Maitri Patel

"Hello, I am Maitri Patel, I am from India and came to Portugal in September 2019. I like doing sports (going to the gym, playing badminton, basketball) and I love to draw. Right now I am studying at Escola Secundária de Odemira. I met Inês, Matilde and Madalena at my school, where they had started the BOWING Project. I really enjoyed every activity we did with them. After a few months they asked me if I wanted to be part of the first performance. We did many different things like dance, language tasks, cultural activities, etc. We made an amazing show. I had many different roles in it, where for example I had to walk with other girls, which represented the voyage from our countries and how far we had travelled, facing so many difficulties. I took part in the dancing and I also was a sleeping princess, with video projections on my dress. We ended the first show with so much pleasure and so many memories... One year later, we created another performance (BOWING BACK), in November 2022. We medidated, sang, and also presented the problems that migrants have to face after coming here, like the documentation and discrimination. BOWING BACK began with meditation gestures and after that we walked the audience to a place we called the New SEF (Service of Foreigners and Borders). There, we began our performance with a dance in which the audience joined. It was so fun dancing with them. I also took part in a choir where we represented the bureaucratic process at SEF and all the required documents. After that, six other participants and I had a really important role where we each had to collect 25 people and guide them through a visit inside the New SEF. Each one of us had a box with the number 25 written on it in different languages. In the next part of the performance, we all danced bhangra and a Nepali dance. We learned Punjabi along with the audience. We ended BOWING BACK, again, with so many memories and a big bow. I had never had such an experience before, where I met so many great artists who had so much dedication and were so passionate about their work. BOWING was an experience where I got to know different cultures and traditions, people of different ages, cultures, religions, mindsets and still be able to work together as a family... I have countless memories but I can't forget how all of us cried at the end of the show. As well as the memory of all of us walking through the audience on the bridge of Odemira...."