Changing

So this week was a week full of changes and contrasts. From days of hard work and tiredness to days of leisure, laughter and joy. This week I started with the volleyball classes. We were just 9 people, but it worked out really well. It's somehow funny because I've actually almost never played volleyball in my life, but thanks to my dear friend Ana and her help and dedication the days prior to flying to Mada, students actually thought that I was some kind of professional volleyball player. It's great to help other but also to be helped so thanks Ana for that!

Regarding my English classes, this week we covered Martin Luther King and I am proud to say that students really liked it. I think they liked to be reminded that we are all the same no matter our sex, religion, sexual preferences or colour of our skin, specially because here in Madagascar reality is quite different. White people are millionaires, who can do anything they want here and now, while the rest of the Malgasies struggle  to make ends meet in the middle of an economic and political crisis. I've also started to bond with some of the students. Individuals who share my passion for languages and knowledge, people who dream of a better future and are willing to work hard and learn more in order to achieve it. I hope I can tell you more about them soon.

A new change this week is that we started preparing the scholarship programme at the ESSVA. Zukunft Madagascar, the German association who has given me the opportunity to come here, and who also provides scholarships to the students at the ESSVA who can no longer pay their studies, is willing to expand its scholarship programme and will now also collaborate with the schools here in Antsirabe to find students who would be willing to study at the ESSVA but are not able because their families can't afford it.





This collaboration is what Jutta and me have been working on this week. We have visited the schools and had meetings with the principals of each of them and hopefully we will see the results of this in October 2013. I am quite postive about it and I am sure we're going to make it happen.

Last but not least, Emilien, Elissa and Julie were here this weekend and it was great seeing them again. We went to a karaoke, played some billiards, went to a mall just of zebus and yesterday on a fait la fête! It was so cool seeing that nothing had changed and that we still laughed  to the same stupid things.

And then came the time to say goodbye.

It is not easy saying goodbye when you don’t know if you’ll ever see that person again. It is sad, of course, but most of all it feels so unfair... It is like just been allowed to watch half of your favorite movie or reading just the final chapter of a great book. You know there is still so much more left, so much more that you could have lived together, and so many things that you feel the need to say, and couldn't because you were waiting for the right moment or the right words...

But as someone wiser than me once said, “you are to have and not to hold”. Like a father when a son leaves home, we have to learn to let go... and in the end, with regard to those who leave, the only thing that we can do is... well, just to wish them well I guess, to hope to see them again someday, but most of all, to learn to be thankful for the moments shared and to look forward to meeting new people, who might or might not be as special as the ones you leave behind, but from whom there is always something to learn and to whom we can always give our best smile.

Antoine, Nina, Julie, Elissa et Emilien, merci beaucoup et bonne continuation!