Five months ago my volunteering adventure in Mozambique began and with it also my adventure in a daycare, a sort of family home, in one of the districts of Maputo (the capital of Mozambique) called Katembe.

As soon as I arrived, some kids from the center welcomed me, even though they looked a bit scared to meet a person totally different from them who would be part of their lives from that moment on, they immediately approached me helping me carry some of my things inside one of the little houses that make up the center where I and another volunteer would live. Immediately after settling in, we met the director of the center and some of her colleagues employed at the center as social workers and pedagogical assistants. With them we drew up a plan of the various activities that we would then do with the kids such as music therapy, art therapy, theater therapy, learning English also with recreational games, up to learning to play different musical instruments.

With many problems in the months that followed, I and the other volunteers in my group managed to carry out these activities. We have always received enough support from the director of the center and this will make things easier. Unfortunately, it was and is quite difficult to have the same vision on certain ways of carrying out the activities with the employees of the center, but after some disagreements we have always come to the conclusion. Regarding the kids, a fundamental component of the center, there would be billions of things to say. They all have an amazing energy that they have shown right from the start. They always want to know us, as people and at the same time the activities that we have to propose to them.

Even though I have had very difficult lives and even though I grew up and was treated from the very beginning as an adult, even within the same center, I am always super happy and energetic and I think it is one of the things that I appreciated the most. Very often I wonder where they find all the strength and energy they have to face any challenge that life puts in front of them even though they are very small at times.

In Italy we have a completely different style of dealing with things. As children and as adults we are unsatisfied. We grow up with all the comforts possible and imaginable and despite everything we always need to have something else. Here, on the other hand, kids very often do not have the possibility of having anything, not even that parental attention that we take for granted, here it is not. Nothing here is. Kids of 7/10 years have taught me other perspectives, other ways of facing life. And for this I will always be grateful to them and in the same way I also hope to leave something to them.