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