“Fertig!” This was first word that Hibo Mohamed learned of this, to her, very foreign language. Because Germans use that word so often. Fertig can mean ready, done, finished. When the 30-year-old woman from Somalia explains this to us with the help of an interpreter, laughter breaks out among the volunteers who are here to support her.
At that moment, you get the sense that this really could work: a team of local people takes a refugee family under its wing and helps them settle here in Germany. And that’s how we come to be attending this colorful gathering at the protestant-evangelical church at Schale, near Osnabrück, on a Saturday in October.
Firstly, there’s Hibo Mohamed, her husband Abdirashid and their two youngest children. Then we have two volunteer interpreters, three members of a twelve-strong women’s singing group from the church congregation and the pastors, Annette and her husband Roland Wendland. They are all part of the “New Start Team,” (NesT). This is the program started by the federal government two years ago.
People in particular need of sanctuary from the world’s crisis regions are given help to put down roots in Germany by representatives of “civil society.” This Somalian family, which is now hoping for a future in the Osnabrück area, has experienced tough times. For more than seven years they lived as refugees in Ethiopia, having fled the terror of their war-torn homeland. For an even longer period of time, they had been looking for medical help for their eldest son Ahmed who, when he was five years old sustained a head injury, whilst out playing, which was so serious that it caused a brain hemorrhage. Several operations failed to bring about an improvement.
“He could have received such good treatment in Germany,” said pastor Annette Wendland.
It never materialized. The flight which may have saved his life was canceled at the last minute, several times, reports his mother Hibo, almost whispering. On Oct. 18, 2020, the 12-year-old boy died. It was almost a whole year later, on 2 September of this year, before the family landed in Frankfurt. It was quickly apparent that the NesT team had prepared well for their arrival.
“Without the volunteer interpreter, who accompanied us to the airport, we wouldn’t have known who we were meant to be meeting,” explains Roland Wendland.
As early as May this year the volunteers were able to rent a small apartment with financial support from the church. An appeal in the church newsletter persuaded a local landlady to help out with the “new start.” The volunteers also got the apartment furnished.
The new arrivals soon showed they were keen to learn, showing strong interest in the language course which the church community offers to other refugees as well. So one of the volunteers drives Hibo the twelve kilometers from the village where she is living to her lessons, and back again, four times a week. As soon as the children start attending the daycare, her husband will join her. Some of the helpers are meeting the Somali family for the first time. There are some touching moments.
“We are lucky to have you get us out of there,” says Abdirashid via his interpreter. “We are very grateful for that. You are good people!”
“We’ll see,” replies Martha Hesselmann, grinning and earning a laugh from the others.
Hesselmann, 68, is a trained photographer and musician and she describes the value of the project as being like a “fresh wind is blowing around us.” Her 53-year-old co-volunteer Ute Baumann, a physiotherapist, wants to “gain insights into another culture,” and Karin Linke, 63, who runs the church kindergarten already has experience of looking after refugee families, “because I want to help people get on.”
The project is also very dear to the hearts of the Wendlands, the pastors at the church. The couple have been committed for years to helping refugees, and have offered asylum at their church to a number of them. One of the new things about “NesT” is that “We didn’t know the people beforehand,” explains Roland Wendland. He is aware of the criticisms of the program, that the state is passing its responsibility onto private citizens.
To an extent this is true. But: “We help people avoid the dangers of following very dangerous routes to Germany.” The 63-year-old pastor and his co-volunteers had actually hoped for a family from Syria, as a member of their singing group comes from there.
But in the end, they got the four people who are sitting here with them today. Because the only foreign language they knew was a few words of English, they wouldn’t have managed without the help of a Somali family from the neighboring village, says the pastor.
“They take them shopping, they really care about them and are worth their weight in gold.”
It’s thanks to them that the two interpreters are here today. And Hibo and Abdirashid’s compatriots also fulfill another important task. They act as role models. After living in the Osnabrück area for two years they speak good German and can fend for themselves because the man has found a job with an engineering company. Abdirashid understands what is expected of him. Of course, he wants to work. In his home country he was a cab driver, he tells us, and later he sold tea from a small kiosk. “We are going to do what we can,” he says.
Do they expect to return to their homeland at some point? The idea behind the “NesT” program is expressly that refugees should stay in Germany. Abdirashid is torn.
“That’s my homeland, the country I was born in,” he says. “If the situation changes one day…”
Hibo, on the other hand, is much clearer about this question.
“Women have no rights in Somalia,” she says.
She sees her future in Germany.