SI MONTHLY NEWS August 2006 Travel reports
From SI Exco News
Singapore and Australa 2006
Travel experience sent by Till Lembke 18 years old, the youngest Servas member of Servas Belgium and Luxemburg.
Hello Rita!
How are you?
I’m in Adelaide at the moment with the Dow family, a superb Servas family ! Actually all my Servas experiences (I’ve had four so far) have been great ! My first contact was Anne in Singapore. We got on so well that I left all my belongings at her place when I left for Malaysia. I spent a total of 6 days with her ... and we are going to see each other again in New Mexico this summer. Thanks to her I’ve been able to meet ‘real’ Singaporeans, and I’ve had the chance to mix with everyday life in town, not only as a tourist.
I am also very happy to have been able to stay with Bruce and Bernadette in Darwin because this gave me the opportunity to have a local insight into the relationships with the natives in Northern Australia. If I hadn’t had this conversation I would have left Darwin with a very pessimistic idea of relationships between Aborigines and white Australians.
In Alice Springs I contacted Ernie who is a day host and we went on a hike through the Australian desert hills.
And as I have already said, I’m now staying with Rose and Alastair and their two children, Aisha and Angus.
In a word, it is great !
Thank you for your work and all my best wishes to you.
Yours, Till
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
"When your ship, long moored in harbour, gives the illusion of being a house, PUT OUT TO SEA! Save the boat's journeying soul and your own pilgrim soul, cost what it may". Archbishop Helder Camara
On the road in Africa with Servas
We are a French family (Emmanuel & Nathalie, Pollux - 7, Titus – 5 and Cléobule – 10 months) travelling around the world with a 4WD truck. After Asia, where it was just amazing for us as Europeans to spend some time with Indian and Thai families, then Oceania and South America, with the warm welcomes from Argentinean hosts, we are glad to arrive in Africa.
Africa is our last continent before reaching Europe and to go back home after this four years on the road.
Travelling overland is a good way to discover the evolution of the people kilometre by kilometre.
Servas is for us the best organisation to achieve our goal to understand a little bit more the people around the world and in a peaceful atmosphere. Servas gives us the opportunity to meet people for whom the relations between humans are essentials, with the duty of helping each other. Within Servas, we think that there is no taboo because the relation is made to understand and to be richer.
Thanks to Sheldon Weeks, we have been in contact with Tracey and Alec Collier in Durban, South Africa who are very keen on Zulu culture and active in supporting its development with a great approach: “help the people to help themselves”.
We are now in Botswana, discovering another face of Southern Africa. Our next destinations will be Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt before crossing the Middle East. We have already made our contacts in those countries and we will change our route to meet the different hosts.
Thank you to all the people who have opened their doors. We hope to see you in Paris when we return home in June 2007.
With peace
Emmanuel, Nathalie, Pollux, Titus and Cléobule.
uploaded by Amelia
