January 2008
I am Brazilian. I spent one month in Hull, Winestead then came to Newcastle to drive a van colecting door to door clothes for then for one more month then I stop. There is no way to keep on doing this dirth job, I feel like a thief against the UK people, because people gave their clothes expecting that this is going to help someone but it is just for the pockets from that shit people from Humana.
I don´t know if I can help you that much because I worked for only 2 months on the clothes collection in Hull and Newcastle but all I can say about that time: in Newcastle clothes collection they get about 14 tons per week on clothes and shoes. There is a storage located in Durham where every Friday one big truck collect the big sacks. The clothes sent to Africa is to be sold in there, only what is in extreme damaged condition is give for free to the local people.
Here is a document that I started with a Italian friend when in UK where we made a list of what is the CICD life. Also, a Picasa web album link with some pictures of situation in Hull and Newcastle:
http://picasaweb.google.com/hertchvan
The work
On the Gaia time we have four months to get money for the scholarship that now is £2,650. To get this money we do leaflets, collect clothes by driving, work on a storage packing the clothes in pack sacks. In Newcastle one time per week there is a loading on a truck when we load 18 tons of clothes.
Leafleting
- Leaflet worker has to work from 8.00 to 16.00 doesn’t matter the weather (snow, rain, wind)Most of the times the areas where we make leaflet have done by other companies ( sometimes 6 in the same day!) and you have to fight to take your bags, because we don’t have a printed bag, only the leaflets so other companies take off the leaflets and steal our bags
- The “teachers” tell us to ask for house people if we can take the bags from other companies
- often happen that students has bitten by the dogs when putting leaflet on mail box and the school never take responsible for it, even take us to hospital
- if you made 1200 leaflet one day and on collecting you just get 10 bags, that is normal, you just have this per day. You have no guarantees that will reach the budget and they let you live with the obsession for it
Student qualifications
CICD don’t require any qualification. There are people that are not able to do a good work on Africa but also here they can be dangerous. We have stories that some students do masturbation in front of the girls and nothing happen, they were invited to work for the company!! Others spent the house time on bed, don’t have any kind of hygiene conditions and nobody cares. English is the common language at school time but even the teachers don’t speak good English and we have no classes to learn, also the people cannot express themselves. For the school it’s good as you cannot complain. They leave this person completely alone.
Hygiene
in Newcastle house as it has less people, around 16, we have a fairly good condition but on Winestead the conditions are completely out of any standards. The furnitures in Winestead belongs to the mental hospital times, we sleep on 50 years old bed
Cars / drivers / insurance / penalties
- the cars are old, not safe, the tires are on the life end, they repair by themselves without the standard skills
- the insurance aloud only EU people to drive cars up to 8 people and most of the EU people that is aloud to drive don’t have driving experience and the insurance only covers damages to persons, not to cars or other things
- you have to drive even if you feel that you are not able to. This means that it’s dangerous for you and for people that you drive
- the drivers drive more than 12 hours per day sometimes and 6 days a week and don’t have time even to piss because of the volume of maps to collect.
Expenses
The price that they pay for us is around one pound per bag, but it is a strange account because it depends on how many bags the group collected and to reach this amount you should have a lot of problems. They tell us on the interviews that they guarantee pocket money for outside expenses and food but this money is discounted on the amount of our work and also for the accommodation and house expenses including “teachers” expenses. For sure for one bag they take a lot of money. We need to pay for the rent of the house, the salary for the teacher and more as you can see on pic DSC03239.
Clothes
14 tons per week in Newcastle clothes collection Gaya collection and Storage
Food
When you contact the school they say that will provide food and accommodation, for food we have 3 pounds per day but this money is subtracted by the money levied by us.
They make shopping on Lidl, I think you know what kind of food we find at this place. Sometimes the food ends before the end of the week and we have to do with the rest of food we have so most of the times is unbelievable what kind of meals we have there. In Newcastle the situation is better because of the number of people. The teachers eat another type of food bought in Tesco, Asda etc.
In Hull 2 people have 1 hour to cook for 40 people
Teachers
The teachers cannot be called like this because they don’t teach us nothing. They are really strange because they act as the same way, women have small hair, wear unisex clothes, they don’t look female. They don’t have personal life, they spend all the time for the company. They just talk about the work, all the time, even when we are havind dinner, lunch etc.
The child Christopher
In Hull there is a kid around 8 years old that is the child of a teacher, she had he in Africa, the father is an African. She don’t care about this kid, by the morning who brings him to school is the students. The room that he lives with her mother is completely out of any kind of hygiene. For example, the kid pee on his bed and his mother simply put the mattress on the heater to dry and turn to the other surface. When he pee again, she do the same again…
Studies
-We must have one study day per week when we have to make some presentations. In these days they just give us the theme to explore and some printed papers from old books but the “teachers” never teaches nothing because they don’t have skills. By the morning we have the cleaning action that takes a half of day. Some of us went to collect others do shopping for the house.
Study Weekend
- has to be one per month
- starts with some presentations from the DIs (people that are closer to go to Africa) and people that came back from Africa or India. Then they give themes from presentations and divide us in groups for it. Then we have to make lunch, dinner, dishes, gardening and once they ask us to go door by door ask money so this was a task.
