Yet another day in the EuroArab project

04.11.2010

Köln

The day started with a round of evolutionary rock-paper-scissors. Afterward we started our first workshop this day - a series of short role plays, which were supposed to show different difficulties the immigrants might come across: the language barrier, discrimination because of the skin color, characteristic clothing and religion and customs connected with it.

The following point of our program was a visit to the NGO dealing with the problems connected to immigration and integration in Germany. Allerweltshaus is a cultural center, which hosts such organizations as Ethiopian Democrats, Eritrean Democrats, Nigerian Association and houses a library. Among many other projects, the Allerweltshaus organized a street theatre project in Palestine with the students of the Bethlehem University. In general the organization puts great weight on street theatre, which we experienced ourselves – we took part in a series of theatrical exercises including: running in circles, rapid stops and human-paintings.

We were divided into 3 groups, which went to Neumarkt, Domplatz and Hauptbahnhof. Our goal: 10 interviews per pair. I was paired with Fatma and together we tried to interview people at the bus stop in Neumarkt. We managed to gather 6 interviews before we run out of time and went back to out workshop headquarters.

There we continued with the presentation of our short plays. This time the topics were language as a barrier in education, mispronunciation and low language knowledge as a reason for discrimination and misperception of ones intelligence and qualifications and last but not least: intercultural / interreligious romantic relationships and the problems which might arise due to a marriage of people with different cultural backgrounds. After my quasi-wedding we ended the official part of the day with the sessions of reflection groups.

Then came a dinner in an Italian restaurant. Then we went our separate ways: some decided to actually get a good night sleep, others went for karaoke and a bunch of us decided to stay up for no particular reason. I myself welcomed the next day in the kitchen writing this blog.

From theater to Italian dinner

04.11.2010
Köln

In the beginning of the day all of the group woke up, had their breakfast and then went out to start their activities as used to.

After we all had gathered in the training place and started our awakeninig games, we began our workshop about integration. The group was divided into 6 groups in order to work with each other in creating a theatre that talks about immgration cases.

Every group had its case and we had to put ideas together to be acted by the group members.

Then we all had discussion to interpret the solutions. Then we left for an NGO organization of migrants in Germany.

The people there told us about the organization mission and its activities, we have played many entertaining games, and also they showed us a small show which they had filmed when they were in Palestine, we as Palestinian participarts were very happy to see the talking about our country as they understand our culture very well, we were happy also because we saw our streets and University in this short film.

After finishing the activity, we were divided in pairs to go and make street actions, we had a great time talking to people in  cologne streets and giving them surveys about global challenges to explore their way of thinking and their new ideas.

Then we were back to the social center to continue our workshops, we first continued the rest of the theater plays, and discussed them together. Then we were divided to seven groups, every group was asked to talk about a story that expresses experience of migration and integration, the groups were as follow; Imposed_ extrnal migration_ return_ internal migration_ chain_ external to urban_ step migration. All of the stories were presented by a group member, after every presentation we had evaluation and discussion.

In the end of the day we went to have Italian dinner, and we were back to the hostel.