Skiing on the mountain
Nakato Racheal
Edited by Stacy Oswald
My name is Nakato Racheal from Soul-Xpressions, a volunteer of Open Space Foundation.This is my first time in Europe and everything looks good for me especially the weather . I love the weather, irony because sometimes you see the sun shining and at the same time, it is strongly cold and you are walking on white snow.
It is now a month since I arrived in bulgaria, but I can never forget my first week here in sofia,
When I met a happy and welcoming family from EVS programme. We spent a week together and everyone parted ways but that was just the beginning of a friendship.
After the EVS on arrival training i went at the mountain called vitosha in sofia city with some of the EVS friends that I had met before. They encouraged me to ski and I was afraid because it was my first time. We don’t ski in Africa and to make everything worse, I was not prepared with anything. Turns out for you to ski you need special clothes, shoes and and you need to hire all equipment which only meant I had to pay 30 leva (almost 15 euro) for a bundle of fun. I can get a bit stingy with money but i did not think twice on this matter.
Finally, I received my equipments but I was unable to dress up on my own. They were too heavy for me even walking towards the mountain felt like a torture at one point. All I kept thinking about was “maybe this is not such a good idea”, but just before I changed my mind, one of my friends Jorge saw straight through my African soul and stopped me right before I could get the chance to think again, which was good because he actually knows how to ski so he gave me tips on how to balance myself and all the do’s and don’ts.
My excitement picked right up and somehow I felt like a ski pro, it was very funny because I could not ski I was always on ground full of snow and my other friend Ayubu was always there to lift me up from the ground of course his price was not cheap, I had to tolerate him laughing at me everytime he picked me up as a price for his service. He was not skiing but enjoying himself walking on snow, that’s what he said but if you ask me, I think he was just scared he will fall down.
After a few hours, I was already tired and all my hands and legs were in pain. I was getting colder and colder because it was snowing non stop. The mountain looked white and beautiful with snow. I know i made it look more beautiful being the only dark skinned girl skiing and with all the diagrams I left on the snow from my falls. People were looking at me and smiling, I couldn’t tell if it was because of my skin or because younger kids were skiing better than me.
Did I wake up with massive pain the next day? Definitely. Will I go skiing again ABSOLUTELY, and this time I will be prepared.
My name is Nakato Racheal from Uganda, volunteer in Open Space Foundation in Sofia
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The rubric “My opinio is important” is a part of our project “Art and Culture for Unity”
supported from European program “Erasmus+”, Key Action 2: Capacity building in the field of youth
