Multicoloured blueprints
Sonali Pahwa attends an exhibition that intends to help its young refugee participants adjust to life in Egypt
The Townhouse gallery's large factory space has allowed it to extend its embrace to include a number of new initiatives and training workshops. Last week's exhibition of drawings by refugees' children, organised by the Sudanese Development Initiative (SUDIA), was a notable instance of the kind of expansion that the new space has facilitated. The quiet achievements of SUDIA's three year series of workshops were given a higher profile than usual by being staged at the downtown venue. The initiative has explored the long recognised link between art and the therapeutic development of expressive abilities towards a most urgent mission: helping displaced African children to make sense of their difficult transition to Egypt.
Founded in partnership with Save the Children UK, SUDIA's arts project is focussed on helping children of displaced families, primarily from Sudan but also from Somalia and West Africa. According to artist and programme coordinator Amadou, the project aims to ease their transition to a new environment while building a positive image of the home countries which they fled in circumstances ranging from war to economic hardship. A tall order at best, and even more of a challenge when the refugees are small children without clear memories of leaving but only a sense of their displacement. SUDIA's workshops in art and theatre are geared to the diverse needs of these displaced children and the recent exhibition at the Townhouse spotlights the organisation's effort to achieve several of its goals through artwork.
A walk around the gallery reveals a large number of rural scenes. The houses set amid idyllic fields and trees seem all the more poignant as visions of home projected while living in cramped temporary quarters in Cairo. Several landscapes contain, moreover, recognisably Sudanese features such as doum trees and boats on the river. The art teachers mentioned that they had made a special effort to describe Sudan to children who were too young to remember it when they left.
In the case of some Sudanese and Somali children, however, the goal was to lessen the trauma of their memories of violence in the homeland. Amadou remembers children who drew only weapons in their first few lessons. There was a six year old girl who would not draw her family since they had all been killed. The simple pictures have invisible layers of history. An initial impression of the exhibition as typical children's art in vivid colours demands to be rethought in terms of the effort of achieving such normalcy for displaced children. The pictures have a great deal of playfulness and imagination nevertheless, particularly collages of the devil by younger children and some abstract landscapes in ebullient colours. They are all for sale and the proceeds go to the artists.
SUDIA also provides classes on folk heritage in which children are taught Sudanese songs and folk stories. Theatre coordinator Somaya Al-Tayeb helps the children build skits on the basis of proverbs.
"We want them to keep a link with their dialects and their heritage even though they are displaced," she explains.
The question of language is, of course, more complicated for children of refugees from Somalia who speak no Arabic. For them the focus is on acquiring a new language rather than preserving the dialect of their parents, a goal made more difficult without the structure of formal schooling. At first SUDIA ran separate workshops designed respectively for Somali and Sudanese children, but it has combined them after realising the benefits of having Sudanese children with an Arabic background help those for whom it is a completely new language.
The close attention to detail in SUDIA's programmes in the arts is commendable for a large organisation that pursues economic and social agendas in both Egypt and Sudan. The arts programme initially had a number of projects all over Cairo but these have now been concentratd to two, in Sixth of October City and Maadi, where there are few other facilities (such as churches) at which Sudanis can gather. The volunteers who train children in art and theatre devote a great deal of time to projects, not just in the summer but throughout the year. However, they recognise that their work is only a small part of a dauntingly difficult mission. A major hurdle to giving the children of refugees a normal life is the lack of access to affordable schools. It often takes years for refugees to get an iqama (residence visa) which allows them to pay fees for their children at Egyptian prices rather than those projected for foreigners, who are generalised as wealthy. As a result several children participating in the project have not attended school since they came to Egypt.
SUDIA's publicity brochure notes that Egypt has become "a transit station for refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants" in recent years. Perhaps it is because the refugee population is transitory that their situation has not received adequate attention from policymakers. It has been left to non- governmental organisations with limited resources to address the many difficulties encountered by this diverse population.
SUDIA's response to this challenge has been creative and emphatic in its commitment to creativity. Its brochure states: "Part of our mandate is to be alert to the process, the way in which we work. Our orientation is towards the creative process as a blueprint for development."
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 27 November - 3 December 2003 (Issue No. 666)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/666/cu4.htm