Celebrating Estonian national holidays in Effatha

Ahoj! I’m Käti from Estonia and I want to share some Estonian holidays we have celebrated at my workplace, Effatha.

First of them was already in November and we call it mardipäev (Mart - a name of a man; päev - day; so if I translate it would mean Day of Mart). It marks the start of the season of indoor works and the holiday itself is on 10th of November, however, most important activities are performed the day before. In Effatha we watched pictures and videos of costumes people wear on that day and together with all of our clients we got creative and made masks for ourselves to feel the spirit.

Other two events were both in February. Instead of Valentine’s Day in Estonia we celebrate friendships (and call it sõbrapäev, Day of Friends). In schools it is very popular to give cards and small gifts🎁 as chocolates 🍫or something handmade to dearest friends. Some people even bring a bigger amount of candies or a cake for everyone they spend time together with during the day. Because in Czechia it is different than in my country, we started small and crafted cards for each other, an extra gift from workers were 🤎chocolate hearts for everybody.  In my opinion the event ent well, although some clients were not too excited about making cards, but with that amount of people it is normal not everyone to be thrilled about everything.😁 

The last holiday so far was the Independence Day of Estonia that is on 24th of February. As this year it fell on a weekend we had a small celebration the day before. I thought that listening to a lecture about history and politics would not be interesting at all for clients so I tried to make something more interactive and easy (plus my Czech language skills are still far from doing something as complicated as that). The biggest emphasis was put on traditional food which I brought with me after Christmas. Of course we tried dark rye bread with butter, fish, boiled egg and onion, but also some sweets and salty snacks. In fact, we had bread in three different forms: as a sandwich, as chips and as a drink. The drink tastes a little bit like non-alcoholic beer, but sweeter. And as Czech people are undoubtedly fond of their favorite drink, most people enjoyed this (by the way, we call it kali and a similar beverage exists in some other countries too). Other than tasting new flavors we watched videos of big dance festivals (a few times I could even point out myself from recordings, which felt super nice :)) and coloured pictures of patterns that are used in decorations of traditional clothing. I truly hope everyone enjoyed that day, it meant a lot to me to share important parts of my culture.

Although I enjoy preparing and leading such events at my workplace, I feel lost at times with options that I can do with clients. Their abilities, knowledge and interests are non-identical. I have not studied social work and therefore sometimes I simply do not know what we could even do. Fortunately my supervisor and coworkers are always helpful. 🧡

To sum up, I can say that it has been a pleasant experience bringing my culture to Effatha. We have some more plans for the rest of my voluntary service, so stay tuned! 😉