First event – at St Mary Magdalen Community Centre – Claire Banks in the The Argus wrote a piece:

Memorable quote; “We’ve opened our doors to welcome people to our community . . . . “

http://www.theargus.co.uk/blogs/blogs/8218585.Refugee_week__climbing_the_mountain/

The event was part of the national Refugee Week and took place in June 2010.

They have attended parties, exhibitions, displays and a picnic. Here are some of the stories our reporters came back with.

The event was interesting to cover as it gave our reporters the chance to try out their new skills while uncovering the many issues affecting refugees in the city.

Refugee Radio Party - 15 June 2010 - poster

Refugee Week is a UK-wide programme of cultural and educational events that hightlights the contribution that refugees make to life in the UK and encourages better understanding between communities. Brighton & Hove’s Refugee Week is from 12 June to 20 June 2010 and is organised by several different community groups and organisations such as Brighton Voices in Exile, Asylum Aid, Refugee Council, Brighton Housing Trust and Brighton & Hove City Council. 

Tuesday, 15 June 2010 from 8pm to 2am is the Refugee Radio Party at Volks Tavern, 3 The Colonnade, Madeira Drive, Brighton. For just £5 on the door your ears and soul will be rejuvinated by the sounds of Refugee Week artists, DJs and all things festive! Live African and Reggae Music are on the aural menu and it’s all in support of a unique Brighton-based project called Refugee Radio.

BandBazi performing arts group are to host a cabaret evening marking the UK’s Refugee Week.

12 June begins a week-long national celebration of the contribution refugees make to British culture. The programme of cultural and educational events aims to foster better understanding of refugee people and improved comnunity relations.

Brighton & Hove – renowned for its diverse social make up – is home to refugess fleeing countties such as Zimbabwe, Iraq and Tibet.

Refugee Week Carbaret at the Pavillion Theatre is hosted by award-winning Brighton-based, multicultural performing arts company BandBazi. Theatre goers will be treated to a mix of music, dance poetry and food. Adults pay £6 and children half price.

Refugee Week Cabaret, 13 June,

BrightonDome.org

Refugee Week 2010 is happening between 12th June and 20th June and is organised by many different organisations.

An event that looks particularly interesting for me personally is the Refugee Radio Party which takes place on Tuesday 15th June from 8pm – 2am at:

Volks Tavern, 3 The Colonnade, Madeira Drive, Brighton

£5 on the door

This event is a party in support of Refugee Week with DJs, live African and reggae music. All proceeds to support unique Brighton-based project – Refugee Radio who are also broadcasting during the week.

Today was Peter’s fourteenth birthday, April 20th and he was so excited. Yes, Carl had bullied him at school yesterday and his big sister Annie had called him a ninny, but what did all that matter. There were tadpoles in the brook and he had seen a hare and a deer in the forest last evening and was sure they would be there again tonight.

His mother called him into the sitting room where the breakfast table was set specially for today. A candle was burning on a small cake and there were five presents, tidily wrapped and fastened with elastic bands. His mother was not one to waste anything and the paper had seen other presents before this day. She was a bookbinder by profession, nobody could wrap up things as well as she. Peter’s father had died when he was only nine years old and his stepfather was in the war. Last time they had heard from him, he was in Norway, but mother had not read the letter out loud. Bombs were falling on Berlin and the house he had grown up in was gone, but here in the village with his grandmother and great-auntie everything was safe and quiet.

Peter’s little brother Rudolph sat down at the piano and played the birthday song and everyone joined in: “We are so happy that it is your birthday today!” Now it was time to open the presents and it was a little book on wildlife stories that Peter had been hoping for the most. There it was, a book-shaped gift and sure enough, he took just enough time not to rip the paper, it was the right one. “Thank you, mother, just the one I wanted.” Some of the other gifts were useful, new socks, a shirt and some stationery as well as a very small bar of chocolate. His aunt and grandma had given him two more wagons for his train set and miniature houses for him to put together. Annie had knitted him a green tie and Rudolph written a composition which he was now playing. Peter was dying to get outside to sit and read for ten minutes before school, but first he had to eat breakfast and probably share out the chocolate.

They were eating when suddenly a neighbour came in, beckoning for mother to come outside urgently. A moment later everything changed. “Children, I am so sorry, we have to leave. Now. We will take a rucksack each and go on our bicycles. Peter, choose one present and pack sensible clothes only. Quickly now, I will explain later, we have no time to lose.” Peter felt icy cold. Leave? On his birthday? What about the tadpoles and the hare – what about his train set and the new houses he had yet to build? What about school, well, that might not be such a bad thing, to leave the bullies and the Hitler Youth, who were always telling him to join them, when he was just not interested in their shouting. Swallowing down the tears pricking his eyes he grabbed his new book from the table, ran to his room to start packing. Downstairs he could hear Rudolph howling: “My piano, and Hansie!”  Next door Annie was being terribly efficient. She had already got her rucksack ready and was now sorting out her little brother’s clothes. Toothbrush, comb, sandals, do they even still fit, it had not been warm enough this year to try them on yet, no probably not, wellie boots too big, only one pair of shoes then, the ones on his feet. More room in the rucksack for another pair of shorts and a jumper. Where were they going, how far would they travel? Rudolph was only little and his bike was too big for him, and why? Why so suddenly, so quickly and not on the train like when they visited Auntie Emma in Hannover?

Outside his mother was fastening a suitcase to the rack on the back of her bicycle. She had a rucksack ready and a smaller bag tied to her handlebar and his as well as Annie’s. But on Rudolph’s bike there was only one small box and in it Hansie, the guinea pig. “Peter, Annie, kiss your grandmother goodbye, we must go.” Grandmother hugged the children harder than she ever had and they were off. One hour ago Peter had opened his birthday presents and now he was leaving his home, perhaps for ever.

Forty-four years later Peter saw the house again. They had cycled for five days, always heading north-west with the Russians coming up behind them. Russian soldiers had a reputation for raping young women and killing men and boys, his mother could think of no solution but to flee. On the sixth day they had arrived, exhausted and scared, in the town of Lübeck where she had decided to stay. The town was overflowing with refugees, they shared a room with another family and had only the very few things which they had managed to carry with them. One day Peter broke his plate and then had to wait for one of the others to finish eating before he could have his portion. He learnt to beg and steal, helped carry horribly wounded soldiers from trains, fetch firewood from the forest and search for the last potatoes in the empty fields. He became thin and weedy, his little brother almost died of the whooping cough but at least they were safe. Safe from rape and the Russians, the war was over; they could make a new start. A wall was built between this new place and the old home, a wall nobody was allowed cross. People died trying to get out, nobody tried to get in, but for Peter there was still a house in that forbidden place that was his family’s.

And so it came to pass that the wall went down again, not on his birthday, but one autumn day when he was fifty-eight. And while everyone who could poured out to visit the West, Peter drove East: back to the house he had loved, back to the birthday table he had left on that unforgotten day in April. Another family lived there now, it was their home and they were frightened by and unwelcoming to this emotional stranger who knocked on their door unannounced. “My name is Peter,” he stammered, “And this is my house.”

For his 75^th birthday Peter took his children and grandchildren to the village near Berlin. He wanted to show them where he had spent his youth. When they drove past the house, he averted his gaze. They saw the brook with the tadpoles and his old school playground where he had been beaten up by Carl. You would expect Peter to be working for a refugee organisation today, but he does not. He has a museum of treasures which he has collected over many years and still spends all his money acquiring more things. The trauma of his flight has not made him a better person but a mistrustful and bitter one.

Saskia Wesnigk-Wood 2010

Saskia’s website

Yasher’s story- a 9 year old refugee from Kurdistan now living in Scotland