O testemunho final da Miriam (Viver Telheiras)

 

A couple of weeks ago, I said goodbye to the office, to my tutor and to the amazing team of the Associação Viver Telheiras. Leaving my key in the key stand on my last day was an emotional moment that all of a sudden took me back in time to one year ago when this experience had just begun and little did I know that I would have become a Telheirense by adoption. 

It has been maybe the most fulfilling year of my life, full of personal growth, healing, beers with amazing landscapes and friends. I am forever grateful for the chance I had to do my ESC in Lisbon; grateful for the experiences I lived, the skills I learned, and all the people I met here. 

I am thrilled by the fact that I decided to stay in Lisbon some more time and I challenged myself to continue supporting my community in Telheiras as a personal volunteering project. Volunteering at Viver Telheiras taught me that people’s daily involvement in society is real and satisfying, that neighbours can join and create something amazing for their community; that interaction and cooperation with the authorities are possible; that change is possible.

After one year, I can really say that ESC changes lives, it broadens your horizons and offers new perspectives to look at the world around you, As I said in my very first testimony, when I arrived in Lisbon, it felt like I belonged here. Antonio Tabucchi, “the most Portuguese of Italian writers”, wrote in one of his books about travelling in Portugal that a “place is never just a place”, somehow, unknowingly, that place is part of us, we were carrying it around, until when, one day, we arrived there, by chance.

You know, I am not really sure I arrived here by chance, but maybe it’s true, I was carrying this country in my heart until the moment I set foot here and who knows this will be my place still for a long time. Obrigada, ESC. Um brinde à vida, um brinde a Lisboa, um brinde à Europa!

O testemunho No. 2 da Miriam (Viver Telheiras)

If I look back at these past 7 months I almost feel shocked for the incredible amount of things that happened. 

I like to lay down sometimes and try to brainstorm about it trying to figure out which are the most important moments of my life here and memories show up always so vivid and intense at the point of making me feel very emotional. 

After a super relaxed summer full of sea trips, friends and travels I have finally had the occasion to go deeper into my project and start to do a lot of practical stuff (which is a very pragmatic person is what I was really looking forward to). 

One of the things I appreciate the most about my volunteering is developing projects in the field of sustainability such as the workshops we did in partnership with Spea’s team which brought the Telheiras’ neighborhood together to build houses for birds, bats, and insects and contribute in this way to help and preserve the local biodiversity. (see picture)

After all these months the most extraordinary thing for me is being able to spontaneously connect with people and the strong bonds I am starting to create in the community of the neighborhood which makes me feel really happy and at home in this place. I would lie if I said that everything has gone smoothly so far, but I am really grateful for every single experience, person, and situation I have lived with here because they have contributed enormously to a personal growth I have always been yearning for and I am finally reaching. 

Sometimes I feel a little blue because I am starting to realize that the time left till the end of my project is not that much and I have to think concretely about my future and it seems to me that I have been wandering around randomly without managing to find a proper direction in life. I really hope that these last months will be inspiring for my future and who knows maybe I will end up staying here to keep enjoying this amazing country!

O testemunho no. 1 da Miriam (Viver Telheiras)

SUN, LAUGHTER AND FOOD

If I were to pick some words to describe my first two months in Portugal It would be for sure these ones. 

My name is Miriam, I am 23 and I arrived in Lisbon on May 1st but it already seems like I’ve been living here for at least one whole year. 

I had already spent some days in Portugal in 2019 and I remember falling instantly in love with the country and already having the feeling that somehow life would bring me back here. This feeling together with the desire to learn European Portuguese are the main reasons that made me decide to apply for this ESC project. What has been really surprising me from the first day on is that I can almost perfectly remember the streets, the buildings, the miradouros and I can actually orientate myself even without the maps which I think is the reflection of the sense of belonging, familiarity and connection I have with this city. It’s a feeling that I already could sense before leaving Italy when people asked me how I was feeling about this new adventure and I remember answering that to me it was exactly as if I was just coming back to someplace I had already settled in...As if I had been home just for a quick holiday break. Life here reminds me a lot of my homeplace: the sun, the food, the warmth of the amazing people I’ve met plus the spontaneity of Portuguese people randomly starting to talk to me at the bus stop or in the shops and their kindness really fill my heart with joy. In this time of incertitude one of the few certainties I have is that Lisbon is a great place to live such an experience!

I have started working on my project only in these last few weeks and I am already enjoying it sooo much. I am volunteering at “Viver Telheiras” a NGO that organises cultural events and promotes social life and cooperation in the beautiful Telheiras neighbourhood and I am really looking forward to the decrease of Covid restrictions which will allow us to concretize all the projects we are planning - many of which are unfortunately still stuck because of the pandemic.

Last but not least  I would love to spend some words on my stunning flatmates and on all the other incredible volunteers I’ve met so far. It always amazes me to see how such different people coming from so many different backgrounds can get along so well sharing a lot of interests and spending their time together so spontaneously which is by far in my opinion the best expression of the volunteering spirit:

Volunteering connects people, volunteering connects brains, volunteering connects souls.

Até a próxima!