"Writing After the Bus" or "The Dead Goat and the Butcher".

Do you remember the post about the poster with the scary data on migration stuck at the back of a bus? We promised some more thoughts on that, so here we go.

First of all, those stats and the stories connected are so horrific some might wonder how people can even think about trying, but unfortunately it's not so difficult to understand them: good employment is still seemingly unreachable for most of the lowest classes and the image of our rich world is so alluring it's hard to resist the temptation; moreover, the examples of those who make it and can send money back or find a life there, though never easily, are strong arguments, hard to counter.
Surely, it is important to remind people of the dangers of the journey, as information is education and ignorance or lies are certainly to be fought, but we doubt a campaign like this can really work well as a deterrent: as it happens around the Mediterranean, when people can't see any future or suffer from, or are threatened by violence, they feel ready to face everything, to take any risk in order to escape, to try it somewhere else - "a dead goat doesn't fear the butcher's knife", as the saying goes among migrants (we can't remember where from, but that doesn't matter). 

We believe the numbers of those fleeing violence from Central America might be exaggerated, as many might be using that as an excuse, knowing their chances are better if they're seen as refugees, however gang violence is surely a huge factor, given that the countries of the triangulo del norte (Northern triangle, i.e. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) suffer from awfully terrible levels of gang activity, with homicide figures similar to those of war torn countries; however, the main problem is, as usual, the economic situation, as it is clearly behind the whole gang issue and because it makes people as desperate as to be willing to try anything. Most people are no way nearer the poverty levels we've seen in Africa and not only those who are in such dire conditions are dreaming of leaving, but again that's understandable, as it's hard to see how they can improve their lives here and they are too close to the rich world, geographically and at mass-media level, not to feel the pull. 

So, what can the answer be and what are we doing about this?

Can teaching English in a primary school help? It could, if that meant to increase the kids' chances of reaching better jobs significantly, but reaching that kind of result would imply much more than adding hours to the timetable: their whole education should be much better and most of all they should move on to secondary schools where they're taught English properly, not just colours, animals and "uoziurnem" (What's your name?), so actually Mattia doesn't feel as having done much on the issue through those months of classes, even though he tried his best to instil a desire for learning and to prove the students that they can actually learn a language and not just the usual 20 words or phrases. 

Teaching English to adults, or young people, makes definitely more sense, so we're glad our dear friends José&Marlene have held an afternoon course here at UPAVIM, still a little thing but a positive one, which we hope they can keep up when they come back in January (they're going back home for the month of December). Their educational activities with the older group of kids at the library holiday programme are good seeds too, as that sort of work can widen the kids' horizons and help them develop critical thinking. 

What else could help? 

Staying in the area of education, our opinion is that training teachers would be the way forward (as Mattia was supposed to do in Rwanda but did very little), but here we are in no position whatsoever to do that. 

Apart from education, another fundamental tool of discouraging migration is to make life at home better, by improving conditions. We can't reshape the economy or create jobs (even though Elena's Paper Furniture would be far from that), yet health, dental and nutrition programmes, which Elena has been working on, are definitely very important too, because if children grow well their lives will be better and if parents see their children taken care of, they've got a better view of their own life too, so she must be proud of what she's done, though she keeps feeling she hasn't been put in the right conditions to do as much as she could and most of all to arrange things so that her projects can have a real, long-lasting impact. 

Being violence such a strong factor, fighting and preventing it are other very worthy efforts; the former is outside our range, as it would require action at higher level (police, government...) or at wider level (the whole community, which we are not such a powerful part of as to be able to move it in that direction), but the latter can be attempted and that's what Mattia has been trying to do (starting from afar, which unfortunately won't work much if there's no way to continue the project for long), first with some input and activities in school, but mostly with his sport programme, which has been going on for over 4 months and picked up a lot in the last 5 weeks, with the creation of a good group of up to 12 kids in their early teens for athletics training 5 days a week and with a bigger group of younger children very happy to play pre-sport games. He's recently added another dimension to this youth project by recovering a relic of his African experience, i.e starting chess lessons/matches in the mornings, sitting on the ground, near the campo: nothing major, but it is encouraging to see how kids like it and how it really helps them put their minds to work, which can mean an awful lot for their lives.

Much more could and should be done on such sensitive issues, but we're doing the little we can and in order to do more we'd need more support from the organisation or better we should work for an organisation dedicated to all this, while UPAVIM's priorities are others, which is the main reason for our troubles, but more on this another time.