12
"
"
in
some
the main the refugees are keen but it is respects, particularly language, too late to give real support and assistance as the refugees have almost left the camp by the time they start the classes.
}
Kai Tak has a library. There were books in Vietnamese, Chinese and English and also a Children's section. The relevance of these books, either to the learning process or in terms of easiness to read as second language material, disappointed me very much. There were many books on London, Cambridge, Oxford and the History of the United Kingdom but no pictures of the areas in which Vietnamese people might expect to live upon their arrival in the United Kingdom. I was appaled to learn that at one of the first cultural orientation lessons in the Closed Camps the refugees knew absoloutely nothing about the United Kingdom other than that it was connected in some way with a place called London.
Kai Tak is, itself, a little village there is the shop and also · Noodle Bars. I took breakfast at one of these on my final day in Hong Kong and have to admit that the noodles I had there, sitting on the pavement at a table covered in cigarette ash, and old beer cans were probably the best I have ever tasted. In a way, as I sat there I was relieved that it was my Kai last day in Hong Kong and that I was able to spend it in Tak where there was a certain freedom and easiness in the atmospehere which is all too clearly not there in any of the Closed Camps. Kai Tak is surrounded by a wall topped with barbed wire but somehow that did not matter people here had
the right to excercise their freedom to a far greater degree. The fact that they arrived in Hong Kong before a certain date gave them this right. The fact that others arrived after certain date denied them the right.
What troubled me so much about Kai Tak was that people had been there so long that they were settled into a way of life. In some
the prospect ways
of resettlement for them seemed more difficult. They are surrounded by their possessions, in a city they know well. In an article in the South China Morning Post a journalist visited families in England and asked them if
Kong they would want to return to Hong
none of them to. Refugees are resilient people; they have
wanted to be.
It happened that I was leaving Hong Kong on the same day as four families destined for the United Kingdom. When people leave Hong Kong from the camps it seems to me that half of Kai Tak Camp come to see them off. With luggage, departing refugees and their friends we managed to completely fill one of the wide corridors in the airport. When refugees arrive in London I
It usually meet them.
very was
see where interesting to they had
had come from and the mood in which they left Hong Kong. One thing that has always bothered me is that not only is
the refugees. luggage labelled but so are
They wear a small badge with the initials ICM on them for identification purposes when they arrive in the United Kingdom, but Hong Kong
also insists Immigration
that they wear a luggage label their wrists. Surely they have been labelled for long enough? There is no need for the label and my first comment when they arrive is that there is no need for them to wear labels any longer.
חם
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.