Hands free flute

As we walked around the camp on the first day to engage with people I was playing my hands free flute. A guy heard me and signalled me over and I accidentally walked into a prayer area. I immediately saw what I did and stepped out, the group of refugees laughed at this. We then introduced ourselves and spoke to Balendin a Sudanese guy who had a makeshift tent (and a prayer area marked out with a circle of water bottles filled with sand). We spoke briefly and told them what we were doing and shook hands with him and his family.

This was our first meeting and chat with them and they were really friendly and seemed happy to see us. We said hello many times as we wandered around the site but later that afternoon we were sitting around with another family who had invited us to shisha and baklava, Balendin walked past and invited us into their tent and we walked up to that and sat and spoke for about half an hour or so (before setting up for drumming) with his uncles and nephew Abdul, Abdul had a Muslim reminder ring, a kind of digital watch to highlight prayer times. We asked what they wanted to do and the Uncle (could not quite catch his name properly but sounded like Guidsan) said that he had a qualification (MBA) and wanted to work in England, he said he had left his wife and daughters back in Sudan as he thought it was too dangerous for them to travel with him but took his nephew Abdul with him.

They were coughing a lot (which prompted us to give them our sleeping bag the next day) but after looking at some comments on facebook the giving of some donations is probably best coordinated through the organisations on the ground as they know the real needs. Monika showed everyone in the tent the singing bowl and briefly played on Balendin’s shoulder and arm, other singing bowl techniques were also shown which they really enjoyed.