The Amnesty International newsletter came in the post the other day (yay posty!) and I was flicking through it looking for little articles or bits of easy text for me to read as brainfog prohibits most articles, actually am almost 100% on audiobooks at the moment, grrr, anyway, and I came across a lovely little piece about refugee week. Refugee Week in the Uk in this week, the 14- 20th June. It is a program of events which look at the experiences of exile and refugees and their contribution to the UK. Asylum seekers are often faced with hostility from people’s pre – conceptions, fear based prejudices and misinformation and understanding.
Refugee Week 14 – 20 June 2010
Different pasts, shared future
Simple Acts
The article in Amnesty newsletter highlighted the Simple Acts, which is about inspiring individuals to use small everyday actions to change perception of refugees. I thought I can do that! They suggest 20 actions, you just choose an action, do it and tell them you have done it at: http://www.refugeeweek.org.uk/simple-acts
I share with you here the simple acts we are choosing and invite you to join us in one (or more) this week or visit http://www.simpleacts.org.uk and pick your own. Words and text from the Simple Acts site.
We are going to:
1. Cook a dish from another country
1. Cook a dish from another country
Has it ever occurred to you that there might be some “refugees” in your fridge?
Garlic, for example, originally came from Central Asia and was frowned upon by the Americans until as recently as the 1940s. Our old friend the tomato is in fact a native of South America, and was greeted with suspicion by the British because they thought it was poisonous. Even the lowly potato has roots in the mountains of South America, and was for a long time snubbed by Europeans because they considered it to be the food of the underclass.
When you think about it, almost any dish you care to imagine includes ingredients that come from somewhere else. Just imagine how much less tasty our lives would be if these foods had stayed at home?
So, why not welcome new ingredients and dishes into your kitchen? Instead of frowning upon lesser known vegetables and sticking to a meat-and-two-veg routine, go adventurous and explore the world – one dish at a time. You might even discover a future tomato or potato.
We are having pesto mushrooms, yay italy!
5. Say a little prayer for me
When a butterfly flaps its wings, it makes a tiny change in the atmosphere, which in turn can change the path of a tornado or a big wave. This is the so-called Chaos Theory, which describes how small events can influence big events.
Now, if we apply this theory to human beings it works like this:
You say a prayer for refugees. In prayer you use your imagination to put yourself in their place. This experience creates a tiny change in you, which in turn creates changes in those close to you, which in turn sets off a wave of change coming from within your community and affecting the way others perceive refugees
PS.
As for the Chaos theory, Richard DeDomenici flapped his wings in New York and called coast guards in Japan to check if there were any changes in the weather. They declared no changes, which only proves that inter-connectedness of things lies beyond our rational explanations and understanding, or that the guards were too busy playing Solitaire on their PCs.
Some thoughts…
Words lead to deeds …
they prepare the soul, make it ready, move it to tenderness.
Saint Teresa
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Jelaluddin Rumi
My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground on which I stand.
Buddha
It is of course possible to dance a prayer.
Glade Byron Addams
We are praying and lighting prayer candles, please join us in a prayer wave this week 9.30pm your time for all refugees and those seeking asylum and in exile. This is open to all people of all faiths and if you just want to send good wishes and thoughts rather than prayers if you do not pray that is great too. Thank you.
6. Read a book about exile
Reading about exile is not the first thing that springs to mind when you’re looking for some light entertainment on a Tuesday evening. And rightly so.
For books about exile will do exactly the opposite. They will move and unsettle you; challenge you to leave the comfort of your old convictions and permanently change both you and your Tuesday.
They will not necessarily tell you the things you want to hear, but the ones you don’t; the necessary things that can’t remain unsaid. They might scare the life out of you. Make you witness some heartbreaking moments which lie beyond our language, comprehension and humanity. They might introduce you to strange characters, customs, and places. Make fun of your culture and your language. And make you feel, as something grand begins to collapse in you, that a hand has come out and taken your own.
Sounds tough and unsettling? Yes, and isn’t that precisely what good books are for?
I will be listening to Benjamin Zephaniah’s book Refugee Boy, in audiobook form. Downloaded from the lovely Listening Books http://www.listening-books.org.uk/
book here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Refugee-Boy-Benjamin-Zephaniah/dp/0747550867 I would also recommend: You can’t drown the fire: latin american women writing in exile ed. Alicia Partnoyhttp://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Drown-Fire-American/dp/0939416174 and A Map of Hope: Women’s writing on human rights ed. Marjorie Agosin http://www.amazon.com/Map-Hope-Womens-Writing-Rights/dp/0813526264
8. Find five facts about refugees
8. Find five facts about refugees
Everyone likes silly stories and jokes but people just don’t take you seriously until you provide them with facts.
Having facts at hand is particularly useful when talking about refugees because there is so much nonsense and misinformation going around.
So, here is a whole bunch of facts that might surprise you, and also make you look in the know.
A refugee is someone who has fled to another country seeking protection from war or persecution. An economic migrant is someone who has moved to another country to work.
Under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention people have the right to apply for protection in the UK.
In Leicester alone, over 30 000 jobs have been created by Ugandan Asian refugees since the 1970s
11 refugees from the UK have won Nobel Prize for science
Asylum seekers account for only 3% of net immigration to the UK.
Almost a third of refugees have contributed to society by doing voluntary work since arriving in the UK.
Many refugees have academic or teaching qualifications. There are more than 1,500 refugee teachers in England.
The UK hosts 2% of the world’s 10 million refugees.
More than 1,100 medically qualified refugees are recorded on the British Medical Association’s database. It only costs £10,000 to prepare a refugee doctor to practise in the UK. It costs £250,000 to train a doctor from scratch.
Estimates of the UK’s refugee population suggest that it only amounts to 0.6% of the total UK population.
Under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention people have the right to apply for protection in the UK.
A refugee is someone who has fled to another country seeking protection from war or persecution. An economic migrant is someone who has moved to another country to work.
9. Find out who you REALLY are
9. Find out who you REALLY are
Who would have thought that the origin of an English word about good breeding, lineage and ancestry would be a French bird with big feet?
Apparently, the English word “pedigree” comes from the French ‘pied de grue’ or ‘foot of the crane’, probably because a simply drawn family tree looks a bit like the foot of a bird.
So what about you and me? If we traced back our line to its beginnings, would we find a big-footed French bird or something equally as unexpected and entertaining? Ask Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, who traced back his family’s roots and discovered himself to be a descendant of a Turkish refugee!
The history of your family is a great mystery and, like all great mysteries, there are plenty of surprises to be had.
THIS IS OUR SIMPLE ACT OF THE MONTH!
A few ways to find out a bit more about who you are:
ask your grandparents to tell you about your family
Such wonderful thing to do, our background and pastory can inform who we are today and often elders are not respected enough in our societies, ask and find out. Who were your great grandparents, your great great grandparents, where were they from, what were their stories?
look up the meaning of your surname
This was fun too, my surname wasn’t recorded on any of the websites, they said it was too unusual but my mothers is and it is an irish surname as I knew, it means son of the sea man (settlement by the sea)! Wow!
go to see a palm reader lol
go to a genealogy website
11. Smile :O)
Smiling is contagious.
To test this, next time you leave your house smile at a stranger and you’ll see that stranger will smile at another stranger. Very soon the whole street will be smiling.
It’s a little like sending one of those chain e-mails that everyone has to forward to five friends. Except it’s not an e-mail, it’s a smile-mail.
So, if you want to make a refugee smile, you can send them a smile via the smile-mail and be sure they are going to get it sooner or later. The main effect is that they will feel welcome; while the side effect is that your whole street will be grinning in the process.
How to smile
Sometimes it’s good to go back to basics, so here’s a few tips on beaming.
Enjoy smiling
Some people are a bit nervous of smiling. They think it makes them look unattractive, shows off spinach in their teeth or just makes them look like a bit of a maniac. Deal with it. Smiling doesn’t make you look ugly – it makes others feel good, which makes you look gorgeous! And even if you do have spinach in your teeth – that’s bound to make someone else smile back.
Think of happy happy joy joy things
It’s sometimes difficult to smile when you’re walking around with a little black cloud over your head. Luckily, when you’re feeling down, smiling can help cheer you up, even if you have to coax a smile out at first. The best way to do this is to think of happy things. Has anything ever made you laugh so much that you nearly peed yourself? What was it? Remember it. Go on. Where was it?
See you’re smiling.
Smile with your eyes
Ever seen someone smile with their mouth but not their eyes? Scary isn’t it.
Smiling with your eyes is the key to a genuine, warm smile. You can’t really explain how to do it- your cheekbones lift slightly and your eyebrows dip a little. But when you see it, you know it: it’s that look of your eyes “lighting up” or “twinkling.”
12. Learn to say a few things in a new language
Scientists have discovered that learning just a few phrases in a new language can improve how you speak your own.
People who learn new languages are also better at things like maths, art, higher level thinking, reasoning and problem solving. Phew!
However, we think that the best thing about learning to speak a few sentences of another language is that it opens up the world of opportunity, possibility and chance encounters. Think about it like this: if there are 5,000 people in the UK who speak Bosnian, by learning to say “how are you today?” or “want to dance?” in Bosnian you increase the number of new friends you could make to 5,000, not to mention the number of potential partners you could meet, invitations to Halloween parties you might receive or birthday cards you could send.
To start with, here’s how to say ‘Hello’ in 3 different languages:
Somali:
Helo (that’s an easy one)
Arabic:
Mar ha ba
Mandarin:
Ni Hao
Hello (in 44 different languages!)
- Arabic: Al salaam a’ alaykum
- Armenian: Barev
- Bulgarian: Zdraviete
- Cantonese: Nei Hou
- Croation: Bok
- Czech: Dobry den
- Danish: Goddag
- Dutch: Hallo
- Estonian: Tere
- Finnish: Terve
- French : Bonjour
- German : Guten tag
- Greek : Kalimera
- Hawaiin: Aloha
- Hebrew: Shalom
- Hindu : Namaste
- Hungarian : Szia
- Icelandic : Hallo
- Indonesion : Assalamu alai kum
- Italian : Buon giorno
- Japanese : Konichiwa
- Lithuanian : Labas
- Mandarin: Ni hou
- Mayan : Ba’ax ka wa’ alik
- Mohawk : Sekoh
- Navajo: Ya at eeh
- Norwegian : God dag
- Persian: Salam
- Polish : Czesc
- Portugese : Oi
- Romanian: Buna Ziua
- Russian: Zdraustvuite
- Samoin : Talofa Lava
- Serbian : Zdravo
- Slovak : Dobry den
- Slovenian: Zdravo
- Spanish: Hola
- Swahili : Jambo
- Swedish : God dag
- Tagalog : Magandang tangali po
- Turkish : Merhaba
- Ukranian : Pryvit
- Ute : Mique
- Welsh: Bore da
These are our simple acts, hope you can enjoy some too. We will share how these go. Thanks for reading! Wishing everyone a good week with love and all best wishes,
Grace and Linus xxxxxx
This blog is also in memory of Neil who worked for Refugee Week for many years. In love and light xxx
http://www.freepressseries.co.uk/news/latestnews/8197881.Tributes_to__passionate__human_rights_worker_from_Cwmbran/
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