write it, to count, to understand what people are saying and to read stories.
I learn colours, the days of the week, the alphabet, masculine and feminine and verbs.
I learn what different instructions mean: colour in, cut out, put a cross, copy, read, write, cross out, repeat, glue and draw round.
I learn the difference between a river and a stream, a stone and a pebble, a house and a family, day and night, sadness and fear.
I learn sheep, lamb and ⦠ewe; bull, calf and ⦠cow; father, child and ⦠mother.
I learn the difference between tu and vous. When I go to the club, I decide to say vous to Xavier. Itâs more respectful, classier.
By March I can understand everything.
By April I can make people understand me.
By May Iâve lost my accent, but Iâm still quiet and shy.
By June Iâm fluent, even if I still make little mistakes.
French is helpful. I can talk to my friends. All of them except Sohan, my best friend, who doesnât understand French. I try to help him, but at the end of the year he goes to live in the south of France, and he disappears from my life too.
Maths is simple. Except for problems to begin with, when I donât understand the instructions in French. English is easy. French children are only taught a few words, but I can speak it already.
We do art too. And music. I wonder what the point of it is. We learn songs to put on a show, a âmusical comedyâ. My father is surprised and not very happy: heâd rather I was either working hard at school or playing chess.
We do PE too. We have to fence. Itâs dumb. You have to hold a metal stick and follow all sorts of complicated rules. You arenât allowed to hit anyone properly, in case they get hurt. I try to anyway. Mme Klein gets cross with me and sends me out of the class.
Every day after school my father comes to meet me with a cake and a carton of fruit juice. We walk back to the hostel with the other children who live there and their parents. We play football, then Yolande comes to make sure we do our homework.
I like living in the hostel. Thereâs room to move, play and run about. Even if itâs noisy, even if you have to share the toilets and showers, and even if it isnât a proper home. At least we have a roof over our heads. It seems that there are some people who donât, even though France is a rich country. Iâm happy to live at the hostel until I get my own home. I wouldnât like to sleep on the streets. Thank goodness Iâll never have to!
XP : With Fahim, I discovered what daily life was really like for political refugees. The France Terre dâAsile hostel in Créteil is the oldest hostel for asylum-seekers in France, and also one of the largest and best. It is run by 30 or so permanent staff, including Muhamad â Fahim and Nuraâs social worker â and Frédéric, known as Fred, who is in charge of applications and other paperwork.
The hostel offers accommodation to over 200 people, and during the day helps many more to negotiate the labyrinthine complexities of official bureaucracy, or simply with the necessities of daily life. It has a kitchen, showers and washing machines that they can use. Itâs a strange sort of world in microcosm, a sort of Noahâs Ark of humanity, where you may come across men, women and children of all types and nationalities, young and old, families and single people: a real Tower of Babel, echoing with every language you can think of. At this point there were more Bangladeshi asylum-seekers in France than any other nationality, and there were several Bangladeshi families living at the hostel.
More than neighbours yet not quite a community, living more intimately than side by side but not quite cohering as a group, these people live their separate lives, see to their affairs, do their housework, cook for themselves and submit the forms and paperwork they are asked for. But they also make friends,
I learn colours, the days of the week, the alphabet, masculine and feminine and verbs.
I learn what different instructions mean: colour in, cut out, put a cross, copy, read, write, cross out, repeat, glue and draw round.
I learn the difference between a river and a stream, a stone and a pebble, a house and a family, day and night, sadness and fear.
I learn sheep, lamb and ⦠ewe; bull, calf and ⦠cow; father, child and ⦠mother.
I learn the difference between tu and vous. When I go to the club, I decide to say vous to Xavier. Itâs more respectful, classier.
By March I can understand everything.
By April I can make people understand me.
By May Iâve lost my accent, but Iâm still quiet and shy.
By June Iâm fluent, even if I still make little mistakes.
French is helpful. I can talk to my friends. All of them except Sohan, my best friend, who doesnât understand French. I try to help him, but at the end of the year he goes to live in the south of France, and he disappears from my life too.
Maths is simple. Except for problems to begin with, when I donât understand the instructions in French. English is easy. French children are only taught a few words, but I can speak it already.
We do art too. And music. I wonder what the point of it is. We learn songs to put on a show, a âmusical comedyâ. My father is surprised and not very happy: heâd rather I was either working hard at school or playing chess.
We do PE too. We have to fence. Itâs dumb. You have to hold a metal stick and follow all sorts of complicated rules. You arenât allowed to hit anyone properly, in case they get hurt. I try to anyway. Mme Klein gets cross with me and sends me out of the class.
Every day after school my father comes to meet me with a cake and a carton of fruit juice. We walk back to the hostel with the other children who live there and their parents. We play football, then Yolande comes to make sure we do our homework.
I like living in the hostel. Thereâs room to move, play and run about. Even if itâs noisy, even if you have to share the toilets and showers, and even if it isnât a proper home. At least we have a roof over our heads. It seems that there are some people who donât, even though France is a rich country. Iâm happy to live at the hostel until I get my own home. I wouldnât like to sleep on the streets. Thank goodness Iâll never have to!
XP : With Fahim, I discovered what daily life was really like for political refugees. The France Terre dâAsile hostel in Créteil is the oldest hostel for asylum-seekers in France, and also one of the largest and best. It is run by 30 or so permanent staff, including Muhamad â Fahim and Nuraâs social worker â and Frédéric, known as Fred, who is in charge of applications and other paperwork.
The hostel offers accommodation to over 200 people, and during the day helps many more to negotiate the labyrinthine complexities of official bureaucracy, or simply with the necessities of daily life. It has a kitchen, showers and washing machines that they can use. Itâs a strange sort of world in microcosm, a sort of Noahâs Ark of humanity, where you may come across men, women and children of all types and nationalities, young and old, families and single people: a real Tower of Babel, echoing with every language you can think of. At this point there were more Bangladeshi asylum-seekers in France than any other nationality, and there were several Bangladeshi families living at the hostel.
More than neighbours yet not quite a community, living more intimately than side by side but not quite cohering as a group, these people live their separate lives, see to their affairs, do their housework, cook for themselves and submit the forms and paperwork they are asked for. But they also make friends,
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