Berlin locals, drug dealers meet over migrancy offering first steps for integration as well as employment opportunities
Dog walkers, cyclists and doting parents all enjoy Berlin’s Gorlitzer Park. Everyone goes about their business, including the drug dealers – many of them migrants from west Africa – who work the park gates, seeking out potential customers. Nobody seems much to mind the cannabis; it is just accepted as the way things are in this hipster neighbourhood of Berlin. But after getting to know the dealers while walking her dogs each day, one local woman decided to do something about it. Migrants can do way morethan deal drugs, she said. „We want to show they can have normal jobs and this canreverse the whole situation in the park. If you give migrants opportunities they will take them,“ said Brigitta Varadinek, founder of Bantabaa – „meeting point“ in the mandinka language, which is spoken in west Africa. As well as weekly German lessons and legal advice as a first step to integration, the social enterprise she founded in 2015 offers employment opportunities in its cafe and a place to live for 15 people chosen for its work training scheme.
Escaping slavery
Slim and shy to speak, Mass, 38, works at the cafe. He has been in Germany since 2015 and spent two days sleeping in the park every week when travelling into Berlin to seek work from arefugee shelter in Mecklenburg Vorpommern, the federal state north of Berlin. Bantabaa employed him because, of the many migrants who come asking for work, he was one of the few with a CV. Although Mass – who did not want to reveal his surname – has been refused asylum, he cannot be returned to Mauritania as he does not have a passport. He does, however, have a work permit.
Mass fled slavery in Mauritania, working as a bonded labourer for five years for a man who had been subcontracted by a German construction company. He was given food and shelter, but said his boss kept his money.
The West African country has one of the highest rates of slavery in the world, with two in 100 people living as slaves, according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index.
The situation in Gorlitzer Park is tolerated because of its location in Kreuzberg, with its liberal local government.
But things have changed, said Varadinek, who continues to work as a lawyer while running her social enterprise. Her aim is to help more migrants as the cafe makes more money.
The drug dealing still exists and the political atmosphere has soured – but Bantabaa will keep trying to bridge the gap.
„We will not solve the whole migrant question,“ she said. „It’s a question of helping each other …. not to change the whole world. This is something we cannot do.“
LEE MANNION
Text pochází z agentury Reuters Zdroj LN
Naučte se gramatiku podle textu
Dnes jsme se setkali s příkladem idiomu, tedy s frází s významem, který se liší od významu jednotlivých slov. Jedná se o větu „Everyone goes about their business, including the drug dealers…“ („Každý si jde po svém, včetně překupníků drog…“). V angličtině se vyskytuje množství idiomů s výrazem business.
Přiřaďte idiom ve větě k jeho významu:
1. I don’t have much time, so let’s get down to business. 2. I’m not going to tell you, it’snone of your business. 3. Mind your own business and stop asking me all those questions. 4. I don’t normally like mixing business with pleasure. 5. I think there is somemonkey business going on.
a. combining professional and personal life b. start doing something c. dishonest or silly behaviourd. stop interfering in my affairs e. it’s not of your concern
SLOVÍČKA
migrancy migrace
doting milující, zbožňující
seek out vyhledat, sehnat
cannabis konopí, marihuana
the way things are jak se věci mají
get to know seznámit se
way more mnohem více
reverse změnit, zvrátit
legal advice právní rada
enterprise podnik, počin
scheme program, projekt
escape uniknout, vyhnout se
slavery otroctví
refugee uprchlík, běženec
shelter útočiště
CV životopis
reveal odhalit, prozradit
refuse zamítnout, odepřít
permit povolení
flee utéct, prchnout
bonded dluhem vázaný
labourer dělník
rate míra
sour zhořknout, pokazit se
bridge překlenout, překonat
gap mezera, rozdíl
Řešení: 1b, 2e, 3d, 4a, 5c
