Nose to the Grindstone

Today we were given a free day to work on our project presentations or any exploring that we wanted to do. I spent the morning inside the hostel doing some work, and the only exciting thing I did was learn how to circumnavigate my inability to access Wi-Fi with my laptop. I haven’t been able to access the Wi-Fi with my laptop at the hostel, so I had been going to a café to do work. But, instead of going to a café every couple of days and abusing the establishment’s generosity by only ordering one drink to sit there for four or more hours, I decided to get creative. I learned that with the USB connection I can transfer the word documents from my laptop to my kindle fire. From my Kindle I can upload the documents to my dropbox, and then I had my most wonderful boyfriend log in to my dropbox and copy/paste the documents into my blog! It’s convoluted, but it works and I don’t have to buy a coffee to do it.

Later that day everyone was invited to Badeschiff, which has a swimming pool in the Spree River and the surrounding area has sand, so it feels like a beach in the middle of Berlin. We all met at Badeschiff to say farewell to one of the directors of our program who won’t be able to join us on our trip to Jena. I unfortunately couldn’t stay very long because Rouja and I had to meet with Manuella to go to an interview. Manuella had set up an interview with one of the refugee actors from Ballhaus Naunynstrasse that she knew personally. The young man, Abidal, was a bit nervous to meet us and his English wasn’t great, but he was very kind and I’m grateful that he took the time to talk with us. He is currently a refugee in Berlin, but he used to live in Libya before the fall of Gadhafi. Both Abidal and the other refugee that came and talked to our class described their life in Libya as having everything. They had water, electricity, a place to sleep, food to eat, and a community that accepted them. In European countries, which are considered developed, he has less freedom of movement and has to pay for food and a place to stay even though they aren’t legally allowed to work. They are discriminated against harshly, and are called “illegals” by the local community that looks down upon them as a burden to society. Abidal says that he feels at times refugees are treated as animals. He can’t get into bars, sports fields, restaurants, and other public establishments because he looks like an “illegal”.

Abidal gained entry into Europe through Italy, and then moved to Germany afterwards and lived in Oranienplatz, which was refugee camp in Berlin, but has recently been removed. Refugees are now finding shelter through churches that have been helping the refugees, but in the next month the refugees will no longer be able to be supported by the church and they will have nowhere to go again. Abidal became involved in theater because there is not a lot that he is allowed to do, but through theater he is able to have a voice. During his part in the play, which he wrote himself, he is able to tell people about the situation they are in and share with people about the inhumane treatment of refugees.

Even though my research here in Berlin is coming to an end, I will continue to research and keep up with the refugee crisis in the EU and help in any way I can.