Participants Blog

There is something that amazes you every step of the way

Daniela describes discovering a sense of freedom as she learns to “Do Nothing!”

How do I even start to describe this place? I live in an island filled with palm trees, vegetation, paths made of shells and of course…mosquitoes. The heat is hard, your skin is itchy, but there is something that amazes you every step of the way. Coming here has not been easy and the first days we had to get used to many things. We were literarily like babies. We had to learn everything from how to eat, to how to take showers, or brush your teeth in the dark. I think I’ve never felt so ignorant about so many things. When it comes to studies and books and general knowledge, we might have a better idea than the people here. But when it comes to living, to simple everyday surviving kind of living, we have absolutely no idea. We don’t even know what to do with our free time, because we never learned how to simply do “nothing”, and that is what we have been doing here…simply nothing. Washing, eating, cooking, and going to bed. However in the in betweens of this nothingness there are laughs and times when you simply feel a sense of freedom.
It is funny, a man here was telling me how in the past, his ancestors had come to this island to escape slavery, so that they could be free, and in some strange way, I think we are doing the same. Our time here is our parenthesis in this chaos of life; it is our time to be free. Free of judgments, free of homework and tasks, and schedules and labels and society. Here, in this island, we just have us. And although that can be terrifying at times, it is good to know and feel that a place to live like this really exists and that we are fortunate to have the chance to experience life lived this way.

Daniela/STU/Ghana/2010