Name: Heloisa Barrense
Major: Journalism
Age: 21
Year: Senior
Zodiac sign: Scorpio
How was your volunteer work in Indonesia?
It was something that happened out of nowhere. A friend invited me to go to a meeting of Aiesec and I was very interested with participants stories about their experiences abroad. I applied in their website to a program and they contacted me later. Since the beginning of the year, I was already considering a trip on my own, and I though the volunteer trip would be a good opportunity. I chose Indonesia, because it was a project linked to journalism, I had to write etnographic reports about a medical project in the country. I thought this project would also benefit my résume, since it would boost my writing skills. I spend three weeks in Tosari, a village in the island of Java. The project consisted basically on an Indonesian government initiative to comply with more medical facilities and access across the nation.
Are there any highlights during the experience?
I attended a few workshops with local women hat gathered to discuss matters that impacted them, from family life to health. I really enjoyed seeing this because it was in fact a very feminist work but they didn’t labeled themselves as a feminist. One of this workshops was about uterus cancer, where a nurse explained what were the sympthoms and etc. Another workshop was about garbage collection and I got to see the village’s garbage system and how it could be improved.
Did you travel while in Indonesia?
After the work was finished I spent more three weeks traveling, I went to Jakarta and Bali. A friend I met online was also doing volunteer work in Jakarta and we met there. I ate a lot of ramen too.
Were you afraid?
Yep! When I was in the airport and I saw my mom far away in the plane line, because passing customs. It was also the first very long trip I took and all by myself. It was a 22 hour flight and in the middle of the flight I started thinking if the airplane could handle this long trip. One thing that it stood out a lot was that when you visit a country in the Ocident, you sort have a mindset of what to expect, but in Indonesia’s case it is very different, both language wise and traditions. Everything I knew from Indonesia, I learned online. While I was doing volunteer work, I have a great support from Aiesec, but in Bali and Jakarta I was on my own and I got robbed in Bali, they took my cellphone away, so it was challeging to speak to my family in Brazil without my smartphone. I basically bought one of those local store phones and we tried to sms eachother, but it was still precarious. Internet was close to zero in other places.
Can you share a few things you learned with us?
Most things I learned were about the Islam culture and how the media and what we hear on Brazil is completely different from what the religion and culture stands for. I talked to a woman about the situation in Israel and Palestina and she told me that people usually think Islam stand for terrorism, when in fact it is all about love and family. That taught me about empathy towards other people. As a person, I learned that we can do things we swear we can’t and that sometimes we will only see if we are capable or not if we just do it. We cannot be petrified by fear, we need to take risks.