The Daily Star
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BEIRUT: To get to Bikfaya from Beirut, Myarana takes a bus, a minibus, and two taxis. Navigating this journey would be tough for any foreigner, but Myarana faces some extra challenges.
First, she must make the journey in English, which is not her first language. Second, she isn’t really on the way to Bikfaya.On a recent Sunday in the leafy courtyard of Sanayeh’s Zico House, Myarana and her teacher Rawand are role-playing the trip using a hand-drawn map of the route Myarana takes to get from Beirut to her employer’s house, where she is a domestic worker.
As they practice phrases such as “How much?” and “I want to go to Bikfaya,” Myarana seems a bit shy about pretending to board a bus, but she persists.
In French and English, the two also debate the exact translation of an “autostrade” and where on the map Myarana should dismount.
In Beirut on her biweekly Sunday out, Myarana, who is from Madagascar, is one of some 60 migrant workers who are learning English, French and Arabic at free language classes set up by the Migrant Workers Task Force, a group that aims to improve opportunities for migrant workers in Lebanon.
Estimates vary widely on the number of foreign migrant workers in the country, from 300,000 to 1 million. Some 200,000 of these are domestic workers.
Rights groups stress the poor conditions migrant workers face in Lebanon and in 2008 Human Rights Watch reported that one migrant domestic worker in the country dies each week of unnatural causes. HRW said that most deaths are suicides or are caused by falls from high buildings, often as workers run from their employers.
Janie Shen, originally from Sweden, moved to Lebanon just over a year ago. She founded MWTF with several like-minded friends, including Lioba Hirsch and Alex Shams, in January. Shen is the coordinator of MWTF.
“When you are an individual here you want do something about the situation [of migrant workers] but you don’t find an outlet,” she says. The organizations that work with migrant workers, such as KAFA and Caritas, “work really well but they don’t have the capacity to take on a lot of volunteers. So we created the classes.”
About 60 volunteers teach at the weekly two-hour Sunday classes. As the teachers’ schedules vary and workers are often not allowed regular days off or days out, there are an average of 20 to 30 students at each session, with a ratio of one teacher to two students.
The students hail from Sudan, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Nepal, the Philippines, and Bangladesh. MWTF distributed flyers about the classes before they started in February, but Shen says “talking to people was more effective and then word of mouth helped. [The students] bring their friends.”
But word of mouth is not always possible. Shen says she has “a Nepalese friend who lives in a village near Mounsourieh. She would see [other] Nepalese women on the balconies, hanging up clothes, and she would wave. They wave back, but they can’t say anything, because they are not allowed to talk to anyone outside the house.”
Rawand, who is Lebanese, and a student at the American University of Beirut, says “there is a huge problem with migrant workers coming to Lebanon and not being treated well … [the classes are] one way to help them feel that they can do whatever they want here.”
This includes boarding a bus. MWTF takes a practical approach to language.“We are focusing on the social aspect, not necessarily fluency,” says Shen. “We ask what [the students] want to learn from us. So we have topics like taking transportation, how to bargain for food … going to the doctor … or being able to argue.”
Most of the teachers are not trained in education, and so the classes have been a learning experience for all involved. “We are also new to this,” says Shen.
“So we get experience from other people, and we get help. We just work on improving all the time.”
Across the courtyard from Myarana, Abdullah speaks in halting but clear English, even though he thinks his proficiency is only “maybe” improving. Originally from Sudan, Abdullah has lived in Lebanon for 10 years. He works in a kitchen.
“I want to learn English for the future,” he says. “If my family do not speak another language, it will be very difficult.” He says that in business, English and French are the international languages.
Abdullah plans to return to Sudan and teach his family English. Myarana has two children in Madagascar, a boy and a girl, and she hopes to teach them English and French.
Many students mention job prospects and teaching their families as reasons for attending class, but there is another benefit – an increased ability to communicate the challenges they face as migrant workers.
Abdullah thinks racism is a problem in Sudan, but it is worse in Lebanon. “[Many] Sudanese come to Lebanon, and they have degrees. Some are lawyers, some are journalists.” But they can’t find work. “Why? Because they are black.”
“The idea was that a very efficient way to help migrant workers would be to give language classes and give them an opportunity to communicate,” says Hirsch, one of MWTF’s founders, who also teaches language classes.
“This gives them more opportunities to make their voices heard. Not [through] us, but by themselves.”
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