O testemunho final da Afrodite (SPEA)

Hello everyone 

 

And so here it goes I am already at the end. The ESC program is over and this shall be my last testimonial. It is today, 16th of September 2022, my esc ended on August 31st and started on November the 1st 2021. I am now writing this while sitting on a stone bench in the middle of Gulbenkian gardens surrounded by dense vegetation and listening to the water streams running through the bamboo sticks. One of the most beautiful gardens of Lisbon I believe. Lisbon gardens are also a reason why I love this city so much. Well now a loud plane just passed and disturbed my line of thought. 

What has happened in those 9 months? What have I experienced? What have I learned? How did I feel? In what ways have I changed? 

What I see in myself different as of right now, is a person that is relaxed, chill and calm, which comes in contrast with how much stress and frustration this esc program started with and continued for the biggest part. I see a person that now lets things go easier, and is more comfortable with uncertainty and unpredictability and perhaps what I am truly more comfortable with is actually myself. 

Being this very chaotic person that constantly gets myself into trouble and accidents I now feel so fine even though I have 4 finger joint capsules broken, a broken tailbone, a metal leg bone and a slightly out of place neck. It’s all good. I am so calm about it all. 

Here is the time to reassure any possible reader that the esc program had nothing to do with all these, or maybe it does partially as I just had a flashback of how I rolled down a cliff in Berlengas islands with a 10 kg massive telescope while trying to count the eggs of a not visible cliff nest of a very discreet cliff bird called in Latin “Aristotelis'' and I believe in English it shall be Black cormorant and or in Portuguese “Corvo Marinho das Berlengas”. Yeap, that’s right, I was working with birds. My esc was all about birds. Birds birds everywhere birds. At some point all I could see or care about in this period was birds, hence that cliff wouldn’t stand a chance to be seen as I was only seeing the bird! 

And right now a “Melro preto” just landed on a branch opposite me, watching me and I am watching him. It is a “him”, he is completely black with a very bright yellow beak, which is different to a female one being more fading brown and with a much more discreet beak. One of the things I take with me from this program is a vast collection of knowledge and facts about birdies.

I must say I love them even more now than I did at the beginning of this program. Or perhaps this program awakened in me that passion I had about these feathered creatures ever since I was a kid. Then the years passed by and I got myself more and more distant from appreciating these creatures and the natural world, Ι guess I became a boring adult that does not notice or gets excited about things like that. And then I remembered I never wanted to grow up and to become boring and not able to see a bird and get super happy about it! And I feel that now I am much closer to appreciating natural wonders just like kids do. So I am very happy for this little change, for this program revealing a side of myself that I had forgotten existed. 

A proud “common mallard” or in simple words a duck, walks down the grassy downhill, towards the bushes in front of me. I can see him walking vigorously with his famous duck walk. He is in a hurry. Duck walk has been one of my suggested training exercises during my warmups that I give for my sports “frisbee” team of Lisbon. When I say “duck walk” everybody starts crying almost, because apparently it is a very challenging type of walk to do. Have you ever tried walking like a duck? Not easy. Hence it works greatly for warmups and strengthening. See, my frisbee local Lisbon team was one the reasons I wanted to do my ESC in Lisbon, I met this team in 2018, became obsessed with the sport and wanted to come back ever since. However, the hilly obstacles I had to climb in those 4 years to be here and train, have made those years the most difficult ones for as long as I lived. The mental strength I had to find to continue after a devastating accident until I am able to run again was beyond any strength I ever thought I would find. This ESC program had offered me some time to try and make it for the last time. And I did. God knows how.

The activities and the content of my work through this program acted as a distraction, as a reminder that there are still so many things to appreciate and allow to take place within my life. The occupation with the natural world through these esc projects helped me find some peace and let my mind forget for a bit and let things go. Watching how resilient natural creatures can be, made me feel ashamed of how painful I make my inabilities be for my mind. When a bird gets injured, it will almost not notice it, it will keep doing everything it does everyday. When a tree loses a branch, it will keep growing, it will not stop and cry for its loss. As if they don’t have the time to stop, to think, to hurt, to get depressed. And if I think about time, do I have the time for it? I learned these 9 months that perhaps I don’t. 

I get the feeling that life might be over tomorrow and I won’t even realize it. I do not know how much time I have. It might be years, it might be months, days or seconds. And all I can do and all I owe to myself is to spend every single minute doing things that I love, enjoy, and care about. All these years I have been blaming myself that I am undisciplined and that I never get to do a normal job and get a normal salary because I don’t like to do anything that I don’t like. And today I say to myself that I was right. I don’t want a life where I do what I have to do. I want a life where I do what I want to do, and I will keep doing programs and finding short term opportunities even if that means I will always be broke and without luxuries. 

So what I see is different in me, is more faith to myself, to my instincts, to who I am, to what I am made of, to my heart, my being, my existence. Self respect is the skill I have learned to cherish and use more with the end of those 9 months. I am grateful for it. I am grateful for having the opportunity to be selected for this program and I am grateful for all the personal skills and more that I have equipped myself with in these months. I am grateful for being a European citizen, and for having all these European project opportunities for young people.

I am proud for being part of a continent that really cares to offer alternative education opportunities to youth and I wish for more people to get to know about these programs and to learn as much as I did. Dear reader, if you're still reading this testimonial, thank you for doing so, and I hope that by reading it I have added some value to your day.

Ciao!

O testemunho No. 2 da Afrodite (SPEA)

 

Hello everyone 

Already halfway through my volunteering program with SPEA -Sociedade Portuguesa para o Estudo das Aves. I am thinking  that only 3 months are left and I get stressed about my next steps. Can I say that it was worth it after 6 months of experiencing it? Definitely. When thinking of my background and that is not exactly and directly related to biology and nature conservation I realize that if not through volunteering and if not through the ESC program I would never have the chance to experience something like this.

I realized that I do love working for environmental conservation and environmental education projects. It feels unreal to me sometimes to think that actually there are jobs that are based totally in the outdoors, and that naturally protected areas need so much attendance and workforce to keep flourishing. I had no idea that these kinds of jobs existed and I was amazed to find out. In the last three months, I have been visiting Berlengas islands to carry out conservation work. It was so special to get to know the islands as if they are animate creatures which in a way they are. Their every formation, track, cliff, rock, bird colony, fauna composition. I could never imagine such a small island having so much to show. It's every side that touches the ocean having a different name as if they are street names in a big city. The stories and myths that it withholds within the knowledge of the very few habitants. The lighthouse keepers, the nature police and us, volunteers and biologists. The 6 of us inhabit an island and stay in the lighthouse. It felt like the earth was this island and nothing else existed. Just us on a big rock surviving in a continuous battle with the ocean waves crushing on its every edge. A vibrating ecosystem that would seem as nothing special for a couple of hours but the more the time, the hours and the days spent there, the more it revealed to me, how much treasure it withholds, how much knowledge and purpose it carries for the protection of biodiversity and the continuation of life.

What does a day in Berlengas feel like? We would wake up in the morning to breakfast with fresh Portuguese toast and coffee. Telescopes, binoculars and ready to climb hills all day long. We would cross the land and reach the edges, set up the tripod and zoom in the telescope lens to watch a nest of ‘Galietas’ from 300 meters away on a deathly cliff! We would watch for hours until she decides to get up so we can see and count her eggs or chicks! Now you can imagine not all of them would be so cooperative, some of them would even play games of on purpose maneuvering so we never get a chance to make a clear observation! Others would stand up for a second and as we crazily rush into setting the lens at the right spot she would sit down immediately once we are able to watch her! Now tell me if that is not on purpose! The ‘good’ news is that we have to do that for more than 100 nests across the island which can barely be finished within 5-6 days! Isn’t it boring? One might say so, but I quite enjoyed this part of just sitting watching the ‘galieta’ and the ‘galieta’ watching me for hours and hours. I don’t think I needed my patience any more than in this case before.

At lunch time we would have someone cooking a very Portuguese amazing food like ‘calderada de peixe’ or ‘massada de peixe’ were my favorites! Wine, coffee, and aguardiente was part of the menu too! And the plenty of cakes which I was asked to make because it seems like it made them very happy! In the afternoon we would either check the mouse traps to see if they trapped a mouse and or we would record the fauna species per square meter of land and per percentage of coverage! Fun stuff! Other tasks would include recording species traffic for the census using the telescope! That was not easy! Imagine having the view of a highway of birds which are at least 10 km away from you and by their way of flying and colors you need to identify what species they are, how many they are and what are they doing there! I wish they could just tell me straight away! It feels like being in the middle of a motorway and trying to identify the date of manufacturing of each car based on its emissions! This was such a random comparison but whatever! And my next favorite part is dinner. Same as lunch.

And while one might think that at night we would go to bed and rest we actually had to wear torches on our foreheads and get outside in the middle of the night, climbing cliffs with the moonlight as guidance and the torches on our heads blinding each other! Why?? Well because we had to go and extract those poor birds called ‘cagarras’ from their nests in the ground and then measure their every body part and give them a ring! Just imagine you are sleeping in your bed in the night peacefully and a giant hand drags you out and starts measuring you with a ruler, then stuffing you in to a bag and weighting you and as if you are not fashionable enough in your pajamas you from now on need to wear a bracelet with a number! That is how a non-biologist sees all of these… Of course the poor ‘cagarras’ had to fight back and it was a bloody fight with our hands full of scratches since their beaks are quite deathly! And we would be doing this all night long, coming back home at 2 am in the night!

So that was a typical active day in the berlengas in the high season which is spring and everything is flourishing! There would be some days that nothing would happen and we cannot get out of the lighthouse since the wind splashes are about 70km per hour which would most likely cost you your life if at the edge of a cliff! Did I have accidents on those cliffs? A few yes. It is not the safest type of job, but definitely one of the most exciting ones I have done with all these risks that come with it!

So that was a small taste of my conservation work in Berlengas which seems like a world I would never thought existed and I feel so lucky that in one way or another I had the chance to experience it! Definitely one of the greatest gifts that I got from the whole volunteering experience so far. Let's see what comes next, what steps will I take, and I will soon be starting to plan my life after this program. I am so glad I chose to do this program and it definitely exited all my expectations by far. I never thought of this experience being sooo interesting! I am grateful to SPIN and SPEA for choosing me as their volunteer.

April 2022, 22nd.

O testemunho No. 1 da Afrodite (SPEA)

I started my volunteering experience in November 2021.

Spin association was the Hosting organization that coordinated the procedure while SPEA organization was the one I am working/volunteering for. SPEA stands for ‘Sociedade Portuguesa para o Estudo das Aves’ and it’s work is around the fields of natural protection, conservation, and environmental education in regards to the bird species of Portugal.

I cannot but begin to say how thankful I am to SPEA association for all their welcoming and friendly manners. Their support and guidance from the beginning of the program until now have been heart-warming for me. I am currently working under the supervision of Carolina Bloise who has been a great supervisor and team worker. At the same time we work closely with Ana Esteves and Alexandra Lopes and we all together are part of the department of citizenship and environmental education in SPEA. I have had an amazing collaboration with them all and I really enjoy the time working together with them. Overall I feel I am very lucky to have this opportunity to work with SPEA since there is so much space given to me for personal and professional growth in the field of environmental education.

As part of our work in environmental education are the school visits in Lisbon and the workshops we carry out to foster environmental awareness and urge the need for environmental protection and conservation. Part of my duties is the preparation of educational material and assistance during the demonstrations of workshops. Working with this particular age group of children and within the theme of environmental education is a first-time experience for me and the learnings I withdraw on a daily basis are many. Having worked in education in the past I see this as an amazing opportunity to grow my knowledge and experience in regards to the educational needs of this age and within this topic.

An addition to the things I have been working on in SPEA is the assessment of educational material from external partners within the framework of erasmus + educational programs. This experience gave me the opportunity to learn how to be critical about educational material resources and how to look for quality in resonance with our specific context of Portuguese school curriculums. The learning I gather from the experience and knowledge of the people I work with is what helps me be able to assess such material. This part of my work has been very great as well to help me build up knowledge and experience in environmental education that can foster environmental awareness and will for environmental protection.
Overall these have been the main streams of work that I was focused on so far and I can’t wait for what is next and the new experiences that I will add to this year of volunteering with SPEA.