Together with my younger sister and pregnant mother we fled from Iran. I was only eleven years old but I remember everything very well. The first thing I saw when we arrived at the airport was a young couple making out in public. Something I wasn’t used to. We were placed in a refugee center and applied for citizenship. We kept moving from one refugee center to another without any clarity about the future. That changed autumn 2005. It was six a clock in the morning when the police woke us up. They said we had to leave the country and for the meantime we were placed in a detention center which is a fancy word for prison. The days passed by and after seven weeks they decided to review our case. When you go through something like that it’s hard to believe in the future. One year after we got released we received our residence permits. Slowly I started to move forward and make plans. I auditioned for theater school in Maastricht and surprisingly I got accepted. Even though I’m not a refugee anymore it still influences my life and also my work as an actor. For example, I’m now working on a production called ‘Nobody Home’. The title says it all. When you are a refugee you don’t belong anywhere.

Jimmy is one of the workers in Tio Antonio’s hammock workshop. Even though he is blind he makes the most beautiful hammocks in the entire workshop. When I asked him about his dreams he said: ‘I wish to meet a lovely girl, fall in love and have loads of beautiful babies with her.’

The man in my previous post, his name is Antonio. The local people call him Tio Antonio, which means uncle Antonio in English. While Tio gave us a tour through the hammock workshop he stopped next to this guys and said: ‘Do you remember Oscar from the story I told you about before? This is him! He works now in our workshop.’

“One time this American man was visiting our village. When he saw our little fishers boat he asked if we could transport him. He wanted to go surfing offshore and was in need of transportation. Even though we could really use the money, my husband doubted to accept his offer because of the bad conditions of our boat. I told my husband he had to be transparent about the situation. The man was willing to go anyways so my husband took him. When they came back the American was so excited that once he got home he set up a Facebook page for us and told his entire group of friends about his experience. After that we kept getting more and more people who either wanted to go surfing or fishing with us. Our financial situation started to develop and through the years we managed to save up money. Nowadays we own three boats and all our kids went to school. One even graduated and is now a primary school teacher.”

Nicaragua – Popoyo

“They are a couple.”
“Do they ever have an argument?”
“No never, they are in love.”
“How do you know?”
“They work together as partners. Every morning they wake up and sing the exact same song over and over again to attract attention.”
“What for?”
“So they will be fed.”

Nicaragua – Popoyo