5/6 March - Durban Hospitlaeros Training Course

We planned on 12 people and ended up with 13 trainees, 2 trainers, and 3 hospitaleros.
It was a fun weekend and great to have 6 people travel from Cape Town to do the course.

Every course helps us to learn and expand on the different aspects of the course.

For instance - first aid.
Many doctors, nurses, therapist, healers walk the Camino.  They can offer their help to other pilgrims on the Camino if necessary but treating illness and injury are actions the Federation insurer will NOT cover in the albergue policy.  Even if you (the hospitalero) is a doctor, nurse, physiotherapist, Reiki master or quantum healer, you are not covered to treat pilgrims in the albergue unless in a case of emergency or dire need. 

If a medical emergency arises, do what is done on an airplane or ship: call out to see if there is a medical professional in the house – often there is.  If you don’t think you can handle something, don’t start. Medical help for pilgrims is readily available at the Health Centre. Take the pilgrim there or arrange to have someone accompany them for this purpose. EMS help is available by calling 112. 

Perhaps you practise esoteric spirituality such as Tarot Card or psychic readings, or you are a medium and can speak with the dead.  We must remember that Spain is a Catholic country and over 50% of the pilgrims that stay in albergues are Spanish Catholics.  Another 25% Catholics come from neighbouring Portugal, France, Italy and Germany.  90% of Korean pilgrims are Catholics. 

As a psychic you are on a different spiritual path and these talents are fine practised on the Camino, but not readily welcomed in the traditional albergues, most of which are owned by the Catholic Church or Catholic organisations.  

Respect the religion and beliefs of the Country and especially the albergues where you serve.

HOSPITALEROS VOLUNTARIOS IN SOUTH AFRICA

HOSPITALEROS VOLUNTARIOS IN SUD AFRICA

In 2008 Rebekah Scott and Tom Friesen developed a prototype of an online hospitaleros training course in English.  The intention was to offer it to English speaking pilgrims who live in countries like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa who did not have training programs in their countries.

In 2009 Sylvia Nilsen was asked to test the course by completing the weekly online assignments.  For various reasons (one being that it is better to do face-to-face training with pilgrims than long-distance training) this course was never adopted. 

Sylvia walked to Finisterre in September 2009 and served with Begonia from A.G.A.C.S (Gallego Assoc) for a day at Finisterre before serving for two weeks at San Roque albergue in Corcubion.  When she returned home she applied to Ana Barreda of HOSVOL to run courses in South Africa.  She combined the online course assignments with the Canadian course material provided by Tom Friesen and Mary Virtue into a two-day training schedule. Courses have been held each year in a different city since 2010 and in 2014 Jenny rooks joined her as a Hospitalero trainer.  From 2010 till now, 108 South African pilgrims have been trained at courses held in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town. Almost half of these have served in Spain, some more than once, and a few have served in Portugal. 

We do not know how many pilgrims from South Africa walk the Camino each year but we think it is probably between 1000 and 1200.  Last year (2015) 808 South African pilgrims received a Compostela.

Learning to speak Spanish is one of the biggest challenges facing volunteers from South Africa.  There are 11 official languages in South Africa and most South Africans can speak more than one language, but very little Spanish is spoken. We are told that a papal decree of 1493 assigned all land in the New World west of 50 degrees W longitude to Spanish explorers and all the land east of that line to Portuguese explorers.  So, there are many Portuguese speakers in South Africa but few Spanish speakers. 

Getting to Spain, and to the albergue, is a long and costly journey for people from South Africa.  It is 11, 765km from Cape Town to Valladolid and can cost over €750 to fly to Spain.  Fortunately there is no time difference between South Africa and Spain. 

Sylvia Nilsen

2017