Cymru & I

By Inclusive Journalism Cymru

In Cymru & I nine new writers look at what Wales means to them as people from backgrounds previously marginalized or excluded. Their kaleidoscopic viewpoints prove that the concept of Welshness' is broader, deeper, and far more nuanced than that portrayed in the mainstream. These unheard stories reflect the experiences of many, but such stories have too often been overlooked or ignored. Here are essays on identity, integration, the power of language to welcome or divide, acceptance, personal aspiration, civic decline, and hill walking. Among the contributors are those who have sought sanctuary or space in Wales: immigrants current and first or second generation neurodivergent, LGBTQ+ and working-class people. Their articulate and compelling essays demand attention. Cymru & I is made of nine very human stories about Wales and the many different kinds of Welshness it encompasses. The contributors are: Gosia Buzzanca, Tia-zakura Camilleri, Kelechi Ronald Ikpe, Mo Jannah, Bethany Mcaulay, Laura Mochan, Debowale Omole, Alys Roberts and Anthony Shapland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Jan 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781781727317

Book preview

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

Suite 6, 4 Derwen Road, Bridgend,

Wales, CF31 1LH

www.serenbooks.com

Follow us on social media @SerenBooks

Essays © individual authors, 2023

The right of the above mentioned to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

ISBN: 978-1-78172-730-0

Ebook: 978-1-78172-731-7

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Books Council of Wales.

Printed by Severn, Gloucester

CONTENTS

Introduction

Debowale Omole, Scars, Knotweed and a Dream

Bethany Mcaulay, Vague Shapes Inland

Tia-Zakura Camilleri, Dringo’n Ddu

Alys Roberts, My Dyslexic Disguise

Mo Jannah, Global Wales: The Legacy of Multiculturalism

Gosia Buzzanca, A Concatenation

Kelechi Ronald Ikpe, In a New Land

Laura Mochan, When Giants Fall

Anthony Shapland, Meantime

About Inclusive Journalism Cymru

Notes on Contributors

INTRODUCTION

The story of contemporary Wales is like a jigsaw puzzle made up of more than 3 million pieces. Individual, multi-layered stories that are unique, irregular and complicated, but fit together to make the whole. Frustrating and infuriating at times, but something that we might eventually be satisfied with, or perhaps even proud of.

It’s obvious where some of those stories, those pieces, sit. They have a natural place, they fit comfortably, and in many ways they are the building blocks from which the rest of the puzzle can start to be seen.

But others don’t fit in so easily.

They might be interesting shapes or sizes, look different from the rest or may be a bit broken. We need to think harder about where those pieces fit, mend them or carefully ease them into place.

Some pieces, though, are missing.

They definitely exist, but they’re unseen, ignored or overlooked. They might not feel important at first, but we need them if we’re going to see the full picture and make sense of it.

Stories are how we make sense of the world, but we’re never going to be able to understand how the jigsaw fits together if some of the pieces, some of the stories, are missing.

When we started Inclusive Journalism Cymru, we knew that we wanted to create opportunities for people from marginalised backgrounds or identities to tell their stories, precisely so that we could fill in the gaps and complete the picture. So we could tell the true story of Wales.

Cymru & I explores some of the questions, the challenges and the delights that have surfaced as Wales gradually becomes a more diverse, but also occasionally more fractured, nation. You’ll read stories of people who’ve felt welcomed, rejected, broken or built by this country. Some of our writers feel viscerally Welsh, while others find their relationship with that word much more complicated. That’s what happens when different people tell different stories, in different ways – we begin to embrace the complexities of our identities rather than reducing each other to stereotypes or caricatures.

But none of that is easy. To tell those different stories we need to create genuinely inclusive processes that make it possible for the most marginalised voices to be heard. We can’t continue to apply the same lenses that have traditionally privileged those with power or status and expect those new perspectives to be magically revealed.

If we want to complete the jigsaw we need to think differently and open our eyes to where those missing or broken pieces might be, and do everything we can to make sure they’re part of that full picture.

We’re thankful to the Books Council of Wales, Creative Wales and Seren for supporting and collaborating with us on this journey of change, and being prepared to think differently and help find those missing pieces of the jigsaw.

Although most of the writers in this collection have never been published before, they are not ‘new voices’; they’ve always had their stories. What we’re trying to change is who hears those stories, and how hard they listen.

So we thank you too for reading this book and helping us do the jigsaw together. We won’t finish it today, or even tomorrow, because – like anything that’s worth doing – it’ll take concentration, application, hard work and time. But it’s good to make a start, knowing that seeing the full picture will be our reward.

SCARS, KNOTWEED AND A DREAM

DEBOWALE OMOLE

‘Daddy!’ screamed my daughter. I’d heard my seven-year-old scream many times, but never like this. And at 4.00 a.m. A cold sweat washed over me and my heart started racing so fast I feared I might vomit. As I bolted out of bed, trying to reach her as fast as I could through the darkness, there came a second, piercing scream. I looked over – my wife wasn’t there. Perhaps she had already reached the bedroom where our three children slept. As I got closer to their room, not only could I hear the frightful whimpers of my second daughter and my son, but I could also hear my wife plead and try to reason with strange voices.

Once I reached the landing connecting our bedrooms, I saw what was happening downstairs: three fierce-looking immigration enforcement officers had entered our home, clearly with the intention of detaining us. Instinctively, my immediate thought was to free my wife from the officer about to put her in handcuffs. I say instinctively, because I had no sense to walk down the stairs at this point – I thought it more expedient to jump down the whole flight instead. I was mid-air when my head bounced off the beam above the stairs, and by the time my body touched down at the feet of the officer, I was unconscious.

‘Daddy!’ shouted my little boy, waking me with a start. Drenched in a cold sweat and with my heart racing, I jumped out of bed, almost knocking myself out against the wall. I looked over – my wife was still in bed, and I didn’t hear a scream nor whimper from the room my children share. I must’ve had a wild look in my eyes because my usually boisterous four-year-old son took frightened, cautious steps backwards and said timidly, ‘I need to pee… Sor-wee, Daddy, sor-wee.’ The alarm on my wristwatch went off: 6.00 a.m. ‘It’s OK, K-Bobo. Daddy is the one who is sorry. I am sorry I scared you. Daddy had a bad dream.’

This nightmare was from four years ago. Hauntings like these are like faded scars that never truly disappear from most immigrants’ lives. I have been scarred by prejudice, and it is a hard-to-kill type of knotweed that requires strenuous effort to eradicate from hearts and minds. My mind on most days is a litany of endless prayer – ‘Lord, let this day be good’ – or a mantra of defiance: ‘Not today!’ This mental struggle has shaped my experiences and how I respond to Wales as home.

Why have you left your ‘original home’? Why has Wales become your home? Why should anyone move homes? Why do we have prejudice and why are we sometimes traumatised by different people and different environments?

Change, as the saying goes, is inevitable and it happens to us all. Though I am the hero and historian of the story you are about to read, I do not promise you answers to the small word that asks big questions: why? This essay is an invitation, if you accept, to answer them for yourself. Will you feel what I felt? Would you make the same choices as I did?

BEFORE THE BAD DREAM

It is the year 2012. A significant year in the history of the United Kingdom. London hosted the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. The first city to invite the world to its home for a third time. The year 2012 was also significant for the UK because it was the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. The second monarch in British history to celebrate sixty years on the throne after Queen Victoria in 1897. It was also a significant year for me: it was the year I moved to the UK to join my wife. She was pregnant with our first child and due in the spring. It was, for me, figuratively and literally, a season of new beginnings. My wife and I had long debated our next move after she completed her master’s in public health at Swansea University. It wasn’t the pregnancy that swayed our decision to stay for the time being, it was the illness in the agonising months prior to my arrival that made travel for her impossible. Consequently, I conceded to join her in Swansea till we could move out of the city, which I’ve come to have a complicated relationship with.

‘Croeso i Abertawe’ crackled over the public announcement speaker as I stepped out of the bus. It was bright. The sun was up, and it was a beautiful day. The air caressed my ears and neck tenderly; it made me pull the collar of my coat up, imagining it would miraculously shield my ears from the unwanted whispers that I suspected came from the sea. For someone who arrived from a city where the average temperature in the coldest months is 26 degrees Celsius, the smile of the sun and the whisper of the breeze seemed to foreshadow a complicated dichotomy that would lead me to appreciate why Dylan Thomas called Swansea an ‘ugly, lovely town’. As I waited patiently in the queue beside the coach for the driver to retrieve my bags, I became keenly aware that my heart was racing, and it wasn’t because the cold air made me want to sprint for the door. Thoughts of seeing my wife for the first time in nearly nine months filled my head. What would I do, what condition would she be in, and how would I support her in the weeks ahead? I was momentarily lost in my musings when I was interrupted by an ‘Oi, mate!’ I smiled and apologised to the driver. I instantly bent to pick up my bags, except that they were not in front of me. I looked at him, still smiling, but he wasn’t smiling back. I thought I must have done something wrong and apologised again for not paying attention earlier. ‘Are those your bags?’ he queried, pointing to the open compartment beneath the coach. ‘Yes, they are,’ I confirmed.

He replied, ‘I’m not touching those; they are too heavy.’ I crawled into the belly of the coach to retrieve my bags as quickly as possible without a fuss. What’s the big deal, right? I thanked the driver with a smile. He considered me briefly and muttered something as he resumed retrieving the bags of the other passengers. I assume he uttered a greeting and that I could not understand due to his accent, so I smiled again in acknowledgement and turned around to leave.

Upon making a 180-degree turn to approach the large glass automatic doors of the bus station, I was confronted by another non-smiler. This time the person was a fellow passenger, a white lady with medium-cropped, greying brown hair. She had the aura of a grandmother and a pleasant demeanour. We had chatted briefly on the bus from London. I knew she was Welsh because she had used that to explain her inquisitiveness about my mission to Wales. What I didn’t know at this moment was why she looked vexed. ‘He shouldn’t have done that, that wasn’t polite,’ she said. I told her I didn’t hear the comment, but he sounded polite to me. I bade her farewell as I was keen to get to my wife, whom I had now spotted through the open glass doors. Many months later, I came to understand that many off-handed British insults can be delivered while sounding and looking polite. My African experience has been that there is often congruence between how insults are delivered and how the face is contorted. Incongruence between spoken insult and facial expression is another British dichotomy I learnt.

We often have different ideas about what our experiences in new places might be like, but we also miss early clues about what the journey ahead could be. In my first hour in Swansea, I was given clues I had not noticed until now. It is only when we look backwards that we can connect the dots and make sense of the trajectory of our lives. With the benefit of hindsight, I can now see that those few moments of my arrival were a precursor to how my journey in Wales would play out. I would, in a sense, start from a place of ignorance and crawl briefly into the city’s underbelly before standing again to walk towards an exciting future. While ignorance for me was probably bliss in the short term, Swansea showed me that no form of ignorance is sustainable. I was glad I wasn’t upset about what wrong the driver may or may not have done. I was not physically or emotionally hurt. But I could have been. I would later attend some training and come to understand that the UK works and thrives because of policies, standards and laws. Procedures that have been put in place for the safety and dignity of all.

For the next few months, I remained blissfully unaware of why it was so hard to secure a job at a similar assistant managerial level I had left in Lagos. After all, I had a degree from a university and ten years of work experience dealing with some of the most demanding clients. Moreover, most people here were polite and friendly (or so I thought). How hard could living and succeeding in this society be? I was positively content that, before long, I would land a good position. It took the feedback from a particular application to jolt me out of my naivety and make me realise that my dictionary of communication needed to be changed.

THE FIRST SCAR

My first job came in the form of a sales representative for LoveFilm, before Amazon acquired it. I was thrilled when I was invited to interview and offered a job with a group of sales reps. We were given the rules to dress smart, wear a suit, put on a tie and a pair of black shoes. I have experience working with sales reps back in Lagos; they were given cars to attend meetings and talk to potential clients in different locations. I was right and wrong about this job: I did speak to potential clients, but I walked up and down sloped streets in the cold and rain, knocking on doors trying to sell people LoveFilm. I found I was working for a marketing agency of some sort without proper structures. I fell ill after three days, mentally sick because my job made me feel like a con man, and physically sick from the exhaustion and the weather my body had not adjusted to. I never returned there nor got paid for my efforts though I had earned some commission.

Shortly after my daughter was born, I secured a temporary role in a warehouse. It felt like a leg through the door to get to where I wanted to be. All through our induction training I was entranced by the picture painted before us about how easy it was to move upwards. The lead trainer enthusiastically spoke of how she and her colleague had moved through the ranks in a space of a year. I noted that the people before me now were an American, two Poles, a Welsh man and an English woman. It looked international enough, with no visible discrimination.

This is perfect, I thought. A year of hard graft and showing my potential will set me on the right path. On the warehouse floor, we were informed about the procedure for applying for roles that became available ‘upstairs’. We would write applications that had to pass through our floor manager for endorsement. In the meantime, I would work as hard as I could to make it easy for the manager to endorse my application when the time came. For weeks I stacked items on shelves as fast and as accurately as I possibly could. The monotonous work and the prison-like regimen became depressing after four weeks. But my time there was also enlightening. No matter how fast or accurately I stacked items, I was not hitting the targets given to the floor staff. Curiously, though, most of my Welsh colleagues and the more experienced ethnic minority staff were not having issues. My employment here was at risk. Though the warehouse role involved a lot of walking and pushing carts, I was determined not to return to walking out in the cold with the marketing agency. I had to study what the ‘Perms’ here were doing.

Before securing the role at the warehouse, I got into the habit of wandering through the Kingsway and Oxford Street in Swansea’s city centre to browse the windows of recruitment agencies for opportunities that might be available. I recall a particular day walking through the bustling centre at the time when the subdued turf war between people and seagulls was at its peak. I looked for familiarity and found none. I breathed in deeply, desperately hoping to recognise the smell of loamy dust agitated by the first drops of rain. I took more deep breaths looking for traces of aromas from familiar goat meat stews, or from jollof rice burning in cast iron pots. But there were none. I looked out for eyes that would lock with mine and at least communicate familiarity or reassurance. I found a pair and held them for an unforgettable few seconds. They were grey, intelligent and weary with bags underneath them. The owner was a heavily bearded man in his sixties. He stood out with his woolly hat and belongings in a makeshift bag. The eyes were watery though no tears were about to break their boundary. He sat alone, sober, on the floor, in a disused entrance of a building. He was homeless. Nobody engaged him in conversation, but he did engage with me in the briefest of moments. His look seemed to say, ‘You are lonely. I know this. You’ll be fine, son.’ It’s possible I imagined what I saw next, but I thought I saw him smile at me. Whether that moment was real or not, the imagined kindness stuck with me.

I would later be informed that he was well-known in Swansea. I would later make his acquaintance again when I volunteered with a ministry in City Church (formerly called City Temple). The man was referred to as ‘Teabag’ by fellow homeless men and women who came to the church every Friday night for some food and company. His real name was Pete. He was said to have walked for miles to return a wallet holding thousands of pounds and refused any reward. I heard that he was a colleague of the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Before my brief encounter on the street with Pete, I felt like a man floating in the sea, thirsting for water to drink. I needed a friend.

Ryan was the first Welsh colleague I became