“¡Hola!” – a Sahrawi kid said to me – bouncing off the sandy gravel having just performed a quite spectacular bicycle kick with a football.
 
My plane had landed on an August night in Tindouf a couple of days before. I was picked up from the airport by a musician called Mahfoud, who drove me through the dark desert to Boujdour, a nearby Sahrawi refugee camp. Once there, I joined my host family, Tekwen, and her two wonderful children, Seku and Zahara.
 
As a volunteer with Sandblast, I was there to help the Stave House Project prepare for the new school year, and prepare a new blue building in the grounds of the Lal Andala primary school, complete with blackboards, green carpet, and air-conditioning, so that the English language and music programme could be taught to the children.
 
The Sahrawis use song and story-telling to hand down their traditions, and Sandblast know how to run English language and music programmes that can make an intelligent and meaningful impact. As a man of many languages and one, I always found language learning both difficult and enthralling, and so it was something special to see just how enthusiastic Sahrawi children are to not only learn outside their native language of Hassaniya, but beyond their second language of Spanish too.
 
Aside from pushing forwards the construction of the school building, I worked with four fantastic teachers: the scholarly Neneha, the hilarious Nicole, the doubly hilarious Fatimatu, and the caring Tekwen. We spent hours in a library that had old books glued to the ceiling and the walls, and worked together on teamwork strategies, teaching methodologies, and our daily English language lessons. The four of them were united not only in their love for teaching, but also in their drive to improve themselves as teachers and leaders in their community.
 
It was challenging; it should be expected of the Sahara desert during the summer. The midday sun was so oppressive I that soon realised that naps were an essential means of escaping the heat. Tekwen would sleep too, as would Zahara, who, when completely covered in a thin blanket, looked like a kayak – with her mummified globe head the bow, and her veiled vertical feet the stern.
 
In other ways, the time I spent in the camps with my Sahrawi host family was the least difficult thing I have ever done. After traipsing to the mosque for prayer, Zahara might return to play with her yogurt pots, and Seku might come back to hunt for a khanfsa’, a giant and helpless type of beetle that would scuttle away from us like crazy.
 
In the mornings, I got my running shoes and went running over the Sahara’s distended dunes.
 
During the afternoon, I chased the children, barefoot over the far too hot for me sand.
 
At night, I slept under the stars with Tweken and Seku and Zahara.
 
This repeated throughout September, and I am forever grateful to Sandblast for that.

A brief intro by Danielle Smith, Sandblast founder

Last year, Andrada and Florin, two people who have become like family to me, took a huge leap of faith and volunteered their time to go to the Sahara to run a music workshop, for the Saharawi refugee children, in our Desert Voicebox project. It was an experience of firsts for them. It was the first time they set afoot the African continent, it was the first time they travelled to a desert region and it was definitely the first time they ever tried camel meat. I am truly happy I was able to share this journey with them and the many enjoyable moments we had living together in tent, for ten days, in the middle of the desert. 

The music workshop was also a first for our project. Its resounding success proved to be a turning point, highlighting how these kinds of encounters enrich and expand the horizons of everyone involved. During their time there, Andrada and Florin taught the children a Romanian folk song, which they loved and, in turn, the children taught them the beautiful Saharawi song 'Asahara ma tinbaa' (The Sahara is not for same). Once again, music revealed its power to cross all frontiers and showed us the road to building bridges of enduring friendship and respect.

Below is Andrada's account of her experience, in her own words. Please read and enjoy and view the slideshow of their time in the camps.

My name is Andrada Maria Pascu and I am a Romanian piano and singing tutor, based in London for 11 years. I have been working with all levels, teaching from total beginners to University students. 

In February 2019, my husband and  I were invited by Sandblast to join forces and run a -7 day workshop in the Saharawi refugee camps, based in Algeria. We are both musicians and run AB Music Academy, in London, which we founded in 2012. Considering this invitation both a challenge and an adventure, we rapidly agreed, not knowing that it would be an experience that would have a life impact on us.

Arriving in the Saharawi camp of Boujdour, near Tindouf, we met the wonderful family, which would host us for the entire period of our stay. The lessons we learnt from them were that we can share from the smallest part and  there is no me, or you, there is just us. The unbelievable sense of community was shocking, in the beginning, as we never thought something like that would exist: It didn't take us a long time to feel we were part of it and we that we could build something together. 

Despite having worked with pupils from all kinds of backgrounds, teaching the children from the camps was a lesson for us as well. Usually, their timetable included 45 minutes of music 3 times per week, but because we were staying only 7 days, their lessons were arranged to run as an intensive music course of 2hrs every day. When asked if they would like to do an extra day on their day off, they all jumped and shouted yes. Considering that we are talking about children from 9-11,  an age where they easily get bored and want to go out to play, these children didn’t even like to have their well deserved 5 minutes break.

We couldn’t help making a comparison with the Western society, where it is so hard to keep the students  engaged and entertained and where parents often consider a 1h lesson  too long for them. The children from the camps worked hard, like little sponges, and absorbed all the information, even though it was delivered in the foreign language and not in Hassaniya, their spoken Arabic. 

In those 7 days, we taught music using the Stave House method, which we were introduced to and trained in before going to Africa. It is very enjoyable and easy to deliver no matter what the language and the skill level and it gives music teachers the opportunity to develop their creativity and imagination. Our mission was to consolidate Level 2 Stave House and to do activities with the children  to ensure they grasped how to put into practice what they were learning theoretically.   

It was heartbreaking to see these children with lots of aspirations and dreams and realising that after they finish school, most of them would have no future. This is why we decided to continue helping and supporting  in whatever way we can with our knowledge, and by spreading the word about their existence and their situation. 

Our trip to Sahara made us appreciate more what we have: our families, our freedom, and every little small detail which we take for granted - like water- which for us has no value, but they appreciate each drop. 

Starting from then, we have been trying to be more responsible with what surrounds us, with our planet and our lives and do not let small details pass us by. We are happy and grateful to have had the chance to learn this lesson and to be able to bring joy and happiness to the children through what we know best: music!

Update from Stave House in the Sahara!

For the last two weeks in October, one of our partner organisations, Olive Branch Arts, are in the Camps to run their new photography and music training programme ‘Sand and Vision’. They are working in Smara and aim to build the storytelling and creative composition skills of young participants so they can tell their stories in new ways. You can find out more information about their work here. One of their team, Matt King Smith, is a musician and he is gathering the sounds, music and voices of Saharawis of all ages and musical abilities to create some tracks documenting the team's time in the Camps. We are lucky to have Matt working with both our Stave House in the Sahara groups on two different days of workshops. ​

​Working with them on English every day is brilliant as you can see the progress made in a week. After the long summer break they were at first struggling to recall a lot of what they had learned last year. After three weeks of immersion for an hour at a time, working with a teacher who can only help them learn through the target language itself alongside gesture, we have developed our own ways of communicating and understanding one another and everything from last year is coming flooding back to them. They are becoming fearless in taking on board new vocabulary rather than looking to someone to translate the words for them.

Our classes switch between moments of calm and moments of playful energy. The children are inquisitive and bold and don't shy away from answering even when they are unsure. We focus on listening to my voice and all the strange and wonderful new sounds of the English words they are learning. They repeat over and over but also learn to question each other, learning to talk about themselves and others. We listen to English music and look at photos of England, many aspects of which are totally alien to them. We laugh at the way I pronounce their names but that helps them know that I am learning just as they are.

Bring on the next couple of months!"

Original article in Spanish by Poemario por un Sahara Libre.