Every now and then we close ourselves in a bubble, thinking that the world out there is dangerous, then comes that movement of courage, that breath of life that opens a little that heart so afraid of suffering, and here is that life offers you its beauty, a possibility of choice.
When a year and a half ago I read the notice for the National Civil Service, I immediately started looking for a project that could give me the opportunity to invest myself totally, and I found it reading the project on Karungu.
I arrived in Karungu on October 2, 2015 and I stayed there for 11 months, being able to fully experience this reality so different.
Then the hospital certainly very different from the reality I am used to operating: the diagnoses that are often based only on semeiotics, being able to attend surgical operations even of a certain extent, without too many problems, which is unthinkable in Italy. br /> So slowly I began to create my own space, bringing out all the facets of my character, putting myself at the service of others and reinventing myself in many circumstances. The St. Camillus Mission Hospital has many projects started, and this is a huge resource for the area, because it allows those who live in that context to have an efficient service on many problems of which they are often not even fully aware. I’m talking about maternal-fetal screening for HIV transmission, about the Art clinic where about 7000 people are followed and where antiretroviral drugs are dispensed, about the cervical cancer screening project, in which St. Camillus is the only one hospital to have pap smears.
So it’s been a year, between days in hospital and afternoons at Dala Kiye. And here’s what I feel I’ve had: a unique opportunity: to share, to see, to hear more words than we can say. The opportunity to put your nose a little further, where many think there is not so much. But no: there is even more.
All the effort made and the joys experienced made it so that I left Karungu a piece of heart, a lot of sweat and a lot of tears. A heart that I realized was broken, but which, thanks to the encounter with every person who was put by my side in this year, I realized that he can heal and proudly show his scars to make them become a strength, the hallmark with which to present himself to the world, something to be proud of. A sweat that can testify to the effort made in this year full of commitments and work, of moments in which the strength to do things must be found, not for yourself, but for others. An effort that is immediately rewarded by the smiles and the very small changes it generates. Tears because there are many moments that lead you to dig inside to find things that are scary and that you would not want to see, that make your certainties fail by making you question even the things you believed unshakable, there are many situations that hold you tight heart and an infinity of people who touch him deeply.
I saw my walls crumble, I felt the strength fade and the weakness come forward to be shared with children with a future already written by the context in which they live, I found I have so much in common with them and I could learn so much.
I am the one who has been helped through encounters with people, with every single person who has given me at least a look or a moment. Bringing Karungu home with me with everything I have lived and the faces that have accompanied me will be the most difficult part, but without a doubt the most beautiful.
Benedetta Piccoli, volunteer in National Civil Service in Karungu.
