October 3rd 2017.
Today the workshop is in Ashti IDP camp.
This camp is 30 minute’s drive from Sulaymaniyah. It is on the road to Iran, surrounded by the wide, brown Kurdish mountains.
Tablo is with us. She will translate the radio program from Arabic to English. She is enthusiastic about the idea and tell us more about the camp. There are more than 5000 people living here, mostly in tents and coming from the regions of Salah ad-Din and Mossoul.
The camp is divided by wide gravel roads that are exposed to the heat and the sun. We set up the radio studio in the community centre. The centre’s walls are covered with children’s drawings in bright colours.
As we launch the workshop the staff bring more and more participants. They are teenagers girls and boys.
To begin the workshop, we talk about memories linked to radio. Most of the participants were from farming families in their home town. They would listen to the radio in their car on the way to the fields or while growing vegetables.
They left their homes in 2014, when ISIS moved into their area. Most of them were just children when they were confronted with this destruction and massacre. This has had a vast impact on their current life.
They decided to name their broadcast « Wounds of the Past » and talk about resettlement, starting again from nothing, violence and their futures.
This has had a vast impact on their current life and they decided to name their broadcast “Wounds of the Past” and talk about resettlement, starting again from nothing, violence, and their futures.
The entire broadcast is available here :