hafan
Between a Mountain and a Sea: Refugees Writing in Wales - online edition - Web Page I
Published by Hafan Books, Swansea, 2003 ISBN 0–9545147–0–X
Editors: Eric Ngalle Charles, Tom Cheesman and Sylvie Hoffmann
Online edition at www.hafan.org (October 2004)
All texts © the authors and editors. Not be used without permission from Hafan Books.
Contact t.cheesman@swan.ac.uk
THE BOOK IS DIVIDED INTO FOUR WEB PAGES. THIS PAGE IS 'WEB PAGE I'. TO GET TO THE OTHER THREE PAGES, CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW.
Web page I - Web Page II - Web Page III - Web Page IV
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Preface : Tom Cheesman
For details of contributors and translators, scroll down this page or click on the names listed below.
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Preface
Tom Cheesman
Eric suggested the project of creating this book as we drove from Swansea to Llandudno, skirting mountains and the sea, through the invisible internal borders of Wales, on the eve of St David’s Day, 2003.
Refugees from many lands have spent time or settled in Wales over the centuries. Some of the earliest poetry in the Welsh language, written over eleven hundred years ago, is poetry of exile, lamenting the brutality of war, the traumas of displacement and bereavement, the sorry fate of the outcast – “Songs of Heledd” and “Afflicted, Abercuawg” are examples. Later, Welsh industry was built by economic migrants. In the thirties of the last century, many refugees from fascist Europe were made welcome here. So too, later, were exiles from South American dictatorships or communist Eastern Europe. For many decades, Cardiff’s long-established Somali community has repeatedly taken in new refugees. There have been many others. But only since 1999 has the British government’s policy of ‘dispersal’ made Wales officially host to literally hundreds of refugee families and individuals from scores of different countries – or would-be refugees, ‘asylum seekers’, sent here to await decisions on their fate.
Sylvie, Eric and I asked friends and friends of friends for poems and stories (fiction and non-fiction) for this book. Brief notes about the editors and contributors can be found on the following pages. About two dozen asylum seekers and refugees – men, women and children – have contributed. Most of them are new to Wales, though a few have long been living here. We have also included texts by half a dozen other writers of Wales, and a sample of work produced by South Wales schoolchildren in Eric’s workshops. The refugee work ranges widely, from stories and poems by thoroughly practised writers – some appearing here in English for the first time – to raw expressions of feeling and perception by people who have never attempted creative writing before. All attest to the double value of refugee writing: to work through personal traumas, and to communicate with the world as individuals, instead of as the faceless, bogus bugbear of much UK media and ignorant public opinion. The fact that several asylum seekers prefer to remain anonymous is testimony to their profound insecurity.
We intend Between a Mountain and a Sea as the first in a series of publications. These will feature writing – and, we hope, visual arts – by asylum seekers and refugees in Wales, and also include work by any other writers and artists who would like to be involved. Please contact us through www.hafan.org or at the Heyokah Centre, Swansea SA1 6BG.
Swansea Bay Asylum Seekers Support Group is a voluntary community association of refugees and other local residents. We run a drop-in, organise social and cultural events, and help people in crisis. We depend on donations. See details on the back of the title page.
We hope that this book will convince readers that Wales is as lucky to receive such talented incomers as they – we hope – may feel lucky to find themselves in such a relatively welcoming country.
Eric Ngalle Charles grew up in the small village of Buyea, in Cameroon’s South West Province. He left the country in 1997 aiming to join relatives in Belgium, but found himself stranded in Russia. After three years he succeeded in obtaining papers to travel to the UK. As an asylum seeker, he edited a newsletter for DPIA and participated in a project led by Prof. Terry Threadgold of Cardiff University, offering workshops on poetry and displacement to schools across South Wales. He was profiled in HTV’s documentary series ‘Melting Pot’, and his poetry was translated into Welsh at the St David’s Eisteddfod (2002). He is currently studying for a BSc in Business Information Systems at UWIC, giving writing workshops, and working on two books: a collection of poetry, Bag of Letters, and an autobiographical novel, Way to Britain. He has a daughter and a stepdaughter, and plays football for Avenue Hotspurs, Ely.
Tom Cheesman was born in Liverpool and grew up in County Durham. He is a senior lecturer in German at Swansea University, a volunteer with the Swansea Bay Asylum Seekers Support Group, and a trustee of the charities DPIA (Displaced People in Action) and Croeso. He lived in Germany and France before settling in Swansea in 1990. He translates German poetry and fiction and helped edit Home and Away: Diaspora Voices (Index on Censorship 31/3 2002). The poems are mostly based on conversations with asylum seekers, refugees and others attending SBASSG’s Friday drop-ins at the Heyokah café in Swansea.
Sylvie Hoffmann is a freelance artist, storyteller and teacher, and also volunteers with SBASSG. She was born in Thionville, France, in 1947. She emigrated to Britain in 1973. For four years she lived as an ‘alien’ and had to catch a ferry back across the channel every few months in order to come in again with a new visa. Finally on 6 January 1978 she was granted indefinite leave to remain. She studied French and English in London and took a PGCE in Swansea, where she has since taught languages and creative writing in various schools and colleges and worked in cultural projects, such as with Travellers. She has two daughters, a BA from Swansea Institute in Architectural Stained Glass, a licence to fly, and a Welsh GCSE.
A.K. lives and learns in Swansea.
Isabel Adonis is a mother of four, writer, artist and teacher, home educator and working philosopher. She lives in North Wales with her partner.
Moira Andrew, born in Scotland, has lived and worked in South Wales since 1988. She is an ex-headteacher, now a freelance writer and lecturer. She has published two collections of poems for adults, and many poems for children, including the collection for primary school teachers, Language in Colour.
Rebekah F. is 10 and lives in the Vale of Glamorgan.
Andy is 8. He comes from Albania and lives in Newport.
Anahita Alikhani studied Art to MA level at the University of Tehran, and worked as a tutor there. In 1998 she began working as a journalist with German, Austrian and Turkish television teams. Detained and tortured after reporting on student protest demonstrations, in 2001 she fled the country. Recently granted leave to remain, she won a place on a multimedia journalism course with the BBC. She volunteers for the Welsh Refugee Council and SBASSG and is working on a film about asylum seekers for Valley and Vale Community Arts and for the British Council’s A Sense of Place project. Her text was translated by Parvin Leloi. Both the published version and a longer version are available on this website.
Abdalla A. Bashir-Khairi was born on Dagarty Island in the Nile, near Karma, Sudan. He studied medicine at Juba University, specialising in psychiatry. After practising in Sudan and Qatar he came to the UK as an asylum seeker in 1998. He took an MSc at Cardiff (with a thesis on spirit possession in intercultural psychiatry) and is part of DPIA’s Refugee Doctors Programme and the BE4 project on mental health and social needs among ethnic minorities in Cardiff. His stories have been published in magazines in London and Qatar, where his first collection – Al-Ruyia (The Vision) – will soon appear. “The Court”, his first non-academic publication in English, is based on the execution of religious leader Ustas Taha – “Africa’s Gandhi” – in 1985 in Khartoum. He is working on studies of concepts of the human person and of spiritual evolution. His wife and daughters in Qatar were unable to join him for three years; he learned in May 2003 that they would be able to come to Britain at last.
Grahame Davies was brought up in Wrexham. He is a poet, editor and literary critic, working both in Welsh and in English. The poem ‘Rough Guide’ is from the collection Ffiniau / Borders, by Elin ap Hywel and Grahame Davies (Gomer, 2002). The English version is the author’s own.
Menna Elfyn is the writer in Welsh best known outside Wales. Born in 1952, a much travelled and passionate campaigner on Welsh and international issues, she describes herself as a Christian anarchist. Besides five plays, two television dramas and a novel, she has published eight volumes of poetry, including the bilingual Eucalyptus: Detholiad o Gerddi / Selected Poems 1978–19994 (Gomer), and the recent blingual collections Cell Angel and Cusan Dyn Dall / Blind Man’s Kiss (Bloodaxe). She both wrote and translated “Gwenoliaid” (“Swallows”) specially for this book.
Anonymous are around a dozen contributors to Sylvie Hoffmann’s “Swansea Collage”, as well as the authors of “Can Heledd” (“Songs of Heledd”) and “Claf Abercuawg” (“Afflicted, Abercuawg”). These are among the oldest Welsh poems, dating to the middle of the 9th century. Heledd is thought to be a Welsh princess from present-day Shropshire, most of whose kith and kin were slaughtered by the invading English. The speaker of “Claf Abercuawg” is an outcast and an exile, literally or metaphorically a leper. The translations by Jenny Rowland (Early Welsh Saga Poetry: A Study and Edition of the Englynion, 1990) were adapted for this book by TC.
Humberto Gatica was born and educated in Chile. Until his detention in October 1973 under the Pinochet dictatorship, he was involved in community arts and cultural projects with shantytown dwellers, peasants and forestry workers. Released from prison in August 1974 with his wife, he left Chile for Argentina. He came to Swansea as a refugee in October 1975. In 1981–84 he worked in a community arts project in a coal mine in Mozambique, returning to Swansea because of the civil war. Since 1987 he has worked as a technician on the Photographic Art BA degree course at Swansea Institute. Occasionally he publishes poetry in magazines (usually in Spanish) and participates in photography exhibitions.
Hamira A. Geedy is from Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan. She is a qualified GP, trained in Shiraz and Tehran and with 17 years practice in Tehran and Mahabad. She is now an asylum seeker living in Swansea with her two children. She wrote her story in English. It happened to people she knows well.
Nigel Jenkins is a Welsh writer based in Swansea. His latest poetry book is Blue, a collection of haiku (2002). Gwalia in Khasia (1995), a book about Welsh missionaries in India, was Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year in 1996. Footsore on the Frontier: Selected Essays and Articles was published in 2001. He is co-editor of The Encyclopaedia of Wales, due from HarperCollins in 1995. “Girl Reading” appeared in Acts of Union: Selected Poems 1974–1989 (Gomer, 1990). “Borders” is published here for the first time.
Showan Khurshid was born in Kirkuk, Iraqi Kurdistan, but had to leave because of the various wars waged by the former Iraqi regime. He spent some years on the run before finding a refuge in Sweden. He was granted Swedish citizenship and considers Sweden to be a model country. The epic drama Dream of Power was first written in Kurdish, then in Arabic, and finally in English; it has yet to be performed or published.
Maxson Kpakio is from Liberia. He worked there as a freelance journalist for two years, and for the Red Cross and the Human Rights Group. Having fled political instability and civil war, he reached the UK and was dispersed to Swansea, where he now lives. His short drama “It Could Happen To You Too” has twice been performed by members of Swansea Bay Asylum Seekers Support Group. He has worked as a volunteer for BTCV and is currently a trainee community worker with the Swansea Council for Voluntary Service. He is a member of the Wales Refugee Media Forum’s Refugee Link Group, and his poem is based on discussions in that group. He writes: “I’d like to say a big thank you to all the good people of this beloved city, Swansea, for all their love and kindness shown me so far. I have felt very much welcome.”
Hans Popper, born in 1924, grew up in Vienna. His family fled from the Nazis in 1938 and came to Britain. After army service and qualifying as a teacher, he took a PhD in medieval German and came to work at Swansea University in 1961. Though retired, he is still an active researcher, working on medieval epics and on the philosophy and psychology of emotions in European traditions. He is a volunteer for the Samaritans and writes letters on behalf of Amnesty International.
Gabriel L. Vingu, from Angola, is a pastor of the Pentecostalist Church. He walked in Bishopston Valley on 16 March 2003, wrote his story on 20 April, and was removed from emergency accommodation in Swansea (after eight months on zero cash) to Cardiff on 25 April. His text was translated by Sylvie Hoffmann.
Million Gashaw Woldemariam is an aeronautical engineer from Ethiopia, who has been in Swansea waiting for a decision on his asylum claim since March 2002. He trained pilots for the Ethiopian airforce, with the rank of lieutenant, and was a flight safety inspector for the Ethiopian civil aviation authority.
To my friends – they know who they are – Eric
To Marie, Margie, Rosa, and all in SBASSG – Tom
To You, Good Listener, who met me on my way – Sylvie
In memory of Beti Rhys (1901–2003)
When the night has come and the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we’ll see
No I won’t be afraid – no I won’t be afraid
Just as long as you stand by me
If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall
Or the mountain should crumble to the sea
I won’t cry – I won’t cry – no I won’t shed a tear
Just as long as you stand by me
(© Ben E. King, 1961)
WELSH REFUGEE COUNCIL
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Refugee Media Group in Wales |
Jazzy Anthill Café
36 St Helen’s Rd, Swansea
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