Good vibes are contagious!!!

By Carolina Clavier

In 2009 I arrived one day to Montevideo airport, alone, anxious and thinking, what am I doing? I’m going alone to Belém do Pará, to something called FISC, simply because in that year someone had talked to me about IALLA – obviously, didn’t know either what was IALLA. I asked for a couple of days off my job – in the worst possible moment – why…? Well, the truth is I have no idea why I did it, I guess by intuition, but I did it. I left in the worst time of work to get inside (almost literally) a university in the city of Belém, that I barely knew on the routes from the hotel to the university … to discover a world difficult to define in words, but very easy to describe with emotions.

Let me tell you my story chronologically: I arrived to the airport (you know how) and I saw a group of women carrying heavy boxes, I went over and pretending looking in another way I read that the boxes said: ICAE; that was when I breathe for the first time. That’s them, they exist, they are going to Belém and the FISC!!! It took me 1/10 of a second to go over and ask who was Cecilia, the only one I knew on the phone and had encouraged me to go, but without giving me many details.

Upon arriving to San Pablo, the poor women (Ana, Irene, Hortencia …) pretended to be asleep to avoid getting mad with my questions, they just smiled and told me to calm down, that they could not tell me what I was going to do, that I had to live it by myself and I was not going to be sorry.

…poor women, they never imagined that in San Pablo the plane was going to be delayed a few hours…

But it was there that the magic began, yes, and I’m not being poetic, it was magical, people started arriving from all over the world, with posters, shirts, material (and as I had done my homework, I recognized some names: GEO, REPEM, UNIFEM, etc.). They embraced, they remembered the last time they had seen each other, some did not know each other, but we were all going to the FISC. The atmosphere had changed, you could breathe it in the air, the atmosphere was different, how? I do not know, different, nice, encouraging, supportive, I don’t know, cool, really cool.

As I already said, I was not sure what for or why I was going to that event, but given that I was going there, I obviously had registered as a VOLUNTEER, what for? You know the answer: I don’t know. But the thing is that on the plane the group of women of ICAE had already recruited me for a thousand tasks, and I was happy, at least I was going to do something, what? … I don’t know…

Remember I told you I left for 4 days, and thankfully I was free on Saturday morning to at least visit Belém? well no, at 7:30 am, my long-awaited Brazilian hotel breakfast just started, those kind women I knew the previous day tell me: XXX, they are waiting for you in university to see if you can lend a hand, go NOW with “B” (B is not to hide her identity, we called her B because her name was too difficult to pronounce). So goodbye breakfast, goodbye mini-tour of Belem: to work.

When we got to the university I see a lot of people with shirts of volunteers running up and down and I introduce myself to a skinny woman – who looked already tired – and I said I was going to help. I will never forget Marc H’s face of happiness, and as she says, she will never forget that someone fell “to help”.

There began the FISC and it was true, the FISC had to be lived, felt, be part of it, I picked a T-shirt, falei meu melhor portugués and comecei a trabalhar, I joined a group of people and started to run: preparing bags, distributing bags, falar com aquel cara que ta precisando ajuda, ayudar a aquél porque le está hablando un inglés y no entiende nada, merci beaucoup, oui, oui, c’est ici, non, non, reste ici, headphones don’t work on channel 1, ¿has visto a Celita? Ou est la toilette?, Where is Ludmila ?, pega-ela, cara!! oui, bien sûr, allez manger, je reste avec le bébé, has anybody seen my shoes??? and amid all that, some wonderful, inspiring chats, fighter, convinced people, wanting to do things, idealistic people, people, many, many people with the most “positive Vibrations” I had ever seen.

Why am I telling you this? Because I lived it from the inside, because I was a volunteer, because without volunteers, without people like the one from ICAE (Adelaide, Nicole, Valerie, Marcela M, Cristina and many others) many things would not be possible. This year I’m also going to something I don’t know very well what it is (that’s not true, I know, when you are touched by ICAE, you become a member of this group of women – sorry, I say of women because ICAE members I know and inspire me are all women) … I went around the bush, I’m telling you this because this year I’m going to MALMÖ, volunteering, and I hope that many, many people will be touched by ICAE and volunteers will increase day after day. This is the best opportunity to do what we preach: from words to action.

EVERYONE can be a VOLUNTEER.

If you want to be a voluntary interpreter at the ICAE World Assembly please contact: icaeinterpreter@gmail.com