A is for Athens, and A is for Aleppo. We’re in Athens and my student is from Aleppo. He’s constructing sentences: “Athens is a beautiful city” he says. He pauses, thinks: “Aleppo is not beautiful.” No, it isn’t, not any more.
I’m back in Greece, this time working with Kitab World Classroom, an ngo (non-governmental organization) that’s helping young refugees - high school/college age - get their disrupted education back on course. My role is to help them with English. I’ve been mentoring one of the students long distance for the past nine months and I finally met her and her family two days ago. I learned a little more about the story of their struggle to reach Greece from Turkey after they fled Syria: it took many - she said 20 - attempts and disasters involving coastguards, a detention center, a floundering boat and roping the family together before they managed to cross the Mediterranean Sea. Because the mother was pregnant they spent just two months in a refugee camp on the island of Chios before being cleared to move to Athens. That’s probably good. The camps on the Islands are now heavily overcrowded and are very unpleasant places to live.
 |
| Kitab classroom in action: some younger students here today, especially the one in the pram! |
But the problems don’t end with arrival in Greece: like many refugees from Syria and elsewhere, they’re now trapped in this impoverished country, unable to support themselves, and not yet, perhaps not ever, among those privately sponsored, or referred by the UNHCR (the United Nations Refugee Agencv) for resettlement elsewhere, those being the two avenues out. Seeing the desperation in their faces I begin to wonder if another avenue will open up: one of return. With the apparent decrease in hostilities in Syria, will people be able to go back? Will they want to go back? Aleppo is no longer beautiful.
 |
| Outside the Hope Café: the key hasn't arrived yet so volunteer Mary Ellen is conducting a lesson on the sidewalk (British: pavement) |
My student today - let’s call him Adnan – is an unaccompanied minor. He’s bright, sassy and funny. He spends his days volunteering, helping to run a small café on a side street in Athens that provides food and a social space for refugees. I’ve been asked to help some of his colleagues with their English before they start work a few days a week. I ask Adnan if he’s going to come along to that lesson. “Maybe” he says, smiling. I think he has something more to say, so I wait: “You know, they don’t speak English,” he says coyly. Oh, I get his meaning: unlike him, they are complete beginners, they will not be constructing sentences. I laugh: we both laugh. “Oh well,” I say: “It’s going to be A, B, C then!” Forewarned is forearmed. Thank you, Adnan.
Find Kitab at: http://www.kitabngo.org/
Hope Café at: https://www.facebook.com/soulfoodforrefugees/
Please support these organizations if possible.
 |
| Writing, in Arabic, a notice about English lessons |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please post comments