“Who are we?” Under this slogan the first workshop with youth from Plemetina and international Magic Hands volunteers took place. Thanks to hospitality of the local organisation Roma Road we could all meet and, by easy games that involve writing, drawing and talking, everyone got to know each other. Successfully, as you will see.
The message about guests being up for adventures and games spread quickly around small Plemetina. Many curious young people followed our invitation and joined us for a first meet and greet workshop. Some volunteers had initial doubts about the communication – Serbian, Romani, English, Polish, Spanish, German. Translations, hands, feet. Will that work? However, eventual shyness instantly disappeared when we started our introduction game of drawing everyones’ portraits. So that Marie drew a nice nose for Sedat, Ferid made Agata’s hair look beautiful and Nora put a smile on Denis’ face.
Soon, the heat made us move outside to the yard where we started another round of getting to know each other a bit more than only by names and faces. The task: write your name on a piece of paper and answer questions. What is your favourite colour? What is your favourite animal? Car? Sport? Food? Since it would be too easy to answer all this about yourself, the clue of the game is to find answers for the person whose name is written on the piece of paper who is passed on to you. For so long, until your name reaches you again after having made the round through the whole circle of people playing the game. If you don’t know the correct answer – which is very probable if people from all over the world and Plemetina meet in a backyard – make a guess.
Laughter, sound of pens on paper, more laughter and shouts of: “Rotacija” – rotate – attracted curious looks of people working in their gardens in the neighbourhood. Suddenly, Senad’s favourite animal was the Zebra, Vily wanted to become an astronaut and Beti was supposed to have 7 sisters. Really? Well, no, Senad likes dogs, Vily is a teacher and Beti has less than 7 sisters. Finding the true answers to the questions was at least equally funny as making up the guessed answers – as we could judge by everyone’s faces.
Yet, these games, seemingly and indeed being funny, have the ambitious aim of fostering intercultural learning between the youth of Plemetina and us volunteers. Creating a space for exchanging and expressing thoughts, ideas, ourselves, to learn more about particular topics, to learn from each other.
Today’s meeting with the local youth of Plemetina, everyones’ curiousity and motivation let us build new promising friendly ties. A good base for our further workshops coming up during the remaining time of our workcamp. “Vidimo se sutra, u pet sati” – “See you tomorrow at 5 o’clock”, everyone said before walking off into the village’s gentle evening sun.
We are looking forward to tomorrows’ workshop when our intercultural learning will continue – we will learn Roma dances and play music together. Keep your fingers crossed that we won’t twist too many feet ;-).
