THANKS

to all participants and leaders in the
Emmaus Camp Åland 2006

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The Camp Diary

Sunday 30th of July

The camp started off in the late afternoon.

We got a nice surprice. Guy from Paris had forgot to tell Emmaus Åland that he would participate. And we found him just perfectly in time, looking for the right door to enter, ten minutes before six o´clock. We started off by loading the car with matrasses and beds and then we set off for the youth house Tvärsan.

Later on the three ladies from Lithuania arrived and we all had dinner. Carina told about Emmaus Åland and Emmaus International. I had a good feeling the first evening. And it even got better the days that came.

/Carina

Mikko from Emmaus Aurinkotehdas came early and left us after one week of hard work. You´ll miss the fun now. And we miss you!

Guy from Paris outside the Emmaus house.

Monday 31st of August

loading of the container to Peru

Tuesday 1st of August

Dinner at Emmaus for participants, local volunteers and other Emmaus friends.

Wednesday 2nd of August   

Visit to the Åland Parliament, the Speaker Barbro Sundback, gave us a historical background to the Autonomy and Demilitarisation. Barbro was one of the founders of Emmaus Åland, by the way.

A drink and a first glimpse of the Fashion Show on DVD at Carinas house.

Thursday 3rd of August

On this day the sun was shining again and people in Mariehman were enjoying the beautiful weather.We continued with the agenda and finished tyding up the Cirkeln Butik and cleared the front-room that is about to become our dressing room for the immanenting fashion show next week. We sorted out nearly one big container that then went straight ahead to Bygg Returen.

Though we have to mention that an Emmaus store can absolutely never be completely tidied up. The stores just filled up with loads of different things and there are arriving new things all the time.

But at least we got it look nice again and packed a lot of stuff into boxes that are to be put into the container tomorrow and then be sent to Estonia.

Besides that and the usual sorting and baling-work we continued with getting the first layer on the neverending fence.

After lunch we were invited to a meeting with Justina from the Ålands Peace Institute. She introduced her work to us and told us about the great work that Emmaus is doing for different aid-projects in Lithuania through sending containers there. Thus Emmaus supports projects against trafficking or projects for building shelters for orphans.The endeavours are now set to reach also the poor people in Kaliningrad and Belarus, two neighbouring countries of Lithuania with a difficult government constrained bureaucracy that makes it hard to get help there.

After this interesting discussion we went along with the program, looking forward to the as always delicious dinner - Pasta á la Susan feat.

Jos. 

Friday 4th of August

How this day began I do not remember, probably like usual mornings. We loaded the truck to Saaremaa in Estonia and some helped at Byggretur.

We also made some preparation for the Hiroshima commemoration.

On the evening we went to Birger´s house in Kalmarrnäs, an amazing house completely made of recycled materials. We had there a wonderful dinner from Salvador, after which we had activities like sauna or canoë.

Saturday 5th of August

The day starts beautiful, sunny. The expectations were great. At 8.30 we were picked up by Carina to go for our trip to Kökar and Källskär. The trip to Kökar Island was planned to leave by car to Långnäs. This trip was very beautiful and some were sunbathing on the deck.When we arrived at Kökar we had to wait a few minutes. It was very surprising to see the boat to Källskär was tiny compared to the big ferry. Maybe you could get seasick, but the sea was very calm and there were no waves.

The tour to Källskär was very nice despite the small boat. When we arrived to the island (Approx. 13.00) we had lunch and after that we walked to the house where writers and artists are getting inspiration. We all climbed over the very beautiful, huge stones to the artists house. The scenery surprised everybody. There was no noice at all. We took a closer look at the house and I sent a postcard to home. It was very hot during our visit.

/Jos

Sunday 6th of August

Dinner at Carina´s house.

The car got stuck at the "secret beach". Hiroshima comemoration.

Monday 7th of August

Tuesday 8th of August

Today we started out with the regular jobs, sorting, baling, Aaron started to make a loadingramp and for me continuing painting the fence. I lost a bra doing that. On Monday I was painting stuck between the fence and a (unremovable) container. I discovered my breast stick more out than my nose does. When I had finished painting behind the container my shirt had two green circles and the paint had soaked through my shirt. After lunch we all payed a visit to the Åland Islands Peace Institute where Justina spoke about the Peace Institute projects being research, youthwork, conflict management, education and Nendre the centre for woman and children in Lithuania but in specific about human trafficking.

The presentation ended with a round where everybody could reflect on the subject, what there thoughts were about the causes, the solutions and what their (our) role could be in making changes. Afterwards we went back to work. Dinner was served at Emmaus today because this evening the first rehearsel for the fashion show started. An event I feared from the beginning but especially after seeing a video of a previous fashion show. I can't stand it when people look at me, let alone on a stage.  The first number I participate in is the Jungle number. That's one I am able to pull off. No dancing or presenting yourself involved. The second I walked out on, the Indian number involved dancing gracefully. Instead of this I'm moved to the Rainbow number which I will practice next Thursday. And then the final act: the Gala number which was presented to us as: arogance, pride and confidence. The expression on my face reflected my feelings: total missery. On stage I hoped it could pass as arogance. According to Aaron it can.We will see next friday at the Culture Night.

Susan

Susan, the master painter, who could paint even

the most impossible parts of the fence.

Alvyda and Elvyra in beautiful dresses

Aaron and Erik are building the loading ramp

Wednesday 9th of August

This day was just another day, or maybe not. I woke up late as usual and rode my bike heading to EMMAUS workshop. On the way I met Birgitta and Alex and I walked with them. When the work started, I was assigned to bailing until the first coffee break. Then, bailing again thanks to the wonderful teachings of master Mikko. I bailed with Alex who has inherited the same knowledge. Unfortunately the plastic used for this job finished and we had to do other things. At 5 o´clock I went somewhere near the beach to see Eric play soccer but the game has been postponed, thus we left. I forgot to mention that I met Aaron and Susan

next to the beach. At home, when we got back Julija was cooking and I watched TV with Jos

while talking. We were joined by Birgitta and watched some sport events.We had dinner from Aaron (and perhaps from some more people), it was Mexican style. After we celebrated Alvida´s birthday altogether. Each of us congratulated her in his/her own mother tongue. Elvira served us strong alcohol which we drank but did not get drunk. We ate what Julija was cooking (fish according to Susan but it was not). There was a lot of food, it really was a great evening. Some were playing pool, some were outside or elsewere but I went to sleep and the night went on without me…

Lilian is taking care of all the things... Can you see her???

Susan and Birgitta at the neverending

fence, now painted twice.

Thursday 10th of August

ALVYDA 60

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

This morning I really wanted to be on time for our work to start at 9 am. So I started out walking alone from the lodgings at Tvärsan too early, and found myself with 15 minutes just to sit around and wait. A strange thing at this camp where everybody is busy like in an ants’ heap viewed from above!

Or did I hike too fast? That would really be a shame because the road down to the city, along either the water or through living areas, is beautiful. As almost everything on these islands…

My task today is shifted from plank-painting and peace-candle-reconstruction to kitchen-duties together with Carina. We decide to make a casserole symbolising total integration and peaceful living together – which means in reality that we add anything we find to the huge pot! But it does turn out that zucchini, home-grown pumpkins, carrots, tomatoes, onions and potatoes match well and like to be spices up with chilipowder and different kinds of herbs. No one, in the end, knows what were the backgrounds of the ingredients, only what they managed to contribute, and that blended together it tasted wonderful.

Did anyone talk of symbolism?

I tried very hard to combine the cooking with managing a dialogue about the integration of new Emmaus groups over the e-mail… (It is understood that at an Emmaus camp you will rather work as a Jack Of All Trades than a specialist!) The dialogue task was interrupted by a flash-news on the computer screen:

27 people held for terrorist threats in London ! They wanted to blow up aircrafts over the Atlantic ! All traffic at Heathrow at a stand-still!

I rush around with this news; Aaron is immediately interested to know more. We find that Jos is rushing around with Erik about another piece of news – a car is ablaze just around the corner, by the public library! They have managed to take some real action pictures. We suddenly have a verbal exchange – not too hard, though – about “local news” vs “world news”. What is most important?

Only a few hours later we will learn that the burning car was only a manoeuvre to keep all of us busy while a bunch of people with weapons at hand robbed the Åland Bank, close neighbour to Emmaus! From that point onwards, there is definitely no world news about terrorist threats that can even come close to filling the pages of the Åland news media as the firstbank robbery in the history of the islands. And with guns – at a demilitarized zone…! The self-image of us all is getting a big blow.

So what is there to do but to bog oneself down with things that have to be done during the rest of the day: a lunch concert in the church for some of us – cleaning up in the kitchen for others – preparing for the final rehearsal for tomorrow’s big event: the Famous Fashion Show during the Cultural Night.

I manage to take a nap on the couch in the kitchen, to prepare for this upcoming test of nerves, imagination and self-confidence.

The training session goes on from 5 pm to 9 pm, and some of us feel (mostly we females? sensing the double edge of a fashion show?) that we will never survive this show tomorrow, we will fall down dead or make even bigger fools of ourselves than during the rehearsal.

We get home late – it was indeed a very, very long day of work and varied sensations.

I cannot say that I slept very well. Somehow the dreams converged into a nightmare of terrorists looking like bank-robbers finding their final target of a whole city’s population gathered in one place: a fashion show at the Emmaus yard…

BIRGITTA

Rehearsal with Britt-Marie as the last person to enter the stage

The bank robbery started with a car in fire, Aaron took the picture.

Birgitta Göranson-Illiste, vice-president,

of Emmaus International. And a famous Fashion Show model.

Friday 11th of August

Finally. The big day has come that should mark the top-event of our Work Camp and we were nearly all shivering of - The Fashion Show Day. As we did such goodwork yesterday, there was not much left to clean and tidy up and we set up the catwalk and the benches for the expected crowd and got everything ready.

After a wonderful lunch with köttbullarwe had some time to relax and then came back to run the shop and the Emmaus Café selling HotDogs, Coffee and cake. The people really semmed to like it - we did not have one single quiet moment and so the time passed by so quickly and all of a sudden it was already time to get dressed for the final.

We were very busy during the fashion show, dress, get on the stage, change the dress etc. so we could not enjoy our show ourselves, but according to the heavily applauding public it was a really wonderful presentation.

Unfortunately no one had a camera and filmed it and that's why we volonteers are asking you readers desperately: Who has filmed the fashion show or at least parts of it? We would be very happy and grateful if you could give a copy to the Emmaus people so that we can also see our presentation that we all had worked so hard for.

Saturday 12th of August

Tired but happy people. We met at Emmaus around 11.00 and started to clean up the yard and clothes from the Fashion Show. Around 13.00 the lunch was ready, smoked fish and potatoes. The board of Emmaus Finland have had the annual board meeting in Mariehamn, and we all enjoyed the lunch.

Alex took the ferry in the evening, Jos and Susan went to Geta with Britt-Marie, Birgitta and Ulla Hoyer (chairman of Emmaus Finland) left for a concert in the Castle of Kastelholm.

Carina finally took the kids and went for a trip with Kalles wooden boat. A calm and peaceful tour in the Åland archipelago...

/Carina

Sunday 13th of August

It is time to clean up the house, and leave...

But first we have to take farewell with the biggest fireworks that ever where blown off on the islands. And we had a small chat with the President Tarja Halonen out in
Bomarsund.