ODYSSEUS 2000
Personal Identity and social living

ITINERARIES
stories of voyages into the world

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FINAL REMARKS

I subvert the normal order of the sequences of the romance and start taking leave in the middle of our path, before concluding the presentation of the stories of our friends. And I ask myself if it is a "leave" because the metaphorical voyage of our romance is about to end, or if I take leave because, after a long waiting, the moment has come when this new voyage in the interculture finally begins.
I don't want to give any answer to that. I want to conclude with the last dialogue, with a family coming from Morocco and living in Lleida. They feel very well there, they don't miss anything.

“How do you feel about living in this town?  And in the neighbourhood?”
“Well, we lack for nothing.”
“Do you have a group of friends?  Are they Arab, townspeople, mixed?”
“I am from Seròs…  they come to my home…  I go to theirs…  we go to the bar…  we don't have much to do with Moroccans.”
“When you go out with the family, what do you like to do, where do you usually go?  Do you see a show?  Do you go to the cinema?”
“We go to the bar… in the Seròs gardens.”
“Do you take part in the town's Fiesta Major?  What do you like best?”
“We go to the festivals in Seròs, Aitona, Fraga.... and for walks.”
“Do you watch any sporting events?  Do you sometimes eat out?”
“Rida practises karate and Nabila goes to gym we don't eat in restaurants.”
“Do you use the health services?”
“Yes, we go to the CAP (First Help Centre) to visit the doctor.”
“How do you feel about the past: your memories or stories, if there are any, told to you by the old people?”
“I remember my friends from Morocco well… my parents, all the family brothers and sisters… they are all there.”
“What customs do you still keep?  Why?”
“All we can.  Ramadan, the festival of the lamb we don't drink alcohol, we can't cat pork.  We want our children to know them and the religion because we are Moslems.”
“What new customs have you learned?  Why?”
“The "los Reyes" festival, eating the "Mona' (an eating doughnut garnished with sugar)... eating in the countryside…  birthday anniversaries with the children in the class…  Rida and Nabila go to other children's homes and they come to ours.”
“How did you learn them?”
“A friend of mine taught me them and I have practised them since I have had children.”
“What do the grandparents think about it?”
“They find it strange but don't object they ask question because they don't know what "los Reyes" or the Mona are and, when I explain it to them, they laugh because they didn't know.”
“Which Arab cultural customs do you think most important?  Why?  Which do you keep and which not?”
“The culture has changed a lot. I would like to keep then-i my husband and the children prefer those here…. they dont't like going to Morocco… when we go they want to come back immediately.”
“What customs have you lost? Why?”
“Having lots of children…  in Morocco you even have 10 or 12 children… we think that's too many. I don't want to have so many children.”
“Do the children take part  in any extra-scholastic activities: sport, free time, the parish, the games library, association?”
“Those which are practised -in the town karate arid gymnastics.”
“Do they go to school?  How do they feel about it?”
“They're very happy at school, like all the children.  Rida has some difficulty in studying.”
“Do they speak Catalan at school?”
“Yes.”
“Are their friends Arabs, Spanish or mixed?”
“Those from school.  Almost everyone from town, Spanish.”
“Do they take part in trips, sport us and school festivals?”
“Yes, always.”
“What do you like most about the school?  And what do you like least?  What would you change?”
“The children like everything and me too I like them studying.”
“What kind of future would you like for your children?”
“That they study a lot.”
“If you could have three wishes what would you choose?”
“To live well, eat well and have nothing lacking at home.”

I already mentioned the infinite nostalgia this lady has when she thinks to her country, and also the fact that her family doesn't share it completely. The dialogue with the interviewer ends in this way:
“Do you want to add something?”
“We have a house in Morocco and every year we go there on holiday… I like to meet my family. The house is in Tetouan and my sisters take care of it, they clean it… we feel very well here… I like Morocco… for the family… the boys don't like it… there are very different habits…my husband and the boys want to stay here… I think to my family more than they do.”
At the beginning she said "I don't miss anything here": these opposite thoughts live in the same person, deep inside.

Is there sometimes a sort of attempt of hiding the contradictions?
I was thinking about it as I was reading the interviews. Can we directly ask "how does your child feel in the school?" and have the pretension and the illusion of having immediately, in few words, an exhaustive and complete reply? Perhaps a reassuring one? If we compare our answers to the opening tests of the two training courses with the ones given by our friends coming from every part of the world, it seems that the embarrassment  and the difficulties in the school is a problem the teachers feel more than the parents of the foreign children. The embarrassment of the students can be read "between the lines". Or when we hear the stories of episodes of embarrassment, it seems as it was not exactly a contradiction, of something "not right", but only a natural episode for someone who comes from another country. He has to adapt to it, to accept it and to assume responsibility for the things going wrong. For example, when the Tunisian mother tells us that the teacher recommends her, not to let her child speak Arab at home. Or when we hear the "double" difficulty of the Greek children who, anyway, are always poised between the two worlds. But if we read again our answers to the tests in the two training courses, we can say that we too instinctively try to hide the contradictions. Many of us say, indeed, that the biggest problem we have to face in the moment of settling in a foreign boy is the discipline and the behaviour, that is to say when the conflict and the contrasts are more evident: it's not important that the foreigner speaks well our language. The best situation, for us, is instead the one in which the boy remains calm, even if he doesn't speak our language.
To hide the contradictions means that we pretend that everything's right and everything's the same. That the culture, our culture, is a natural fact, is static and precise, is protected from inner contrasts and gives us naturally the right interpretation codes in order to understand the others, to make well-advised questions, to converse. But we have also seen that in our group, too, there are different opinions. We have also seen that, in the two training courses, the experiences make us change our opinions and convictions, and in particular they ameliorate our relationships with the others. They let us know, or at least intuitively understand, that the culture is dynamic, develops, can better face the situations when it's a critical culture which tries to analyse doubts, searches for contradictions and doesn't hide them.
We began this trip through interculture talking of a "generalising sight", of "us" and of "them". And we met in only 30-40 stories (a total of only 30 or 40 hours of dialogues made from the people who took part to the interviews) universes of lives, of peculiarities, of situations, of deep and never banal motivations, of true emotions, not artificial ones. A multiplicity of dynamic situations that every day happen around us.

And the children? These little diplomats or cultural mediators of the family, whom I wanted to talk about? We could not reach them directly through the interviews. We are adults and we analysed adults. Apart from few exceptions - for example our Dominican poetess - the children have been described by the adults. Or by the teachers who are part of our workgroup or by their parents. Each one had his own point of view. Sometimes we experience the story of a migrating boy through the remembrances of the adult, who is still migrating. Also these experiences are very useful, of course. If it is true that we often meet migrant children and just register their phenotypic features or colour of the skin leaving their personal stories aside, now we begin to have a more complete idea of the context where they live. But I always have the impression that this is not enough. In our future ways we'll have to care about it. I don't want to say that we have to interview the children instead of the adults, because we must go on with the dialogue with the adults. But we can help the children interviewing one another, so that they can have real opportunities of communicating and exchanging, through their curiosity, their stories. In conclusion, let's uphold the reception as possibility of meeting and hearing other persons in a spontaneous and reciprocal way.

Another aspect I was very interested in, in the last moments of re-reading the whole stories, is the way we all asked everybody: "How do you feel here and what kind of relationships do you have with your neighbours?". I remember a dialogue I had some times ago with an Iranian doctor I had known by chance in a restaurant. The first question I asked him was: "How is your country, is it true that it is very beautiful?" Before answering me he began to smile and explained me then that he was afraid I would have asked him: "How do you feel here in Italy? Do you like it?" because that is, usually, the first question everybody asks him and every time he has to answer in a very reassuring way: "Yes, it's beautiful, we live very well here, etc.".
Perhaps we should question our foreign friends in a different way in the next interviews or dialogues we'll make. And perhaps we should try to answer to these questions before asking  them to others. (And furthermore, this Iranian friend of mine was a doctor who has lived in Italy for about twenty years and who was able to get in the world of the job in a position where he could exploit his professional skills. Often we don't have this condition and emigration means to begin in the lowest rungs of the social "class")
Until now we have just made some preparations. The experiences we have collected in these first two years of the "Odysseus" project are just a little part of the "store" we will bring with us in this voyage. Perhaps at this point, after having heard and read about ourselves and the others, we can say we are ready to start this voyage, the interculture. In order to discover the other side of ourselves.

The last step of our "packing for the departure" is the analysis of the refugees. As far as the official data are concerned, the ones concerning refugees are more variable. They fast change according to the political situation and to the recognition of the status of refugee. It can be recognized or revoked, even when someone could not go back home. A study of 1996 said there were about 26 millions refugees. If we consider the countries of origin of those people, in the first place we could see Afghanistan followed by Liberia, Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, Burundi, Sierra Leone and Vietnam. The countries of arrival were, instead, Iran, Pakistan, Congo, Guinea, United States, Yugoslavia (Serbian refugees from Croatia and Bosnia), Germany and the Ivory Coast. We just need to list the countries of origin and of arrival and we can understand how difficult the problems are. As far as the situation in Bosnia is concerned, in the years of the war they estimated about 2 and a half millions of refugees, about 50% of the whole population. Many of them had escaped in other areas of Bosnia, Croatia or Yugoslavia, many went abroad. If we try to evaluate the present situation, about 1 and a half millions refugees have still to come back home and they won't probably get back anymore.

Also in our stories we have talked about refugees coming from different parts of the world, from Somalia, Bangladesh, Turkey and, most of all, from Bosnia. If we analyse their situation we cannot talk of a voyage. It's more similar to a tragic, unforeseen evacuation they didn't want to experience. It's an evacuation from a personal, social and cultural context where their feelings and thoughts were born and developed… from a context which is far, not only in terms of distance, it vanished in the remembrances and does not exist anymore.
In our voyage into the stories of others we always chose the same way of communicating, even if people and situations were very different one from the other. This choice helped us  find a common thread for all of us, so that we could better understand the others through the comparison of the universes everyone had in him/herself. It also helped us to better understand that there are many ways we can pass through. On the other hand, the same way of talking to everyone didn't allow us to cross any of these ways in order to deepen this or that situation. We'll have time to do that.
I personally could deeply analyse the stories of the Bosnian refugees since I travelled in the last years to Bosnia and could therefore talk to lots of people. In the period we started working on the interviews we can read in this book, I was still completing the writing up of a book of stories of people from ex-Yugoslavia. Somehow I could find a common thread between that book and the first interviews of Bosnian people made in Waiblingen and Gothenburg. One of the main lessons I learnt in this voyage into the stories of the refugees was the importance of listening. It's a sensation I had never felt so strongly before. In the whole long dialogues I had, I experienced that, at the beginning, people had lots of difficulties and a sort of opposition in talking of so tragic moments of their lives. After some time, the story began and had a sort of relentless advance. Sometimes I realized that these friends of mine had found, for the first time in their lives, someone they could tell their own stories. This "someone" who was able to hear and to understand them since he knew some of their towns and of their situations, he had studied that war, that society and that culture in their details and tried not to be caught in the dangerous trap of generalising. Very often refugees in foreign countries who had escaped from home with no money in their pockets, with no job and no home where they could go, felt themselves accepted only in their elementary needs of assistance. Many of them were not considered and if someone asked them something about the war, he/she did it through generalising questions or superficial interpretations which didn't consider of the personal reality of any of them. I also spoke with a boy who now moved to the United States. While talking to me, he told me surprised that he was remembering, for the first time, some episodes or parts of them he had forgotten, hidden in himself. I think that the most important thing while talking to someone is to listen. I think it's something you don't learn as a simple technique. You can't standardise it in a method, you need time, constancy, a great care which can be boring, sometimes. You have to read, to know, to gather information and, above all, you must have a direct experience, even if you risk to make some banal mistakes. It's the experience we tried to share through our interviews.
I conclude with a witness which was collected in Gothenburg an year after the other interviews and sent in these last days by Ase, a teacher of the Forskolan.

Eldina
This is the story of a 23 year old girl whom we can call Eldina.
Eldina was 15 years old when she arrived to Sweden with her mother, father and a younger brother.
When they first came to Sweden they all lived in a camp. There were hundred of refugees from Iraq, Bosnia and Kosova. The family lived in a military tent for about a week.
From there they moved to a different camp where they had to share a little room. Many of the refugees had to share their room with strangers.
The were served in a canteen, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Eldina thought that the food was different in Sweden than in Bosnia. Specially that we mix sweet lingonberry jam with meatballs.
It didn't live so many people from Bosnia in this camp and not many young people for Eldina to make friends with. Eldina didn't have much to do here.
At this camp they arrange a short course in Swedish for children and younger persons. They also had a place to go to in their spare time and hang out. Two older Swedish persons worked there.
At the end it came more people from Bosnia and more children in Eldinas age.
Eldina made some friends and they started to explore the surroundings outside the camp area. They often went to a café down town where Eldina met Swedish, young, people for the first time. She met a Swedish girl that became her friend.
This friend invited her to her home. The thing was that this girls father didn't like refugees so the girl thought it would be good for him to meet Eldina who was ( and is) a very nice and sweet person. Eldina were welcomed to the house.
At the café Eldina learnt her first Swedish words. For the first time Eldina started to like Sweden.
The family lived in this camp for 7 months.

They moved on to another camp. The difference was that they had a flat on their own for the first time in Sweden.
She enjoyed the flat but the village was very small and everybody was staring at them, she thought. It was living a group of Bosnia people there which made it easier.
Eldina started school in the same class as her younger brother. Eldina felt very embarrassed over this and wanted to change. The children in this class were between 7-12 years old.
She talked to the social worker and she started in the same class as her parents. Here she also learnt more Swedish.
The family had a social worker who had the responsibility for the families welfare.
Eldina think that if she and her brother had needed any help to talk about their experiences from the war in Bosnia they would have received that help.
However, at this point they didn't know what to expect from a Swedish social worker.
The family finally gets their permanent residency and it is with mixed emotions.
Sadness for the fact that it feels definite that they can’t return back and happiness because they now are safe.
At this point they can choose by themselves were they want to live. The decide to move to Borås. It's 70 kilometres from Gothenburg.
The parents takes a loan, which is provided by the state, to buy furniture.
After a week it knocks on the door. Its a teacher and a social worker.
They talk with the family and Eldina. She is starting school the following week.
These two people help Eldina to build a self confidence, they motivate here to go on with her life. Thanks to these two people she felt that she didn't have to go to college for immigrants so she started in a Swedish college instead. It was hard but it worked out.
She tells me during the interview that if it not have been for these two people and their pep-talk she may have not been where she is today.
Today Eldina is studying to become a social worker at the university of Gothenburg!
This is how far she as gone in only 8 years.