (SCORE) in addition to giving me 1000 kroner (100 dollars) each month. There was also a co-operation with the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences giving us the opportunity to get this year counting as a year of study. We had to finish an exam before departing and write to reports in addition to one week of schooling at a university in Cape Town.
We, the volunteers, decided to have a competion in having the lightest luggage. I think I ended at 18 kilograms plus handluggage, 5 kilograms behind the winner. I didn’t by more than a few shirts through the year, so it was definitly enough. We didn’t know what country we were going to live in and had to be ready for everything from a township in a big city to a remote desert location in Namibia or a remote village up in the South African mountains.
I brought a laptop with an extra harddrive with movies and series, games and for storage of pictures. I had a thick sleeping bag in case of cold winternights, an extra phone (just in case) and clothes. We left Gardermoen as a group, changed plane in London and headed to Cape Town for a two week camp before beeing placed in a community.
You can read about the reception and the first weeks in Africa in Volunteering part 2
