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.
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