10th day...natalia

9:00 a.m.: I have to wake up… it is almost the time of our meeting for work… “visioning”… yesterday we had a 15 minutes meeting in which each one of us (Renata, Lantana, Iyad and me) presented ideas… and then defined responsibilities… this is a good starting point even though we didn’t have the time to work on it… at least we could go to bed thinking about it…. Ok… there is no more time now to be lazy…. Time to take a shower… there are a lot of things to do today…. This will be such a long day… visioning group meeting, general meeting to review the presentation, modelling in Sulukule, finishing the mapping report, prepare the visioning advance for the presentation... so many things to do… time to start…. I have to go downstairs for the meeting… today will be at room 23. The phone rang… it was Iyad and he told: “Tony needs help to glue the map into the styrofoam…” Ok… change of plans… the material for the modelling should be ready… so the meeting group should wait… but everything is so important… 10:45 a.m.: it is almost the time for the general meeting for discussing the presentation… and I’m still in pyjamas… I have to go up stairs and take a shower… 11:00 a.m.: The meeting… Meghna started the presentation… and it is only the first slide and there are a lot of things to think about… now the framework… it is definitely not clear… it is necessary to change so many things… the discussion kept going on… and our group doesn’t have any slides… we will only speak about our ideas but I think there won’t be time to do that… it is actually 12:30 p.m. Tony already left the hotel to go to Sulukule… Ioannis and I have to be there at 2:00 pm… now I’m trying to fix the framework while the meeting is going on. 1:15 p.m.: It is really late… I couldn’t finish the framework, but it is already time to leave... we met Ipek and Asle at the hotel door, and went together to Sulukule… when we got off the taxi… the driver said something that of course I couldn’t understand… but Ipek told us… he said ‘be careful with your bags… kids here use to steel’… for me it is still hard to understand these people’s misconception… I have been here for a week and I think that this people are absolutely amazing… maybe because they are visibly different…. I don’t know but I feel they are more human beings than others… I know I don’t really know them but at least I feel myself more comfortable here than in other ‘good places’. Afternoon… making the model… the kids are amazing… they are really enjoying the activity… for us it is difficult to manage them… they don’t care about colours, heights, and all those organised stuff about models… but what can we do? Nothing!!… they are kids… so the best thing we can do is to leave them to enjoy the game… the drawing was manageable… but the Lego…. I don’t know if it was a good idea because it is such a great toy for them… but it is great to see them so happy… Now young guys are coming and since they already knew about Tony’s football skills, they asked him to go to play for a while… My friend Murat came … he is so cute…. I think he is 8… now he is asking for me and he finally found me… he is talking to me and I’m so sad I can’t understand him… I asked Gokce to translate it for me… she said my friend wanted to take me for a walk around Sulukule… ouuuuhhhhh!!!!! I’m so surprised! I really wanted to go but I don’t know if it is a good decision, because the workshop is still going on… I asked Tony and Gokce and they said it wasn’t a good time. So Gokce told him in Turkish that I couldn’t go at that moment but half an hour later. So it is time to work and it’s such a nice work!! Kids are all the time laughing, running and asking things… I went a little bit far to take some pictures and I noticed that the gender separation exists even between small kids. There are three tables: the first one has the organised kids, only boys… they draw the map putting different colours and adding buildings of different stories. They really did a good job! The second table has younger kids, boys as well… there were singing all the time… and drumming on the table… their draw was good as well. The last table was only girls… they were quieter but instead of the colour pencils they only have the markers, so they did the messy map… Personally, this has been the most exciting experience that I’ve ever had professionally: seeing these kids doing things, drawing, panting, singing, screaming, running, being happy, going home to take something to eat and then coming back to continue their job, the job we gave them for a while; seeing the people coming to ask us why we were there; seeing how they still believed there was something that can be done…. All this things make me believe that yes!!!! Something can be done… even though my experience says that who always wins the battle is the more powerful one… Sulukule community is telling me that something can be done… things can de changed… cities can be just… And now, I want to believe in this stuff… at least for a while… 4:15 p.m. almost time to go “home”… I mean to the hotel J… we have a meeting at 5 with Michael to discuss the “visioning” I think we don’t have anything yet… we have to go to the café where Iyad will pick me up… because I can’t go back by myself… ok, part of the game… actually even better… cause I never know where I am :p We are leaving Sulukule… Tony, Gokce and me… but my friend comes faster to tell me something… I couldn’t understand… again ask Gokce to translate it… (the language is such a huge obstacle!). My friend said again that he wants me to go with him for a walk… now I have time… I don’t know where I’m going… he is all the time talking to me… even if I don’t understand he doesn’t care… he is still talking to me… he took my hand to show me the way and finally I could understand something… he wants me to go to the park… he is such a cute boy! Now we are in the park playing in the slide… well, I know I said the same thing more than once… but everything is so amazing… after the park we went to the café… I was supposed to be there at 4:30. In our way to the café he wanted to go by one of the roads that Memduh told us to avoid because it was a private street. I was a little scared to go that way because I didn’t want to do something that makes them feel uncomfortable… I’m trying to explain to my friend that I can’t go there… but, it seems that everything is ok. An old man makes me understand that it will fine so we went down the street. In the middle of the street Murat showed me another way that goes to open space next to the café… And I finally got there… I said good bye to everyone and started to be ready to the following visioning discussion…. 7:00 p.m. such a long day!!… and there is still a lot of things to do… and I have a terrible headache… but it is fine because the meeting with Michael gave us clear ideas about the visioning… now we only need to have something ready for 10 pm, the time of our last meeting of this busy day! I have to go work… but I think I need to take a nap first… :p 8:00 p.m. I slept for one hour and I still have headache… but we are in panic because we have to produce something in less than two hours… 10:00 p.m. the last general meeting at least for today… I couldn’t believe that we would do something good… but it seemed that our work had coherence… at least… we already finished the meeting but there are still a lot of things to do for tomorrow’s presentation... noooooohhhhh!!!!!!! ncv