Love of the Common People (2)

"Living on free food tickets"

Flash didn't join Luna and myself for the morning forest walk yesterday. Not quite sure if a health or mind problem. He did the evening walk/bike ride with Angie though, so hopefully it was "mind", perhaps he had heard a gunshot in the forest.

So to make up, set off for the "Schickling walk" in Ottobeuren which he always seems to enjoy. Sunny and a bit of a cooling wind but still warm. Almost back at the car, we came across Ali, sitting on the bench enjoying the sun's rays but wearing an anorak.

Ali is one of the thousands of Africans who survived the trip across the Med in a plastic boat, about half of his fellow 100 passengers dying on the way. He is from northern Somalia, formerly the "British" part, the south being Italian and of course the French were in the neighbouring Djibouti area. He has been in Ottobeuren for about 3 months.

He was thrilled to find out I was English and could carry out a normal conversation with someone. He seems to be getting by well and is grateful for the support he gets. He hasn't got a job but knows the main reason is the language barrier, so he attends school every day. He clearly misses many aspects of his homeland, a very natural feeling which I also "suffer" from.

I am certainly not going to get in to a discussion on this one, mainly because I don't have an idea how to get to grips with the problem. I don't however think it's right to automatically put up a solid barrier. We don't need to look back too far to see what we Europeans did in our own country (Pilgrim Fathers) forcing people to take to boats and flee their country and there are very many of us who owe our present good fortunes to the exploitation by our forefathers in the "colonies". While we sort out the mess, we do need to treat them with respect.

Notable was that Flash & Luna didn't care a tiny bit who he was, where he came from, his religion, his colour - so long as he threw sticks to fetch and didn't use them to beat them, he was great. Good luck Ali.