Four Languages + One Sewing Needle

A long morning walk like this quickly gets the conversations going once everyone has worked out who speaks which languages. I'm the only one of the carers who speaks English, so I mainly talk to a woman from the Philippines, one from Kenya and one from Syria, who speaks the most languages of us all (English, French, Arabic and some German). The inhabitants of the camp hardly know each other, they prefer to stay separated by language groups.

Trying to communicate in 3 languages (English, French and Arabic) at the same time during a course turns out to be a bit complicated. None of the carers know a second foreign language, so we communicate with each other in Spanish, which nobody else understands. Most of the 8 men have never sewn before and their first attempts are somewhat ridiculed by the women. But somehow it works. After two hours, a woman from Syria shows a man from the Ivory Coast how a special sewing stitch works, while another girl from Syria discusses various colour options with a woman from the Philippines - each in her own language. The ice is broken and there are many attempts at conversation on the way back to the camp. They also try to talk to each other in Spanish, but that doesn't go beyond "How are you". Most of them are only at the beginning of their Spanish course.