Perspectives The voices of refugees

This is a good section title slide Maá tells me never to look too closely at the food, and whenever I find flies or worms, she says I’m extra lucky because they give me protein.  Once I even found a human tooth in my rice.  Hey, Maá is this lucky too?  I asked, and Maá looked at it and said, ‘If you needing a tooth.’  She laughed a long time at her own joke. Longer than it was really worth, in my opinion. Eli sees me looking and slides his half full bowl over.  ‘You crazy, boy.  No normal person could want more of this crap.’  He says it extra loud too, and the Jackets watching take a step nearer, their hand on their sticks, just in case we didn’t know already what happens if we cause a fuss in the Food Tent. Questions: What kind of place do you imagine the writer to be in based on the description above? Do you think the writer is there through choice? Who do you think the Jackets are? What do you think they might do if Eli causes a fuss? This is a good section title slide

And then today at school, some of the kids had been talking And then today at school, some of the kids had been talking.  Saying how lucky those people were in the Centre.  How they had everything.  Good clothes and thousands of toys and books and computers and teachers and doctors who lived right there in the Centre so you didn’t have to drive for two days if you were sick.  And one of the boys, Max, said he saw a container get delivered to the Centre, and inside it was full of brand-new bikes.  Only a few kids at Jimmie’s school had a bike.  The school used to have a couple for the kids to use but they had disappeared just about as soon as they’d come. How do you think the kids at Jimmie’s school, described above, feel about the people in the Centre? Do you think the kids are happy that the people in the Centre have all of the things they describe? Why do you think the bikes at Jimmie’s school have disappeared? Do you think that the Centre described here is the same place as the writer in Excerpt A describes?

WRITING Imagine that the football or jump rope in the pictures are the favourite possession of the children pictured, like Subhi’s Pebbles of Happy in The Bone Sparrow.   Imagine that you are the child in the photograph and write a paragraph on why this possession is important to them, like your desert island disc item from task 3 is important to you.  You might want to include details on how that possession makes them feel, what it helps them to do and how it helps them to cope with an uncertain and uncomfortable life in a refugee settlement.