I had to stop my work, which consists of checking the transcription of some audio files to make sure all words are there correctly, because one voice I was transcribing set off a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions and I needed to share them. They all enter into why I love intercultural mediation so much, and why I cannot do it, at the same time.
It reminded me of why I started a cultural association in 2020, then backed away from it last year, and why my heart aches for people, and I love them dearly, completely, and yet I have social anxiety and wish to remain as far away from people as possible.
People are more beautiful to me when they are real, very real, with their imperfections and quirks and inadequacies all in the open. I have never felt as comfortable as around drug addicts, homeless people, possible future or potential criminals who hid their gun in my car without telling me, bless their heart, the boys who would come to the centre where I worked as a cultural mediator and they were the most conflicted, but also some that weren't, some that were just so very very smart, so refined in their intellect, soul, ambition and dreams, but because they spoke with an accent or they had come off the boat, they were treated just as everyone else. They were the African migrants, or the Bangladeshi migrants, or the Egyptians.... but they were — always are — all so beautifully, wonderfully different. The boy who confided he had killed someone, by driving without a licence and running them over with his truck, the boy who was entrusted with running an illegal shop when he was 9, the boys who had been violent, who'd been trouble, and thus were sent off by their relatives in hopes of getting something out of them — but they are all ok now, they are better now, the system, and especially the work of myself and precious colleagues like the one in the photo, succeeded. They are all dear to me, and I remember them all, those who made it and have a chance in this life, and those for whom the system did not work. Their voices are echoed in the one I am transcribing now and that brings me back to why I am writing this.
The people recorded in these audio files are supposed to be using natural speech, talking about how they organise their work, their learning, their schedules... some of them are reading. Some are clearly learned, I can tell because of the way they read, even though they are not quite following the brief. But one of them, this young man I keep coming across, is wonderful: he speaks in what would be horrendously defined with the best of intentions as a "colourful way". But what he is saying behind his stilted English, "colourful" English, is very smart and filled with love and drive and ambition and dreams.
And it pains me, you know?
It hurts me, how much I love him, solely from listening to his voice. I can tell more or less which country in Africa he is from, and I can tell more or less how old he might be, and I can tell from the background noises that he has goats, a donkey, and other people near him, so he's not alone. This young man is doing this recording audio work instead of attempting the horrendous 2–3 year journey across the desert, through torture and manipulation and exploitation and, finally, the sea that so many of his compatriots attempt. Some of those will survive, but a lot, way too many, will not.
Sometimes in the morning on the beach as I walk my dogs I pick up as much of the plastic the sea has thrown back at us before it reclaims it. And sometimes I come across a single shoe. I try not to think about where that shoe came from, whether it might be a shoe that belonged to one of the many, many men and women and children who tried to make it across, and failed. I have to put that thought aside because it devastates me.
But then I do this job, in my chosen and sought after isolation, and I hear this young man's voice about how he will tick this learning for today and tick his learning for the next day, and my heart swells with gladness and joy: this young man has found a way to make some money for himself without having to get all his family and friends to pitch in to pay for his expensive trek across the desert, only to then get blackmailed into giving more and more money, and maybe even get tortured in Libya.
May he continue to do so and may he flourish and be happy.