WORKANDLIFE SOLIDARITY AWARD: testimony of Nínivet Moreno Pérez, WorkandLife volunteer in Meki

Nínivet Moreno is an educator at the Hospital Rey Juan Carlos Children's School managed by Work&Life.

He traveled with the Foundation Pablo Horstmann as a volunteer Meki Orphanage and Daycare during the summer of 2017.

THE ELASTICITY OF THE HEART

Nobody tells you that you will have the same amount of fear as of excitement upon your arrival, nor that you are about to leave your comfort zone to jump into the void.

People don't tell you that you are going to embark on a rollercoaster of emotions not for the faint of heart, in which some days you will be on top of pure happiness and in which you will descend into hell on other days.

They don't tell you that you are a grain of sand in that vast desert, but that without that contribution nothing would be the same, hands are needed and yours, although they seem small to you, are equally necessary.

No one tells you that you are going to fall in love with the country, its people, its aromas, its beauty, because Africa gets inside you as soon as you arrive and doesn't let go even when you have returned home.

They do not prepare you for everything you will see, which will be a lot, sometimes reality hits you so suddenly that you are not prepared to assimilate it, one becomes ashamed of having been born into the friendly side of life, the world sometimes paralyzes and other times it falters.

There the clocks are meaningless if it is not to stop them and listen a while longer to the stories of the people with whom you share the day.

Nobody tells you that you will grow as a human being, that respect will make you wiser, more patient, because life sometimes does not make concessions and only gives us one chance.

You will see smiles that shatter sorrows, you will have all the continents in your pocket after a hug, Meki changes lives, but not destinies.

Finally you will know the elasticity of the heart, because along the way it will have sometimes shrunk before your eyes (life there is hard) and, however, other times it will expand out of pure gratitude, of happiness because you know that your drop, Although tiny, it will remain in the ocean of memories of those people who gave you their time, from whom you learned to live, from whom you say goodbye physically but not emotionally and who know that in another part of the world, you think of them and not you forget the lessons you have been given.

So, come and see, gentlemen, because the world is not as far away as we think and we must try to get closer, the world is always worth seeing because it makes us more intelligent, more aware, more human, in short, more alive.