In the Midst of a Long Journey, a Moment for Inspiration

Note: This story was written in September 2020. On September 30, the Bosnian government closed the Bira reception center. CWS now works in Lipa, a new refugee and migrant center about 12 miles from Bihac. Ghulam left Bira days before the center closed.

Ghulam has been moving for as long as he can remember. He was born in Afghanistan. When he was 5 years old, his parents sent him to live with an uncle in Pakistan and start school. After a couple of years, his family joined him. Then his dad went to Saudi Arabia in search of work that would put food on his family’s table. Ghulam moved back to Afghanistan with his mom and nine siblings.

Ghulam has always loved both learning and art. He remembers racing home from school to finish his homework. Ironically, considering that he now dreams of being a professional athlete, he would paint while the other children played. When his family moved back to Afghanistan, he had to drop out of school and help earn money, but he still found a way to pursue a craft. He made wooden furniture with his older brother.

A year ago, everything changed. Ghulam’s father returned home with a medical condition that meant that he could no longer do hard, physical work. Ghulam made the tough decision that he felt was best for his family: he left to try to get to Europe and earn money that he could send back to his family. His journey has taken him through Iran, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and now Bosnia and Herzegovina. He desperately misses his siblings, especially his older sister. And for now, he got separated from his best friend and traveling companion, who is waiting for him in Belgium. They want to meet up and eventually go to the United Kingdom together.

For now, Ghulam is in the Bira reception center in Bihac, Bosnia. The center is full of shipping containers that are used as dormitories, classrooms and meeting spaces. CWS has a container where we offer classes for Bira’s residents. One day when Ghulam was passing the CWS container, our team invited him in for a German class. He says that he thought to himself, “I love languages. I already speak Pashto, Urdu, Farsi and English. Why shouldn’t I try to learn German as well?”

It turns out that the German class wasn’t the main takeaway that day, though. “I sat in the container, but the only thing I could focus on was the drawings that the CWS staff put on the walls,” he recalls. The next day he returned, and the CWS team was organizing a craft workshop to celebrate Valentine’s Day. For a while he just watched, but then he decided to join in. He drew for hours, and when he was finished, the CWS team complimented his work and hung it on the wall with the others.

“Every day you encouraged me to draw more and more and gave me crayons, paper and whatever I needed,” he says. Today, Ghulam is a regular at the CWS container. He loves to draw portraits and graphic drawings. He says he will continue to learn languages ​​and paint in the future, even though his dream is to become a professional athlete.

As a recent conversation shows, Ghulam has a big heart and big plans. “I am happy to see my drawings among others, it inspires me,” he says. “But you guys need more decorations, especially wooden ones. I’ll make them for you. Maybe I’ll even start writing poetry, we’ll see.”

When Creativity Leads to Community

Note: This story was written in September 2020. On September 30, the Bosnian government closed the Bira reception center. Residents, including Kalash, were transferred to another center called Lipa (where CWS now works). Within a few days of his move to Lipa, Kalash left, presumably to continue his journey.

Growing up in Pakistan, Kalash and his family were close. It was a normal, quiet life. “I graduated from high school. While I lived in Pakistan, I loved to play cricket and often went jogging. My family is large, with seven sisters, two brothers and my parents. Our relationships are really strong, and we lived together in a big house.”

Unfortunately, Kalash’s family struggled economically. His brother left a decade ago, frustrated by financial struggle and an uncertain future. He now lives in France. Two years ago, Kalash decided to follow his brother’s footsteps in search of a better life and to provide for his family.

From Pakistan, Kalash spent six months in Turkey and then two months in Greece. He spent a few weeks in Serbia and then made his way to Bosnia, where he is today.

Along the way, Kalash met people from different backgrounds. Some were very friendly, he says. Other times he was met with racism and discrimination. “Respect is the ability to feel someone else’s pain and to treat strangers in a normal way,” he says. “Racism is when refugees and migrants are told that they smell bad or that they are ugly and dirty.”

Kalash arrived in Bosnia last summer, and for the better part of the year he has been in the city of Bihac. He has primarily lived in the Bira reception center, where CWS works. He has tried to cross the border into Croatia five times, and failed every time. He has been beaten by the police and had his phone and money confiscated. After repeated failures, and due to the lockdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic, he has temporarily stopped trying to cross the border.

When some of his friends left Bira to try to continue their journey, they offered Kalash the living space in their shipping container. He had been living in a tent with about 100 other people, so he eagerly jumped at the chance to have a container all to himself.

During the lockdown, Kalash entertained himself by watching videos on his phone. He found himself watching videos of people making crafts. He watched more and more videos, sometimes staying up all night. He was constantly thinking about how beautiful the products ended up being, and he thought he could make something similar.

Kalash mostly kept to himself in Bira and didn’t participate in many activities. But one day he noticed the CWS container, which has a creative corner that offers crafts and art for Bira’s residents. He liked the decorations, and wanted to do something similar in his container. So he talked to our team, who let him have some of the decorations for his container.

It turns out that this was the start of a new passion. He collects materials from the camp’s recycling to turn into art, and CWS provides the glue and other supplies that need to be purchased. He used an old umbrella and paper to make a chandelier, for example. Soon, his ordinary shipping container turned into an extraordinary place to live. When he got new roommates, they loved what he had done with the container. He even won an award from the Bira manager for having the most beautiful container.

Kalash says that the respect and recognition that he has received as a result of his creativity makes him very happy. He’s something of a celebrity within Bira now. And our team is excited to see him using his time to do something productive and different. Plus, the confidence that he built as his work started getting recognized helped him feel safer and start communicating more with the others in the center. “Thank you CWS for giving us a chance to develop and improve our abilities and skills that we don’t even know we possess,” Kalash says.