Reflections on meeting Roland

I’d been sponsoring Roland for about year, and we’d exchanged a couple of cards and letters. I’d learned a few things about him – he has a dog called Lesio who he feeds every day, and he really likes football (that’s Roland, I’m not sure about the dog). In his third letter, in response to my questions about how he would celebrate Christmas, Roland wrote:

'We will make a big baklava for New Year and I will butcher a big pig and we will go to a restaurant with my family and if you can we will welcome you here in Albania'.

Now I’m a vegetarian, but I liked the sound of the “big baklava” (a sweet pastry with nuts and honey). So I immediately made up my mind to go.

It was July when I finally got around to my visit. I went for a week, and spent a few days camping and enjoying the mountainous scenery. I bought a football and some nice books to give to Roland and his family as gifts. Before I met Roland, I spent two days meeting some of the other sponsored children in the communities, delivering their birthday cards and talking to them about the difference sponsorship is making in their lives. Some of the children I met were confident, and talked to me clearly about what sponsorship meant to them.

Piter, 11, showed me all the letters and cards his sponsor had sent, which he'd saved up over the three years he’s been sponsored. When I asked him about his sponsor, he told me all about her – about her family, including all of her nieces and nephews, her pet dog, and the different places she had lived. He brought out the pairs game that so many sponsors sent out a couple of years ago and showed me how he plays it with his sister – they’ve made up their own rules. He talked happily about a summer camp that he had just been on, made possible by World Vision sponsors. “We learnt dancing,” he said, smiling, “to a song by Jennifer Lopez.” I asked him about the football World Cup, as the semi-finals were coming up in the next two days. “I am supporting Brazil,” he told me, “because it is the country of samba.”

On Tuesday afternoon, I met Ermando, aged 18, who’d been sponsored for more than eight years. He was confident and relaxed, and totally happy for me to ask him questions about sponsorship and what it meant to him.

 “I had the same sponsor all these years,” Ermando told me. “His name is Stuart. He is very interested in my life and in each letter he asks about me and my family.”

 “When I saw that my sponsor was so interested in my life and my family, this pushed me to be interested in him too.”

“I have seen children disappointed in my area. We talk and we share. They saw that I am very content and glad about my relationship with my sponsor. And some people were very materialistic and they asked about the clothes and said where did you get those from and they said ‘lucky you because our sponsor doesn’t even write to us’.”

What Ermando said made me think of some of the children I’d met who'd been really shy when I’d delivered their birthday cards. They would offer a single word answer when asked a question, and seemed afraid even to look at me. The local volunteers told me it was normal for Albanian children to be shy, and they weren’t used to the idea that adults might be interested in what they had to say. They told me this was the first time these children had received anything from their sponsors.

I wondered if Ermando had been like that eight years ago, and whether the friendship with his sponsor was what had made the difference. Ermando had also told me that he was now part of a youth group supported by the donations of World Vision sponsors. I later met the rest of the group, and found out about the things they were doing to transform their own community, including raising the funds to renovate a school in one of the poorest villages in Lezha. I was impressed. I’d never heard of a youth group in England doing something like that.

On Wednesday it was finally time for me to meet Roland. I waited nervously in the World Vision office, sitting by the open door, wondering when I should give them the presents I bought. Would there be a chance to play with the football?

When Roland and his family started to come up the stairs, I recognised Roland immediately, but I was taken aback by how small he was, and that his hair had been cropped. And I was surprised to see him wearing a blue spiderman top. I suppose, without consciously thinking it, I had expected him to be wearing the same t-shirt as in the photograph I’d got when I signed up to sponsor.

We went into the next room and sat in a circle on plastic chairs as a translator helped us to exchange conversation. I don’t remember much of what was said in that first half an hour. They were surprised that I knew the names of all four of Roland’s sisters. I remember that we got out the letters that we’d exchanged and looked at the photographs. Roland was very shy, and I expect even children in the UK would be, at meeting a new adult. Eljona, the sponsor visits coordinator, reassured me, “he’s just shy, he’ll relax soon enough, that’s what always happens”.

We went by minibus to visit one of the poorest villages in the area, to see the work done by Ermando’s youth group. 

I was amazed at what they’d done. This village was half an hour’s drive from the town, and none of the youth group even knew anyone who lived there. They’d just heard about the poor state of the school and wanted to help. So it was really interesting being shown around and hearing about how things had changed. Having come to visit Roland, I wanted him to have an enjoyable day but he was very quiet. I wanted to know more about him – what he liked doing, what kinds of mischief he got up to, what he did at school, what his favourite book was if he had one, what games he liked playing – that sort of thing.

We went to a nice restaurant, and sat outside in the sunshine. Everyone else ordered the biggest lump of meat on the menu, and I chose a pizza. Then we got down to some conversation. Roland’s dad was the easiest to draw into conversation – I learnt that he quit his job in construction because it was dangerous and causing him injuries, but that his new work as a butcher didn’t bring in a regular income. We talked about the time when they emigrated to Greece, and why they came back again. And he told me about how their house is falling down, and how they dreamed of building a new one but knew they would never be able to afford it.

Roland didn’t say anything at all, and every time I spoke to him, the attention of the adults turned to him due to the need for translation. Looking back, this would have been a good time to play football together- the perfect ice breaker.

The visit drew to a close after lunch, as the family had other things to attend to in the afternoon. I presented my gifts to them. Roland gave me a hug, and they piled into the mini bus and went. I was left feeling a little sad that I’d come all this way to meet Roland, and he’d barely said a word. It was hard to tell if he had enjoyed the day with me, and I had expected something quite different.

When we got back to the World Vision office, I needed some time to reflect. I’d been feeling upset when we’d had to say goodbye. I knew that I shouldn’t have been feeling so dejected but I’d thought that a visit would be a more special experience. It had been when I’d gone to Zambia and spent time with a sponsored child, Edwin, and seen how he spent a typical day. If visiting someone else’s sponsored child had been inspiring, I thought that meeting Roland would be that much more special. But I came to realise that each visit, and every child, is unique and special in its own way.

As I flew back to the UK I wondered whether I should carry on with my sponsorship. Maybe I should sponsor a child in Africa, I thought. Maybe Albanian children didn’t really need sponsors. But as I thought about this I remembered all of the other children I’d met. I remember Argis and his toy cars. I remembered the smile on Piter’s face when he talked about dancing. I remembered the letters that Gjorgjina had kept safe for years, and the colouring pencils that she still used. I thought about all of the projects I had seen with my own eyes and the changes the families were seeing in their own villages.

Several months later, I’m still writing to Roland, and I’ve had another three letters back. In one of them he wrote, “I hope next time that you will come we could play football together. I can play very well now.” In another he wrote, “It was the first day at school when I got your letter... I will learn to write letters to you myself... I will write my next letter to you by myself with my own handwriting.”

Sure enough, when the next letter came, his handwriting was there. He only managed “Dear Duncan,” before his sister had to help. But it was a start. And about the day we met, he wrote, “I was so happy on that day I met you and I knew you from close by.”

At World Vision we often go to great lengths to explain to sponsors that their donations help their sponsored child by transforming the community where they live. When I met Edwin in Zambia, I saw that World Vision had provided a well and a school within a five-minute walk of his house. Changes in his village had made an incredible difference to him and his family. But it’s not just through these kind of changes that sponsorship changes lives. It is also through the direct encouragement that letters, cards and little gifts can bring.