1/20/2009 - Clare’s African adventure
Bega District News
BY HANNAH BROOMFIELD
Ask any university student and they’ll tell you life is tough.
Ask Clare Nash, and she’ll tell you life is there to be lived.
The 22-year-old Bermagui resident is a part-time university student and trainee accountant, and if that’s not enough, she returned recently from a six-month South African adventure, where she worked as a volunteer.
“I wanted to immerse myself in their culture instead of just being a tourist, and I did,” Clare said.
“I really lived South African – I ate South African, I danced South African, I even tried to speak Afrikan.”
Clare applied successfully for an American Field Service (AFS) Intercultural Program, which entailed six months of volunteer work in a remote rural community in northern South Africa, approximately two hours from Johannesburg.
She was flown into South Africa where she undertook an orientation weekend with other volunteers, mostly from Europe.
“They told us about the rules and customs of the country, what to expect and what to avoid,” Clare said.
“It’s such a different country to Australia, but they tell you what you need to know.”
She worked at an education centre for children aged 8–14, with a focus on the environment of South Africa including endangered wildlife and the importance of an environmental conscience.
“Most of the kids stayed for a week – and these were city kids – so they had to rough it,” she said.
“When they first arrived they missed their mobile phones and they missed their computers, but by the end of it they didn’t want to leave.”
While she considered herself an “extra pair of hands” for the centre, Clare also taught the children a lot about her native country.
“They asked me so many questions about Australia and they loved learning about it, and at the same time I learned so much from them,” she said.
Clare lived in what she describes as a “colony” at the centre, with 20 paid educators and an Argentinean volunteer like herself, and her host community was a similar size to Bega, with a few shopping centres and doctors in town.
The team ate together and slept in the same accommodation, and on weekends they took Clare on trips to sights such as Kruger National Park and other features of the local environment – both physical and cultural.
“They took me to places you wouldn’t go as a tourist, the people in my host community knew where to go and what to see,” she said.
At the conclusion of her six months of volunteering, Clare spent two weeks travelling South Africa.
“Then I was a tourist,” she said.
“I bungee jumped, climbed, I took a helicopter ride.
“I spent a week in Cape Town then travelled through Botswana and into Zimbabwe for a week in Victoria Falls, which was definitely a highlight.”
Having returned to her job at Kothes Accountants in Bega and her degree, Clare is already looking ahead to her next adventure.
“I want to finish my traineeship and my degree, then I definitely want to do something like this again,” she said.
“South America’s on my agenda (but) I just need to learn Spanish.”
Click here to find out more about AFS South Africa
Click here to find out more about AFS Australia
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