Martina Clarke, a Quality Assurance Specialist from Co. Wicklow, volunteered for 3 months in a welfare project in Argentina
On the 27th Feb I arrived in Buenos Aires with about 40 words of Spanish and a paragraph on what I would be working at. Fortunately the 10 Spanish lessons I had were very good and usually connected in some way to the voluntary work I was going to do so it was very practical. It also helped greatly that the teacher was very patient!
After the 14 hour bus journey to San Juan, I was met by the Martinez family who were extremely friendly and open. My first meal at their house was a barbeque with their whole extended family, there was at least 25 people at it. From that day on I knew I would settle in well into the house.
San Cayetano Comedor where I worked was located in one of the poorer parts of San Juan. I would start work at the Comedor at 9am and would finish at about 4.30. The typical work day would start with cleaning up after breakfast followed by peeling the vegetables and preparing for lunch. Breakfast tended to be warm milk with bread and when food was plentiful there may be cornflakes too. Lunch was usually a soup type dish which was not very tasty. Eleven women worked in the Comedor, all from around the area. They too were very friendly and invited me back to their homes to meet their families. Lunch time would be from 11.30 to 1 and would be just crazy as most of the kids poured into the Comedor all at the same time from the school which was just around the corner. Some days there was dessert which was usually an apple, orange or banana. After lunch and a break for the workers, it would be back to cleaning up - sweeping, washing, hosing. An afternoon snack was given around 3.30pm to the kids and again this tended to be warm milk and bread. On some days there would not be enough food for all the kids and many would have to be turned away. A lot of parents from the area would also come with containers looking for dinner for their families. In total, the Comedor would serve up to 250 people per day. The Comedor also got a lot of clothes donated so some afternoons would be spent going through the clothes and separating them into the different age groups. They would then be given out the next day to the kids. Towards the end, the weather had turned very cold and the food had to be served in the kitchen itself. This wasn't ideal as the kitchen was too small and with all the hot plates and food it was a miracle no one got scalded.
The kids in the Comedor were great, all they wanted was for me to speak English or to play with them. They were generally very happy and content but cheeky too. I enjoyed trying to speak Spanish and having very little Spanish at the beginning was not an obstacle.
Overall the experience was more beneficial for me, I definitely got more out of it than the people in the Comedor. I would recommend it as a great way to see and live the Argentinian way of life, to learn about some local challenges and to give an much needed extra hand to a local project, but I would suggest future volunteers to manage their expectations about making a difference: you do make a difference in the local project where you are placed but it might in a different way from what you expected.
Martina Clarke