Daniel
I am 26 years old and a student of nourishment science. After my three months stay I am going to finish my diploma.
I already have planned to go to a foreign country or a long time and through my studies my interest to go to a developing country has been intensified. As developing aid is a possible working field of nourishment science, this is another reason why I wanted to get an insight into this work.
Therefore, I looked for a development aid project and a fellow student, who stayed a Leka Gape previous year recommended it to me.
One of my projects here is to work out a food concept for special diseases. This means that I prepare for different illnesses a special diet and try to teach this to the housemothers of the Shelter.
Besides that I am planning to plant an herb yard that covers the needs of the traditional medication. However I still need to inform me about the necessary herbs. But on the other hand I am also skeptical, if herbs should be planted that are used by the traditional doctor to cure HIV, because I think that these way of practice should not be supported.
Furthermore, I want to have an insight into an HIV project to gain some experience about HIV diets.
My internship provides me the opportunity to live in a totally different culture and sometimes it is difficult for me to handle the living attitudes of the locals. It took a whole month to get used to the life and mentality of the people here.
For this reason I think that a stay of three month is too short. Even if I do not agree with everything that happens at Leka Gape, e.g. the introduction and instruction of volunteers or the fact that sometimes nobody listens to my ideas about nourishment, I have learned a lot here.
I have not only learned to reduce my expectations and to improvise but also got a great insight into the development aid sector.