The First Working Day

After a arrival and a warm welcome on Sunday night, on Monday we all volunteers were ready to work at Emmaus' yard 9 a.m.

This is the second time I come to Emmaus Åland for such a summer camp. So, I had a glue abuot what to expect. And the first day really came with the hole bunch.

I started with sorting donated clothes. A never ending job. Together with happy work mates it's fine, anyway.

But then, the big container for Peru arrived. We loaded the huge container. It toke several hours. On the picture, I am carrying two of the hundreds of bales. It's hard work. However, when the container is filled up, you see what you have done. When the containers door was closed, we almost had done for today.

But there was more today: On the first day already, some of us found our costumes for the Cultural Night (see right).

For dinner we met again 6:30 p.m. We enjoyed smoked fish.

Then we took our bicycles for the 'Sjökvarteret', a culture park at the eastern shore of Mariehamn. There Ålands Fredsförening-Emmaus commemorates the annual Hiroshima Day. Soon, everything was prepared: the banches we had set up already before dinner, the candles were lit and ready to be sold, the sound check was done; and we were waiting for visitors...

With a little delay, Åland's people arrived we sold the first candles. Fortunately Åland's people all know the English language.

Carina opened the commemoration. There was local folks music (violines) and a field report from the ongoing conflict in Palestine. But for us summer camp volunteers, probably the most important part were the performance of Gaia, she sang.

After the speeches and music had ended, everybody went to to luanch a candle. We suddenly run out of candles but kept the last to ones for our selves. The sea was perfectly calm. so it was very easy to put the lights to the water. As there were a lot of mosquitos around, we quickly left the place afterwards.