By Josephat from Tanzania

…and so I have one week now in Dortmund. It all started with a warm welcome I got at Dusseldorf airport on 25th May (with receiving a Borussia Dortmund scarf as a gift). I have been over a great deal of exploring this new world to me. From the weather, food, transport, community gatherings and hangouts. I also couldn‘t wait to see Signal Iduna Stadium: the Borussia Dortmund home stadium, and it felt just like heaven to me, you know what I mean?Over the past one week I have been into registering my residence in the city of Dortmund, having my other facilities for transport, communication and banking system done and paid a visit at the to-be my new working place at Kontaktstelle Evangelische Jugend. I also started my German language classes and had a moment in the Sunday English service and Ökumene hangout with a great number of people where I met my mentor Chris for the first time. I had shopping moments as well and cycling, cutting grass around the house, participated in the Global Garden Project in the volunteerhouse. Without forgetting the flea market experience and the Lake Phoenix tour. Does it
feel too much for a one week period? Oh Lord.

My head got too much detailed, a great number of experiences and contacts with many people, without forgetting how people tend to talk a very fluent German that I hardly grasp the words, unfortunately. They say I will adapt it in few days to come, hopefully. Yeah, my one week has been so compacted and I find it so nice and enjoyable that in a period of one week I have had such a great experience.

So now let me tell you something about the volunteershouse that I find so dear to me. We have had some moments of togetherness, which unveil many beautiful definitions of who we are. Cycling together, eating together, cooking together and so on, make us have some times to share things on our backgrounds and preferences. Just like how I now know that Dika (from Indonesia) likes cooking as Rachel(from Hong Kong) likes laughing. As we were coming back home one day I happened to see one of the beautiful pictures that Hannah (from India) had drawn.

It‘s a picture of a beautiful face of a lady but being split into two and so expose the inner parts of her, which in facts gives a view of flowers, another aspect of beauty. Such a talent amazed me and then I happened to think of how can someone just happen to bring such an amazing image in the world, from a scratch? On thinking of its probable interpretation, I came to think of so many things, but, probably this is the best thought I have ever had about it. A beautiful face unveiling another beautiful feature to me gives a meaning of how multi-gifted we are and how useful can it be f every bit of our good gifts can be used to make the world a better place. A multi- faceted view of our beauty phases has to be exposed and spread to the world and make it colourful. How?

Just like one can be working in a hospital and still sing at Church? Like an Engineer takes time to write and inspire the World? Like an Accountant takes time to Paint? Dika studied architecture, gifted in computer graphics and works in OGS for the after school program for children. Hannah studied engineering, working at Referat Ökumene, she is gifted in paintings and drawing, Rachel studied history and literature, working at ESG and she is into script writing and film making. And me, I studied Pharmacy, working under the church youth department at Kontaktstelle
Evangelische Jugend, and I do poetry. That is a brief of only some members of the volunteershouse.

What about you?
Can you tell us how multi-gifted and multi-faceted you are?
Feel free to comment.