Diversity is always most welcome

The on-arrival training happened somewhere in the middle of everything. I had already “arrived” some weeks before, so I figured I knew everything I needed - but it's always hard to organize something like this and have every partecipant on the same page.

So I ventured into the big hotel, our home for the following 5 days, with almost the same spirit that drove me when I first got to Turkey: that very peculiar, fresh familiarity.

And I guess I wasn't alone in that. All in all, the volunteers were about 50, all coming from various parts of Europe and living in just as many parts of Turkey. Together, we were drawing a map that extended from East to West, North to South, and our experiences were just as many – if not more.

In fact, during the following days we got to know a lot about each other (the coffee breaks were numerous, given the current Covic regulations) and we all could share our different experiences and expectations.

This proved to be just as important as the training itself, or dare I say complementary: the institutional part being taken care by the nice people at the turkish National Agency, we were providing to each other the more informal, peer-to-peer one  .

Sometimes the two things would match, sometimes not, and when this would happen there was always room to express that to the trainers, who would address any complaints or doubts both in group or privately.

In all this I was feeling in my element: most people shared my experience and my point of view on many things, which is great when you want to reconnect with some sides of yourself that you inevitably set aside when you're abroad; I can now say I have new friends, we're frequently in touch and plan to meet again in the near future.

But it was also refreshing to share moments and spaces with people who are exactly the opposite as you are. Expecially when it's necessary to collaborate and be productive, different approaches are more stimulating and less distracting. And besides that, new stories and new eyes help a lot not to stay attached to your own convinctions.

Again, diversity is always most welcome.

To me, the most interesting part was noticing how the various “regional” characters would manifest in such a big group of people. At the beginning, everybody was gravitating around his own culture, somehow suspiciously observing the others from the distance, but in the end we were all mixed up and really enjoying our “globalish” identity.

Eventually, five days felt like one and twenty at the same time. We learned new things, refreshed old ones, made friends and managed to feel less “alone” and more as a part of a network. Or family. Hadi gidelim!