A place in the world

“We always think of what we can get out of the world, but what we can give is so much more valuable. Because when you grow up, you learn and realise that the most important thing is what you give to others, and how you can change things with ideas and courage”. Rocio studied psychology in Barcelona and filmmaking in the United States. After that year in San Francisco, she “needed that contrast journey”. So in 2010 she went to Kenya.

In Kenya, she met a local couple who ran an orphanage in a small community in the Rift Valley, Kabarnet, in the northeast of the country. She stayed with them for a month. “In those 30 days I lived through things so intense that most people don’t experience them in 10 years”, she says.

During that first stay in the Rift Valley, she asked the children in the orphanage about abstract concepts like justice or freedom, to find out what their values were. The answer given by one of those children changed her life forever. “He was nine years old and he didn’t want to be Messi, all he wanted to do was study and have an education because he knew everything else would automatically come with that. To keep himself awake to study all night he would take a bucket, fill it up with freezing cold water and put his legs in it. It made such an impression on me that in three weeks my friends and relatives and I had sponsored all the children in the orphanage. And we carried on with those in the community, and then the ones next door”.

And that was how Bamba Project, the NGO that enabled Rocio to find her place in the world, started.

Bamba Project sponsors children. They have created a women’s project that allows them to work, “because we realise that this is the best way to help them, you mustn’t just give anyone anything”. They have built a classroom and an orphanage; they teach people and are making a sports centre. “Obviously we need money. But I like people to come here with the experiences we offer so that travellers can combine solidarity with creativity. We want to put meaning back into people’s lives”. At Cerería Candela, in Palma (C. Fábrica, 73), you can purchase Bamba products.

It had never occurred to Rocio to create an NGO, “but you see that you can improve other people’s lives, that you’re useful, you’re privileged and it doesn’t cost you a thing to help. You might think that if you don’t have much money, or a sponsor, you can’t achieve anything, but you have to be brave and take the first step. If you’re passionate and constant and your objective is a good one, everything falls into place gradually”, she explains.

“Seeing a child who lost his parents at the age of eight, but who is at university now and who tells you, ‘I study because I want to give back that opportunity and pass it on to others’, is enriching. The people who have suffered the most are those who engage the most for others, because they are reversing that negative sense their lives had and they want to turn it into something positive”.

Every time Rocio hears someone say “those poor people in Kenya, having to live in those conditions”, her reply is “poor you, locked in your daily routine and scared of taking a step forward. Over there they give you so many life lessons about everything, enjoying the present, helping others, living in a community, not complaining about just anything”.

“In the west we are really afraid of [...]

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Read this article in full in IN PALMA 66. And if you like, subscribe to IN PALMA for 1 year and get the next 4 issues of the magazine delivered to your home.