Live the DI Experience

By Rebecca Jorquera

I have been in the DI program for nearly 9 months now and  reflecting upon my time here all I can say is “WOW”.

         

These past 9 months resemble a huge rollercoaster of personal and profesional knowledge, emotions, experiences and feelings at more than 200 km per hour!

Looking back to when I first arrived in Juelminde, it feels like it was yesturday and I can´t believe how many things have happened and I have experienced in such a short amount of time, really, I don´t have words!

My line of work at the school during my stay here has been changing according to each of the different periods of the DI program.

During my first couple of introductory months in Denmark, my work at the school mainly consisted in giving a few hours of english classes to some of the students, working in the kitchen and cleaning. I think this was quite appropiate as it permited me to slowly get in contact with the students, get to know them better and gradually gain their trust.

Once I established a good, solid relationship with them I was thrown into the deep end of a great ocean and was incorporated into the school board like all the normal Danish teachers existing at my school, I was just one teacher more.

I say thrown into the ocean because my profession is not that of a teacher and because I had no physical school material or program to go by. I had to use my personal intuition at all times and all the way in order to be able to teach the students. This was a great challenge for me and I think I can proudly say that I succeeded, of course sometimes I made some mistakes but one learns a lot from making errors and specially I must quote:  “the best way of learning is by doing!”

A couple of months ago I reached the half way mark of the DI program where the African period starts. In order to prepare and form myself better for my future development work in Angola, I have once again changed the line of my work at my school.

Now I am a full time gardener at Juelsminde, I have dropped my teaching and taken up the outdoor activity of establishing a productive and effective garden at my school. The decision of this change was mine as I think I really need to improve my agricultural skills for my future work in Africa and honestly I can say that I am loving it!

Only 3 months are left until we depart to Africa! I am really excited and waiting for the day to come when we will be sitting on the aeroplane journey to Angola! I have learnt and experienced quite a lot during my time as a DI and reccomend it to you all to try out. Really you won´t regret it!