Picture: On the left is seven year old me, in the red sweater, together with my younger cousin Hela, playing on a makeshift slide we built from a broken bench we leaned against a well. On the right is twenty-four year old me, sitting on the same well, utterly surprised how small it was. Visiting that place made what had always felt like a dream, real.
Seventeen years after leaving the refugee camp we called home, I found my way back to it.
I knew the name of the town that rested atop a hill next to our camp, where we attended school during the week and church on Sundays, but never really visited. There couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred of us living in the three storey apartment blocks, nestled between two hills. It was a beautiful place; that was how I remembered it.
Once a week trucks would arrive and every person, including children, was handed their food aid box. Food delivery day was a highlight of life in the camp. My box often contained a kilogram of pasta, one or two cans of something, and the best part of all – a bag of gummy bears. Every child ration had a sweet; we were lucky there were four kids in our family.
Everyone stood in line and waited their turn, the kids teasing each other, shoving playfully, not always understanding each other’s words. There were families there from Poland, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Hungry, and Romania – far corners of the Eastern Bloc. Neighbours rarely spoke the same language. The kids had the easiest time of it, deciding on what games to play didn’t require much talking. Someone brought a ball and a game of soccer erupted, someone jumped in the river running through the camp, and we all joined in.
My memories of Eastern Germany are mostly wonderful. I had a great friend, Stefan, who took it upon himself to teach me German, while his mother befriended by mom and would deliver us bags of clothing or household items. We were in a rural area; it was breathtaking and peaceful. Surrounded by farms and woods, far from any other camp, and a distant walk to the town, we stayed put in our little village.
The kids ran the camp; the older ones sat around, smoking cigarettes and listening to 80s rock music, the boys with their hair slicked back. Two Romani teenage brothers had captured the hearts of the most of the teenage girls, my older sisters included. That kept them all occupied. The little ones roamed friendly in the foothills. We built a play house in the forest and dragged discarded furniture into it; a couch, a couple chairs. We found old fabric and hung up curtains. Everyone helped to make it cozy, and brought whatever they could, including treasures that had floated into the camp on the gentle current of the river.
When I couldn’t find someone to play with, I wandered alone. With no one to tattle on me, I’d climb the hill far behind our buildings and sneak out of the fencing. Many of the adults would use the exact same spot in the middle of the night to leave the camp, making their way to the winding road, flagging down a truck and heading to work. They worked, illegally, as labourers. It was a beaten down path through the woods, a tight squeeze through the fence hole, then open fields.
Every child knew where the exit was. Over time, I was one of the few that would use it quite regularly. What pulled me to the other side was the horse pasture. Some days, I would spend hours there. Climbing the empty field between the edge of the woods and our metal fences, I’d gather handfuls of flowers to coax the horses with. Pulling myself onto the wooden fence, I’d sit there, enticing them with the colorful treats, smacking my lips to call them over. It rarely worked: I was offering them exactly what they had to eat all around them, but that never stopped me from trying.
From that spot on top of the hill I could stare off into the distance. The town, other fields, bits of road, the trees that lined the shores of the river. I’d go off in my own little dreams.
Then one day, as I carelessly sat on the grass, braiding flowers into a crown, the farmer that lived there snuck up on me. By the time I saw him, I screamed, and threw myself between the fence beams, trying to get back to the field that sloped down to the camp. I knew we weren’t allowed to leave it.
As I bolted, my feet tripped over themselves. I was a tiny seven-year old, my hair cut short like a boy, and I wore clothes that didn’t always fit properly. This happened to be a day when ill-fitting shoes were a serious problem. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see him running after me,but to my surprise, I saw him standing there, smiling, almost laughing, and waving for me to come back. I could see he wasn’t angry. I stopped running, stood for a moment, and then smiled back, ear to ear. Until that day, I had had very little contact with the local people. Aside from our teachers, who weren’t always kind, we didn’t socialize much with the Germans. My parents had told us not to draw any attention to ourselves, not everyone was happy we were there. This man, however, seemed very kind, and being the trusting child that I was, I walked back up the hill towards him.
We said hello to each other in German. He asked if I lived down the hill and where I had come from. He asked if I liked horses. My German wasn’t great, I had only been there a couple months, and so I nodded, smiled, waved my arms around excitedly. It was a memorable conversation. I climbed back on the fence and talked about my family, a million miles an hour in my broken German with plenty of Polish thrown in for extra confusion. He followed along happily.
He eventually walked over to one of the horses, grabbed its mane and led it back to me. I was so ecstatic. He gestured that it was okay to touch the horse and stroke its face. I put my hand on its moist nose, and then on the smooth spot between its eyes. It was such a gentle creature, I was mesmerized.
The farmer patted the horse as though to ask if I wanted to sit on it. I grinned and stood up on the lower fence beam. He picked me up and put me on its back. I was absolutely overcome with joy. This was the best moment ever. I grabbed on to the mane and he walked us in circles in the paddock. I remember still, that afternoon I was the happiest I had been in a long time.
Little did he know I would be back on that fence every Saturday for the many months we would live in the camp. Little did I know I wouldn’t be given a chance to say goodbye or to say thank you at the end. When it came time to leave, we were woken in the night, dressed, driven to the airport, and put on a plane to Canada.
Years later, the farmer I befriended was no longer there. I returned to the camp, met some of the families who called it home, then climbed the hill again. It wasn’t nearly the towering mountain I remembered it to be. But then, the camp was tiny too, the river was barely a creek, the town not nearly as intimidating, the people seemed far kinder. I made my way through his field to the house, accompanied by some German friends. When the door opened, they explained why I had come; to thank the man who had taken the time to make me so happy. No one knew who it might have been that took me on my weekly horseback rides. I was disappointed. I asked my friends to say that I had lived in the camp below, but when they interpreted my words, the face of the man who stood in the doorway betrayed his true feelings. He ended the conversation abruptly, albeit smiling politely as I tried to show him a picture of me as a child, stepped back, began to close the door, said he really couldn’t help.
We walked away. I felt terribly sad. I hadn’t found Stefan, even though I had showed his picture at the local school and in the government offices. It seemed no one knew any of the families that lived in the camp at the foot of the hill.
The town folk told us that some of the migrants had gone over to Australia, a few to the US, and even fewer to Canada. Many never left; they were never resettled. No one really knew if they were forced back to their countries of origin as the Berlin Wall collapsed and Germany reunited. No one knew if over time Germany granted them citizenship or the right to work. Or if the people who were living there now, knew it was a former refugee camp.
While I admitted the long journey I’d taken didn’t bring me the reunions I had hoped for, I was thankful nonetheless, because the visit allowed me to put the place into perspective. They were ordinary buildings; we were a bunch of families living together; everyone was trying to figure out where their lives were headed. Everyone just wanted to be happy.
I’ve thought of that farmer many times because he discovered in me a love of horses. A few years later, once I had completed the babysitter’s course and started looking after our neighbours’ kids, the first money I ever earned was spent at the Bird’s Hill Park Stables. The kindness of that man endeared him to me, it eased the pain of losing home, and it made me feel I belonged there. I can only hope he knew our friendship, although it ended without warning, has stayed with me for the last thirty years.
