To celebrate Refugee Week, we have asked several of our volunteers to write a blog piece for us. We asked each of them to write about what it meant to be here in Swansea.
Here is Tahir’s response.
“My loving audience and respectable organisers of today’s auspicious gathering, feelings are a relative and variable term. One and the same thing or situation, may be very enchanting to one person and taunting to the other. It varies because of the difference in the personalities based on their previous history, experiences, habits, education etc. etc. But I do not have to be philosophical a lot, but be explicit about what made me very comfortable and easy in Swansea.
Ladies and gentlemen, whenever any living being shifts or is shifted or transplanted from one place to another strange place, it feels a bit of witheredness. It may be a plant, animal or a human being. Same way my feelings and same were of my family’s, when we were undergoing through the process of asylum application. But after two months when we reached Swansea on 2nd March 2012, my joy knew no bounds to note the respectable and co – operative dealing of the manager of clear springs. He helped us in settling down in such a manner that I would not forget. It was Mr. huw any way.
Second role in creating a sense of welcome is of NHS. The surgery/hospital manifests the positiveness of the NHS or otherwise. Our surgery and the nearby hospitals i.e Dr.Devis surgery, Moriston hospital and singleton hospital have provided the best services to me and to my family. I feel proud to declare that my family had six operations at times and each time we felt very happy with the behaviour of the doctors and of the staff.
My three children are school going. Teachers and Head teacher meet us so warmly that we feel as if we are people of high esteem.
Though, as a follower of Sir Bertrand Russel, I am an optimist to keep myself easy in life, but my thoughts about Dr. Thomas and Dr. L.J. Rees, Miss Sondus and Mrs. Marton teachers of children school are highly appreciable.
I would conclude my narration here, by using the names of two masterpiece poems of John Milton. The first one is paradise lost and the second is paradise regained. Made to leave my native place named Narowal, a city of Pakistan was like if my paradise had been lost and settling in Swansea, a real city of sanctuary, paradise has been regained.”
