Wellington Refugees As Survivors Launches New Book by Refugee Background Youth

            An excerpt from "All that I Am" by Abdalla Gabriel, Beyond the Dark Journey

On 16 March Wellington Refugees as Survivors Trust (WNRAS), in partnership with Wellington City Libraries, launched Beyond the Dark Journey, a book of poems and short stories from refugee background youth in New Zealand. The book was developed over the past year through 20 weeks of creative writing workshops created and conducted by Samson Sahele, WNRAS Cross Cultural Worker Advocate and former refugee from Ethiopia.

The journey toward the final published product began back in 2008 when Samson went to the local library and was unable to find any literature from Africa or works by African writers. “I was shocked and surprised,” he remembers. “I asked different libraries, but there was still nothing. I thought, ‘I have to do something about this,’ and that’s when the idea for the workshop developed.”

Samson created a proposal and plan for conducting a 10 week writing workshop with refugee background youth from ages 14 to 25 and began to develop the project with WNRAS General Manager Jeff Thomas. “It took a year and a half to develop the whole project, approaching different supporters and consulting with refugee community leaders,” says Samson. “The community leaders were very excited that someone was taking the initiative to offer such a programme to refugee background youth, and they supported it 100%. They said ‘we need that for our young people.’”

Soon Earthless Trees, the predecessor of Beyond the Dark Journey, was released. The book sold over 1500 copies, and the project was so successful that in 2010 Samson and WNRAS decided to put together a new course with an entirely new group of participants. They increased the length of the workshop from 10 weeks to 20 weeks in order to incorporate poetry into the second book, as Earthless Trees had focused only on short stories.

Every week, Samson conducted writing exercises for which he would bring in an inspiration piece. “It could be a photo, a newspaper article, a painting, anything,” says Samson. “Then the participants would write their own story or poem inspired by that particular thing. They produced a piece of writing every week, and at the end of the workshop, they had all these writing skills, so they could go away and produce their own work.”

The workshop sessions also gave the participants the opportunity to share their experiences and their refugee journeys and to reflect together on what it meant to them to be a refugee. For Margaret Lakot Pompeo, one of the workshop participants, this was one of the most significant parts of the process. “It’s really important to share our journeys,” she says. “All of us have similar experiences, we have experienced the long dark journey, and we all got through. It’s good to share because if I keep quiet with mine, I feel I’m the only one, but when we share, I learn that I’m not the only one. I learn that others share this experience too.”

For Samson, one of the highlights of the process was seeing the growth of each of the young writers with whom he was working. “It was fantastic to see them communicating, achieving, affecting each other, supporting each other,” he says. “It was one of the greatest gifts of my life to see them achieving together, saying to themselves, ‘I can do this. I can communicate through literature.’”

Indeed, developing her communication skills and building her confidence had a significant affect on Margaret. “For me this was a very good experience in my life because now I can communicate and talk in front of people,” she says. “I haven’t been able to do that before now. [Creative outlets like this] encourage young people who may be isolated and show them that they can meet people from different places. It helps them learn how to communicate.”

In the future, WNRAS aims to conduct workshops and publish a book every two years. With overwhelmingly positive feedback from communities and participants as well as growing interest from other regions in conducting similar workshops, Samson and WNRAS are also working to develop a version of the project that can be used in other areas of New Zealand. “We need to record our own refugee journeys for the next generation,” says Samson, “not just the next generation of refugees but the next generation of New Zealanders as well. We are living in a multicultural society, and this book, this project reflects that. It’s for everyone, and it’s important.”

*** WNRAS would like to thank the 11 young refugees who participated in the writing programme. For more information or to order Beyond the Dark journey, please download the order form here. ***