A secondary school English class – lessons are as
much about academic education as about sharing culture and creating a safe space to learn.Refugee Education Chios. All rights reserved.
Amid freezing temperatures in Europe’s hotspots,
refugees fleeing from some of the most dangerous places on earth still
encounter political stagnation and the threat of forcible returns after
harrowing journeys across land and sea. Young people have been forced into
adulthood, leaving their education in a state of limbo. But one NGO has set out
to restore the childhood of these forgotten victims so they have some relief
from the horrors at home.
The human reality
The small Greek island of Chios, once famous for
its production of mastic resin, is now notable instead for hosting refugees.
2,300 men and women, including 700 children live on the island, in dire conditions
in the camps, ring fenced with barbed wire. The demographic is overwhelmingly
male and mainly comprised of Syrians, Afghans and Kurds. Statistics such as
these often give bystanders a snapshot of a crisis, but essentially reduce
adults and children to abstract images and data, dismissing the human reality
of these young people.
Be Aware and Share (BAAS) is a volunteer NGO
working in Chios to break down this depersonalisation by presenting and
treating child refugees as an average school kid; in doing so they uphold some
fundamental rights for these minors. With a profound grassroots effort, it has
established a primary and secondary school, and a youth centre. During school
hours, these children can shed the stigmatised identity of being a refugee, and
have the opportunity instead to simply explore childhood.
21-year-old Moh, a volunteer teacher, himself a
refugee from Syria, helps translate for and assist classes.
“It is great to be getting out of Vial,” he says,
referring to the detention facility that accommodates over 1,000 refugees on
the island.
“It is definitely dangerous to sit around all day
and do nothing. You can see the effect of school on children’s behaviour – they
now cry if they cannot go one day, even though many of them have not been in
school before now. It is important most of all because it is their first point
of contact with Europe – especially the Vial kids, they never meet Europeans.
By going to school they meet European people who make them feel happy and
loved. I think this first impression is very important.”
Sensitising learning
Teaching English at the schools with BAAS requires
a high level of sensitivity to the children’s trauma. Simple educational
methods and everyday activities with them can trigger difficult memories. The
students left Turkey in boats to reach Chios across the freezing Aegean Sea –
some as unaccompanied minors. Many of them have lost family members, and
children as young as six speak with an astonishing detachment of the deaths of
close relatives.
Some of the teenagers have escaped torture and
forced labour as child soldiers by ISIS or others from the conflicts that throng
the Asian and African continents.
Establishing a learning environment which
facilitates their comfort is evidently difficult and BAAS have had to cherry
pick the curriculum with the utmost care. Typical educational activities
involving food or daily routines are inappropriate in these complex
circumstances. In Souda, an informal refugee camp based within Chios city, a
patchwork of NGOs are struggling to support refugees with even basic food and
supplies, where an already strained Greek government has failed to do so.
Worksheets must therefore be sense-checked so classrooms can focus on human
universals and creativity instead.
This is not without its difficulties, however. In a
primary school lesson, a reading of “The Owl and the Pussycat” provokes a
disturbed response to the “pea green boat”; some children shake their heads,
whilst another mimes the puncturing of a boat and imitates drowning, blowing
air through pursed lips, then gasping for breath. Out of context, the
children’s disquiet would seem abnormal, but the trauma they have experienced
at sea and at home has left their childhoods in fragile fragments, which BAAS
is putting back together with Pritt stick, playtime, and human affection.
Continuing reality
The backdrop to such hopeful progress at the
schools is bleak however. There is growing unrest both in the camps and across
the island because of the expanding population. Although numbers are dwindling,
rubber dinghies still reach Chios at night from Turkey, and the new arrivals
are forcing Souda’s makeshift camp to spill out onto the adjoining beach. UNHCR
tarpaulin is their only insulation from the blighting cold. The boredom of
daily life in the camps builds frustration, which often turns violent,
exacerbated by toxic living conditions and the stagnation of the asylum
process.
It is not only life within the camps that threatens
their safety. The camp has faced vicious attacks from gangs of fascists. For
BAAS volunteers, walking the children back to this environment after a day
singing “the wheels on the bus” in a warm and colourful classroom can be the
hardest part of the experience.
A boy from Key Stage 1 (ages 6-9), walks to school
from Souda.
Political deadlock
The children on Chios deserve to be on school
registers, not waiting for months to join the expanding numbers on asylum
registers. But the chaos of western politics casts a long shadow and dominates
the media. The refugee crisis has become hidden, out of mind and out of print.
While BAAS’ work is impressive, it should not only be their responsibility to
rehumanise the situation. Politicians, reporters and Europeans must all stand
up against the “othering” of refugees, occurring at the behest of toxic
policies.
The fragment of normal life BAAS students
experience is all too fleeting. Volunteers wave goodbye to children regularly
as they board the ferry to Athens for the next step of the asylum process,
knowing too well that Athens won’t necessarily hold a better future.
Accommodation is even more informal in the Greek capital, and progress even
slower.
Having escaped the terrors of war, it thus seems
these minors cannot escape the loss of their childhoods. When playing with LEGO,
the youngest choose to build guns rather than houses. One boy, Khalid, during a
lesson on celebrations, admits that he can’t even
remember his own birthday. “No birthdays here”, he explains. Ever since he
arrived in Chios seven months ago, it’s a luxury his family cannot afford,
another normality left behind.
This makes the work of BAAS so crucial, however
transient. It brings structure to children of a generation who some feared
would be lost. But they are not lost. Not lost to drone strikes or Assad forces
in Syria. They did not lose their lives in a car bomb in Baghdad. And they
survived the freezing temperatures of Europe’s seas and harsh winter.
Now, they need not be forfeited to self-harm or violence in the loveless
atmosphere of the camps. The work in Chios is a constant reminder of the common
humanity that joins us, and the importance of childhood, even in the face of an
unpredictable future.
Children doodle on the blackboard, waiting for their
breaktime snack.