Gosh, we’ve had an eventful first week here in Paris.
Our entire squad walked off the plane around 130pm last Monday at Charles de Gaulle International Airport after an 8 hour flight, and as soon as we took that first train out of the terminal…everybody split up. Two teams of seven (one of which was mine) split off to head for north Paris to live separately from the rest of the squad and we haven’t seen anyone since, even the team that split off with us.
So there’s that part. Essentially we’ve been by ourselves.
BUT, we are about a 10 minute walk from Porte de La Chapelle (which we’ll call “PDLC” from now on), which is where most of the refugees in Paris call home, which is a huge blessing since it’ll keep us from having to continuously pay for local transportation.
After recuperating from our 36-hour travel “day,” we decided to split up and take a walk into the west side of PDLC. Around the end of about 2 hours of “landscaping” (I don’t know what other word to use haha) my group found this park filled with older African refugees from Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Senegal, Cameroon, Algeria, and a few other countries that I cannot remember for the life of me right now. Most fled their home countries due civil wars, political unrest, extreme humanitarian conditions, and simply to find a better life.
Can you guess what game they were all playing?… Checkers!
Apparently, every day around mid to early afternoon a fairly large group of refugees gather at this park to pretty much unwind and play their favorite game. Yes, every day. So, after spending a couple hours talking and getting to know them (a few speak some fairly decent English) we headed back to our airbnb for the night. Collectively, we determined that this random park is going to be our primary hangout spot for a while.
Plus it has a basketball court…which I’m certainly not opposed to.
Today was probably the most eventful, though. Three of us took another walk across the railroad bridge into PDLC and immediately found a group of Sudanese and Somalian guys enjoying their Sunday afternoons. When we first walked up they seemed perplexed as to why we were even talking to them (understandable) and we heard them mumbling amongst themselves in their own Arabic dialect. (Okay just as a side-note, every single refugee we’ve met knows at least three languages. THREE. Have mercy.)
But, once they figured out we were there to stay and actually interested in their story, it was awesome. One guy Eli started talking to, we’ll call him Bill (not his name), didn’t know a lick of English… Google Translate to the rescue! I pulled up an Arabic keyboard on my phone for him type on and away he went. His story wasn’t that different than the rest of the guys there: most haven’t been in PDLC for very long and fled because of the reasons I mentioned above. Incredible group of guys.
Later on the same day, we went back to the park to regroup and Elaine started talking to this lady named Lucy (also not her name, haha), who works as a local high school teacher. After about a half hour, she invited us out for coffee! She liked us apparently. On our way to the coffee shop she met one of her friends named Chuck (that’s not his name either, but it actually did sound like “Chuck”), who came to Paris by himself about 20 years ago from Senegal. Apparently he liked us too…because he came to have coffee with us. We had an amazing time hearing their stories and laughing about how little French we know.
And now here we are!! That’s my short synopsis of the week! It’s only been about 6 days but man… so much has happened.
Love and miss everyone! Thank you for your prayers! We need every last one of them.
May the Lord bless and keep you close to Him.
-Bradley
