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Re-Competence
You remember my De-competence piece about being knocked for six adjusting to life in a different culture? Well here is its long-awaited companion piece; a guest post from a dear Turkish friend; wisdom born of her experience making a new life whilst seeking sanctuary in the UK.
Re-competence
Spotify can make far near.
It plays a tune from your hometown in the background. The updated music lists seem to want to say something:
Reconnect to life. Re-competence yourself.
Let the darkness be behind.
There are stars all over the sky anyway. Some of them hide inside people.
Make a few of them your guide.
Maybe you can’t speak well with words.
But hearts don’t need language. You can speak emoji anyway.
Maybe you can find a few kindred spirits.You know the flavours from your homeland already.
Try to discover new flavours.
Birds of other lands sing, too.
Other trees also bear fruit.
New stories are written in other houses as well.
Don’t stop, reauthorize. Empower yourself. Even though they stole your past with a button overnight, life goes on.
They can’t steal your memory, you have your hands, mind, heart and soul.
Start a course, learn cycling.
Climb a mountain. So maybe you can see the altitude of your soul.
Say hello to a community of good people, give them speech with your sloppy words. I’m sure you’ll get a nice echo.
Write new poems, read new books.
Rediscover yourself. Or maybe discover for the first time, maybe you never have. You didn’t see yourself, you always hid yourself.
Maybe now is the show time.
Go buddy..
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Sewing machines and sanctuary in Narnia
To and from the Beavers’ Home
C.S. Lewis’s green and forest-filled land of Narnia has always provided me with sense of ‘home’ in children’s literature. Wherever I’ve lived (7 different addresses in 7 years at one point) in each new bedroom part of the home-making process was unpacking the Narnia chronicles as a metaphorical place to dwell.
It’s my geek thing, so I’ve read bookfulls of Narnia-related critique and commentary, dragged classfulls of year 5s through the wardrobe, discussed picture versions with new-to-English children, taste-tested their Turkish Delight recipes, dreamed about Aslan, deconstructed films (you get the idea) and spent so many hours in conversation chewing over theories and savouring elements that it came over me like a thunder clap last week when I noticed an entirely new angle.
The flight from the Beavers’ house is a total refugee moment! (From a child’s point of view). And with an extra poignant layer as the Beavers’ house itself has just become a welcoming refuge to the children who were new arrivals to the country with only the clothes they stood up in (and even those coats were borrowed).
A quiet Palestinian art teacher asked this week if we had any sewing machines and I thought ‘why are sewing machines such a thing?’ They really are. People run whole sewing-machine-based refugee projects in other cities and countless women have requested them over the years; from post-graduate Nigerians to illiterate Kuwaiti Biduun mums, do folk the entire world over make their own clothes as a matter of course while for me it takes 3 YouTube videos and half an hour of swearing just to thread the needle? (Clearly too much reading and too little sewing in my formative years.) I guess the ‘sewing machines’ stage comes in that season of rebuilding your life when you’ve got the most basic shelter needs sorted and you’re trying to get family clothes organised or earn an income using your skills again.
Pauline Baynes’ evocative illustrations are totally part of the magic
So Mrs Beaver wants to pack her sewing machine when she and her husband and 3 Pevensie children are hastily flinging survival items into sacks as the White Witch’s sinister murderous wolves lope menacingly ever closer through the snow and darkness towards their cosy home.
And what a cosy home it is! When they met Mr Beaver a few pages back the children were hungry lost strangers chilly despite their fur coats, unaware of the hazards or who to trust, unsure of their next steps and shaken to have discovered the devastation of Mr Tumnus’ wrecked and desecrated home. Mrs Beaver, the picture of well-ordered grandmotherly industriousness pictured in her little glasses sat at her beautiful hand-turned Singer gave them a heart-warming welcome
“So you’ve come at last!” she said, holding out both her wrinkled old paws. “At last! To think that ever I should live to see this day! The potatoes are boiling and the kettle’s singing….”
Within a few domestically brisk sentences the ravenous children are installed snugly round her generous table eating freshly caught trout, buttered potatoes and gloriously sticky marmalade roll amidst the neatly stored equipment needed to live their lives (in this case as beavers on a river dam in winter- gumboots, hams, strings of onions, pairs of shears, fishing rods and oilskins) asking all their questions and being introduced to their future in this snowy new country (sound familiar?) with its protracted winter, baffling politics, prophecies and the golden hope of Aslan’s coming.
So it’s doubly chilling when the children who’ve found sanctuary, explanations, hospitality and a basis for making plans in this delightfully practical home realise that betrayal by their own brother means they’re suddenly in danger and need to flee instantly.
Christian Birmingham’s watercolour illustrated book is gorgeous visually, but the wording is more of a summary than a re-telling
Fortunately being a children’s book it’s not too harrowing, C.S. Lewis keeping the focus firmly on the contrast between the others’ sense of urgency and Mrs Beaver’s determination to depart only when she’s packed clean handkerchiefs, the tin of tea and bread for their journey.
Her priorities are so at odds with the others’ impatience that the reader reacts differently depending on who they’re identified with in that moment. As a child I was frustrated with Mrs B’s slowness and in anguish on the children’s behalf (don’t you realise the White Witch only a few miles away has instructed Maugrim to speed hither with his swiftest wolves and kill whatever he finds??).
Conversely as a young parent I was right with Mrs B trying to plan and pack under pressure for the immediate physical necessities of their flight… and now as someone who supports refugees I can see her only gradually accepting the full implications of leaving everything; adjusting from her role as a home-maker worried the Witch will fiddle with her sewing machine, to someone hoping to escape with their lives while carrying the emotional responsibility of shielding the children from the weight of that reality.
Then, because C.S. Lewis knows exactly how much peril we can all handle at bedtime, the journey itself through young Lucy’s eyes brings us all safely back to the familiar territory; the difficulty of sufficiently appreciating the glorious Narnian scenery when you’re really tired on a long walk:
“And she stopped looking at the dazzling brightness of the frozen river with all its waterfalls of ice and at the white masses of the tree-tops and the great glaring moon and countless stars and could only watch the little short legs of Mr Beaver going pad-pad-pad through the snow in front of her…. “
..before a night spent in the bolt-hole for beavers in bad times aided by the contents of a hip flask (Night Nurse anyone? Or my Grandma’s ‘special mixture’ with which she dosed terrified hospital patients at bed time to help them sleep during the WW2 bombing) and the glorious solemn encounter with Father Christmas – hurrah the worthy Mrs Beaver will receive a new sewing machine – culminating in that hot tray of tea things complete with a jug of cream.
Merry Christmas one and all!
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Christmas reflection part 1
Baby Jesus the Migrant
Let’s call them Yusuf and Maryam, and little Isa – he’s nearly 2 now, walking, talking and full of curiosity. So they have relatives here, and Mariam is pregnant with baby two. As there are no humanitarian visas, resettlement schemes or safe legal routes from Palestine, they somehow, through a series of unkept promises, unfortunate circumstances and untrustworthy guides, find themselves on a dark beach somewhere near Calais, with toddler Isa bewildered by the torches and shouting men, being crammed hurriedly onto an orange dinghy bound for the English channel.
Yusuf can swim in the warm river water around Nazareth, but doubts his ability to keep his precious family safe if there are large waves and the flimsy boat capsizes. Why did the Magi have to alert Herod to their existence? Some ‘wise men’! Maryam can still hear reverberating through her memory the screams as Herod’s soldiers snatched their neighbours’ precious sons from their mothers’ arms and blood flowed… the wailing of Rachel mourning for her children is still the soundtrack to her nightmares.
There’s petrol mixed with the saltwater swilling around their sandals in the bottom of the boat. They had to leave everything except their phones behind, including Yusuf’s carpentry tools – how is he going to afford to buy some more to make a living for their family? If the sun is hot and they’re stranded just sitting there, Isa will dehydrate badly…
Mouths parched, stiff, exhausted and knowing this experience will be etched permanently into the psyche of little Isa, they finally stagger gratefully onto a pebbly beach somewhere in Kent. There seems to be a vitriolic group yelling at them to “go home!” – they would infinitely prefer to be safely back at home right now among friends and family…but they are accustomed to hostility and too bone-weary to engage right now.
“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
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Christmas Reflection part 2
Joseph and Mary Flight to Egypt
Or perhaps Joseph and Mary are from South America – let’s call them José and Maria, with little Jesús – they managed to get a study visa for an applied carpentry college course, and they’re at Heathrow with toddler Jesús grizzling because the plane flight hurt his ears. José has his tools with him, but is currently in an isolation room, with a uniformed man shouting in his face. He doesn’t know where he stands or the exact form of words to claim asylum or to make this shouting stop without being arrested; the airport official clearly doesn’t believe what he’s saying.
Back on the road out of Bethlehem that night, it seemed a wise idea to head for Scotland, that little-known country where Herod’s intelligence team would be unlikely to track him down. But now it’s clear that there’s no chance of making their onward flight to the secure obscurity of Glasgow. Now they have no control over their destination.
He can hear Jesús whimpering outside the door, and Maria’s whispered attempts to soothe him… adrenaline and cortisol are coursing through his veins, every muscle is clenched and he’s sweating despite the cold.
Fast-forward a fortnight and José and Maria are now in the hotel room in Croydon, a couple of streets away from here. Little Jesús is crying again, because he’s hungry and he ‘want Nanna’s cooking!’ Wants to be sat safely on doting grandparents’ laps, munching pupusas and sour cherries while his cousins play peekaboo with him.
Here he’s bored, frustrated, lonely, and he doesn’t even recognise that this congealed greyish forkful of pasta is meant to be food…
The nurse glared at Maria this morning when he weighed Jesús, and rolled his eyes when Maria wasn’t certain of the date of his last vaccinations. She’d thought so fast too, screenshotting his vaccination record in the chaos of their terrified departure, but here in the surgery she has no data to check her phone. She can feel the first flutters of baby Jaime moving within her and yet severely doubts her ability to parent another child without any support in this inhospitable place, with no wider family, no money, no kitchen, no friends, none of the comforting reassurance of José’s well-smoothed wooden toys…
As head of the household it’s on José to persuade the officials at the interview that their fear of persecution is well-founded. The hours at night his mind circles round how to explain the divine element in those events culminating in the Magi triggering the tyrant’s paranoia. And trying to convey the political complexities through a translator to a sceptical official with minimal understanding of the region. And that’s before those probing questions which will inevitably uncover that it was essentially a dream that led to this whole uprooting. If their story isn’t believed will Maria be giving birth to Jamie in detention? Or deported back within reach of Herod’s long arm and José’s possible death?
God, will we ever be safe?
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Settling Ukrainians into Primary school
This week in “Ukrainian language” club at school we’ll be decorating gingerbread people. Probably giving them blue and yellow dungarees. In today’s English lesson I noticed most of the pipe cleaner cats also seemed to have a blue and yellow colour scheme… before we moved on to more realistic drawings and a conversation about how much they miss their pets who had been left behind.
I wondered whether to risk a reference to one lad’s father back home and tried a tentative “is Daddy feeding kitty?” pointing to the figures he’d drawn on the whiteboard to introduce his family. But no, it turned out that kitty and co (кошеня кішка and сірий) have apparently run away / escaped so we concluded they were probably happily feasting on birds they had caught in the city trees.
Then through the window we caught a distant siren sound passing on the busy road outside and I noticed him flinch (we have a reassurance plan for if the fire alarm goes off) before his eyes flicked to the world map high on the wall on which Russia’s outline seemed particularly huge and menacing.
When it was just the two of us in my room the other day a younger newly arrived Ukrainian girl initiated a game of throwing screwed up balls of scrap paper at that Russia outline on the map (she apologised to any other countries if the ball went astray and bounced off them by mistake). It was poignant as a 7 year old’s way of expressing her impotent sense of rage, fear, frustration and loss.
Better throw screwed up paper balls at maps though than take issue with the actual Russian children in your class (some of whom are also Asylum seekers who have fled Putin). Fortunately we have a school full of compassionate alert staff who keep an eye out for tricky inter-family interactions in the playground at home time.
We learned from the mums (just in time) about Vyshyvanka day so the traditional embroidered blouses could be worn to school on Thurs 19 May.
Photo by Vladimir Yaitskiy , CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia CommonsAt the Ukrainian parents’ coffee morning today I watched newly arrived mums (none of whom take milk in their tea and many of whom are still teaching remotely or working as software analysts by zoom) being welcomed by those mums who’ve been here years (who all take milk in their tea). Tears happened quietly at some points … and laughter too as we discussed their potato crop beetle collecting memories (I had kids-engaging-with-nature envy). As the subject turned to school life I felt myself tearing up with a sense of relief. Relief that we have a nurturing Primary education system that broadly values learning through creative play, supportive friendships, fun and positive mental health and in which it is relatively easy to find your feet as a refugee if you have a half decent peer group and sympathetic teacher.
Relief too that there’s *something* tangible we can do to help… it does lie within our power to provide a welcome and smooth the path of integration for these families in front of us. We may be powerless to stop the hideous mass destruction, but we can at least make darn sure that if they’re entitled to free school meals, they’re receiving them… and that the school sweatshirt a pro-active Teaching Assistant has dug out from the depths of the lost property box for them to wear on their first day has at least been through the washing machine.
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De-competence
The highly competent Sarah Crowther of REAP (Refugees in Effective Active Partnership) introduced this word while running a strategy session for our charity yesterday; new arrivals experiencing de-competence.
It really chimed with the Sierra Leonean lawyer sitting next to me, who, despite his sophisticated language skills, high-flying qualifications and experience travelling, had felt utterly overwhelmed and discombobulated on arrival at Heathrow.
De-competence spirited me straight back to my sweatiest, most disorientated Summer: 1998 in Mumbai. This is part of why cultural orientation and welcome are so important to me now.
My husband (slightly reluctantly) and I (brim-full of enthusiasm) were spending our Summer holiday helping out in Urban India with a team from Steve Chalke’s “Oasis”. Our remit was to redesign their English curriculum to become a whole lot less “O-Level Shakespeare” and a whole lot more relevant to the poverty-stricken Street children learning it, “Can I shine your shoes, Uncle… and if I converse engagingly can I have a generous tip?” And meanwhile convince the teachers to lighten up their very formal pedagogic approach “NO, repeat after me, “What is your good name?” by incorporating some informal teaching methods such as throwing a ball while questioning students (a slightly optimistic enterprise, it turned out). It also turned out that Indian English was significantly different… to be understood without endlessly repeating myself, I had to drop articles, change verbs, tweak prepositions and introduce a sing-song element and some head tilting. Replying to curious people on the train “I stay in UK” became my catch-phrase.
I commuted to a slum school in Andheri each morning, muddling along at the HIndi-speaking Nursery, fumblingly chanting and mumbling songs I only half understood about washerwomen (Youtube “Dhobi aaya” and it makes a whole lot more sense, if only the internet had existed then)…being laughed at by the children (apparently even now I still can’t pronounce “Heads, shoulders, knees and toes” recognisably in Hindi) while longing for the ineffective fan to rotate my way and trying to decide how to react to the real actual dancing bear on a chain that someone had brought to the alleyway outside.
I’d routinely led successful Nursery singing sessions for dozens of groups back home, and could persuade an entire church congregation to join in a kids’ action song, or get a mixed ability class of 9 year olds to write a version of Homer’s Odyssey in rhyme no problem… but there I couldn’t even understand the lyrics to a nursery rhyme and felt utterly confused, hot, blundering and thoroughly de-skilled. My language struggles sapped my wider confidence and I found myself devoid of initiative feeling only a degree away from entirely useless, and this was having chosen to be there and operating in the familiar terrain of education.
We were staying in a flat in the outskirts of Mumbai (Kandivali East for those of you who know the area.) In those pre-internet days we’d been assiduously practising phrases from an ancient ‘learn Hindustani’ booklet in preparation, but I was stronger on the spoken than the written aspects and needed my husband to coach me on which station to alight at (the longer-name-more-rounded-wiggly-lines-with-the-uppy-squiggles station) before attempting to catch the bus number diagonal-swirl-with-the-dash (mainly by chasing after it, leaping and sweatily grabbing for a hand-hold on the doorway pole.)
Due to my school term dates we missed the Mumbai group orientation session, so when two local girls knocked at the flat door enthusiastically offering to cook and clean for us the day we arrived, we politely declined, full of ignorant British horror at the embarrassing idea of having any kind of domestic servants. Oh how we regretted that decision. For some chemistry reason I still don’t understand, when I hand-washed my clothes in a red bucket, they turned permanently scarlet. Our thick clothes grew mildew (it was monsoon season), milk and water needed boiling, everything needed protecting from the cockroaches, which had supernatural fridge-entering powers, and rice was sold in scoops from an open sack, so needed picking through to remove everything that wasn’t actually rice. When people shared bottles of cola, they hovered it above their mouth so no lips touched glass… somehow without all the bubbles going up their nose, then scrutinzed you trying and failing to do the same.
Despite having money, we ended up mostly living off eggs, bananas and some kind of ‘ready brek’ porridge, which I thought was breakfast cereal, but turned out to be baby food, and we had nobody to consult about packed lunches. Have you met the fantastic Tiffinwala lunch delivering system? It’s an amazingly efficient technology-free Uber Eats Deliveroo idea (your wife/ domestic helpful person cooks your lunch at home after you’ve left for work) which was invented over a century ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDD32skx-zMab_channel=GlobalNews. Well we didn’t discover it until a chance conversation with a neighbour just before we came home. Honestly, where’s a good pre-internet information source when you need it? Normally quite relaxed and adventurous eaters, we clung to hygenically-packaged brands we recognised that felt safe and if we ended up crouched over the squat toilet regretting a curry, well that proved we should have exercised caution, right?
I regularly embarrassed myself trying to haggle over items that turned out to be “fixed price” and, reliant only on word of mouth (“ooh don’t buy from street vendors, never eat anything that may possibly have been washed in dirty water, avoid meat” …did I mention how anxiety-filled life was before the internet) eating out was very cautiously undertaken. So despite cooking up a healthy stir fry without a second thought at home, we struggled to feed ourselves well. Our options felt needlessly narrow, restricted by our local knowledge and experience. Even though we had money and were borrowing a decent flat, that lack of food related information and cultural life-skills knowledge just kept tripping us up.
Unfamiliarity with clothes also contributed to de-competencifying… Some friendly girl I had got chatting to had taken me to buy my sari, which was scarlet (deliberately this time) and covered in gold, but also apparently surprisingly reasonably priced. I had no idea at the time, but after we got back to the UK, a suburban Tamil neighbour discreetly asked whether it had been a very poor person who had helped me choose as I’d been walking round all summer inadvertently in cheap bling evening wear.
And in the Monsoon I waded through knee deep rain water regularly with open blisters (where to buy sticking plasters?). And shalwar kameez (punjabi trouser suits) don’t have pockets. Or maybe some do, but mine definitely didn’t. I watched in puzzled admiration as the local young women my age stepped pristine from commuting on the back of their husbands’ motorbikes, immaculate flower still positioned perfectly in their hair. I tried ditching the rucksack and taking my lunch wrapped in my scarf thingy (dupatta) but one day someone slashed it open with a knife in an attempt to steal my money and the pressing crowds of commuters all paused mid-footstep and watched as all my possessions, including sanitary wear, scattered mortifyingly far and wide across Andheri platform. Humiliated and struggling to keep myself safe; de-competenced by wardrobe malfunction.
Without local knowledge (or mobile phones), I kept someone waiting for an hour and 40 minutes patiently standing at the wrong entrance to a station (who knew there was more than one?). Without any map / travel apps, I triumphantly scrambled onto moving trains, only to discover just too late that they were headed in entirely the wrong direction. WIthout a general familiarity with the area, people’s supposedly clear directions made no sense to me and without a good accent the kindly folk who stopped to give directions couldn’t understand even where I was aiming for unless I showed them the name written on a scrap of paper. Without cultural experience of gender-segregated train carriages, I didn’t know how to react to the sari-clad eunuch in the women’s carriage threatening to curse me if I didn’t give him money. Without the thick skin born of familiarity with a post-colonial multilingual society, I wondered why people arguing on the train switched into my language for swears, insults and curses (did everyone secretly hate me?) yet there was simultaneously the squirming awkwardness of their noisy appreciation of my fair skin (asking was I ”high caste?” Where to even start).
I had a booklet of train ticket tokens which had to be validated before travel by a punching machine accessed by stepping over all the sleeping people living on the station platform, deciding how to respond to all the begging small children touching our shoes en route. Then my commute involved finding where on the platform to stand to join in the organised line who, I quickly gathered, prepared to force our way into the already jam-packed women’s carriage by bracing our hands in the small of the back of the person in front as the train approached. All while managing your recalcitrant dupatta (and that darn rucksack for which there was literally NO SPACE) so it had to be be passed cooperatively woman-to-woman to the distant luggage rack… and the whole thing accomplished clinging to an over-head handle with three women’s noses pressed into your armpit. (Please may it not smell too bad this early in the morning). Why no other lunch boxes? Why no pockets in my clothes? Why is there no Hindi phrase for “sorry I just trod heavily on your sandalled toe?” Everyone I consulted said this scenario called for a head tilt and an apologetic smile rather than words, but I couldn’t get quite the right angle for this non-verbal head tilt – without YouTube they seemed so ambiguous… when I once tried to catch a taxi home and asked the driver whether he could take me to Lokhandwala complex, I couldn’t tell whether his gesture meant “yes hop in the back” or “no, get lost”, so I just sort of de-competently hovered while he rolled his eyes evidently thinking me a dithering fool.
I had discovered the dupatta was necessary for #MeToo reasons, so was striding along purposefully with my elbows out at Andheri station platform, when a man I had tried to shake off cried “Madame, I am a ticket inspector”. Immediately a curious crowd gathered as I rummaged feverishly through my various rucksack pockets and pouches for the elusive validated token with today’s date on it. Before I found it, I was chivalrously rescued by a heroic chap I’d chatted with earlier. He strode up and announced confidently “I can vouch, this woman is of good character, I shared a rickshaw with her this morning and she is here doing charity work”. Inspector satisfied, the crowd melted away and I was left expressing suitable gratitude for his gallantry on the outside, while inside feeling utterly inept at life with the finally-discovered crumpled ticket now useless in my hand. De-competent.
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Words of Welcome
Welcome welcome!
To the land of green parks with ducks to be fed and strong metal safety-checked swings that you can trust.
Welcome welcome!
To the schools where your younger children will find creativity, colourful plastic, abundant stationery, learning through play, and free hot meals… but your teenagers will be perplexed by rudeness. They’ll be known as “EAL” which means they have the gift of more than one language. Keep them proud of their home tongue and culture, explain to school properly how to pronounce their names, their teachers can learn.
Welcome welcome!
To charity shops, Poundland, Iceland and Lidl… there are markets too but we seldom negotiate over price and the cucumbers are mysteriously straight. You’ll find dates, spice and lentils in the ‘world food’ aisle; rice near the pasta.
Welcome welcome !
To the land of drinkable tap water. Perhaps you’ll remind us to appreciate this.
Welcome welcome!
To libraries where you can chat, learn nursery rhymes and use computers… and the wifi is free. Please make them your home from home… far from home. Your daughters will meet Jacqueline Wilson and your sons: dinosaurs and trains (though we feel strongly that girls can like them too). They’ll love Handa’s Surprise and Tom Gates and Allan Ahlberg.
Welcome welcome!
To the land of mysterious signs where gaps must be minded, pigeons must not be fed, dogs must be ‘picked up after’ and where “produce a specimen sample” means “wee in the pot”. Perhaps you’ll help us to talk to one another clearly.
Welcome welcome!
To the land where people seem to love animals and go shopping for dog food, pay to insure them and even buy coats for them… but yell at their children at bus stops or rush tiny babies off to nurseries. Where elderly donkeys have pastures to trot happily but elderly neighbours are forgotten. Perhaps you can remind us of gentle care and cherishing for our old and young.
Welcome. You’ll find much here to love and much to mourn. May you find peace.
I wrote this for “Letters of Welcome” a beautiful project you can see here:
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Welcome, Do You Speak Emoji? 