- Remembrance
- Age 11 to 14 (KS3)
Imperial War Museums tells the stories of ordinary people whose lives have been affected by war and conflict. This resource introduces students to Gulwali who talks about his memories of home in Afghanistan before the war forced his family to pay people smugglers to get him and his brother out of the country to, hoped for, safety in Europe.
This resource primarily supports the Well-being and Health/PSHE curriculum areas for students working at KS3/ 3rd/4th levels. However by following Gulwali’s journey, and the journey’s taken by many refugees fleeing war in Afghanistan and Syria, it would also support the teaching of History and Geography.
A filmed interview with a refugee is provided alongside Teacher Notes and Suggested Activities supported by items from IWM’s Collections with links to follow-up resources.
Content Warning: Before you watch or use this resource, we advise you that the content aims to help students explore challenging emotions around child smuggling and the experiences of refugees and features real stories from IWM’s collections of people who have experienced these emotions first hand. This resource includes an interview with a person who describes the dangers and circumstances of being a child refugee.
Content Advice: The film contains descriptions of the impact of war in Afghanistan in 2001 and references to human trafficking, Please note that this resource was published in October 2020.
The story of Gulwali
One refugee fleeing war in search of a home.
So, my name is Gulwali Passarlay. I was born in Afghanistan in Nangahar Province in the east of the country in 1994. it's very mountainous as well as agriculture land and it's the province is known as - it is quite educated; the people are quite educated and knowledgeable and a lot of Afghans are into poetry, so Nangahar is also called in Pashto Hamesha Bahar – always green. Always, it has beautiful scenery but unfortunately since the war, recently since 2012, it has become a battleground.
I started school at the age of seven – this was around 2000 – and then the war started. So, the US-led invasion with Britain and 48 other countries so about 50 countries invaded Afghanistan and occupied it. And we lived in constant fear of being killed. I lived through the US bombardments campaign in 2001, October. It was terrible, I've seen things you can't imagine. I've seen people die, I've seen houses get burned down and we used to hide from rocket attacks and bombardments at night.
The main reason I left was the conflict and we were not being able to kind of win either way. As children we were a pawn between this great game of survival and my mother and particularly my grandmother thought that for us the safest thing would be to make us leave and so me and my brother left, we were handed over to [people] smugglers and traffickers over the border in Pakistan and we were supposed to be together.
We were separated by the traffickers or the smugglers – the trafficking and the smuggling is quite intertwined, they're two different things but then they work together in some ways. I mean I was supposed to be smuggled but there were times I was trafficked. So, I was on my own and I would keep looking for my brother, I travelled about a year or so 12,000 miles, 12 months at the age of 12 across 10 countries or so before I came to the UK. It was a hellish, difficult journey.
One of the main problems on the journey was not knowing where I was going or when I will get there. So, I was a bit curious but curiosity... you could only be curious so much, but you know, the smugglers just picked me up moved me from places. There was not much of an agency to it and I felt there was a lot of times you just feel like a sheep and they were the shepherds and you know I mean I have been a shepherd as a child and if I see one I recognize it. So, there was occasions where we just follow orders: sit down, stand up, move.
We lost our sense of humanity and there were many occasions where the smugglers would have disagreements and sold us between smugglers or kidnap us for ransom because the smuggler hadn't paid the money – the main smuggler, so... Yeah, I mean we walked for end, and they kept us in some really terrible conditions like chicken coops and places where you don't even keep animals.
When I was in Istanbul, I spent a lot of time in basements. Months in basements. We were not allowed to go out and they never told us the truth. At first, they didn't really tell us anything. When they did tell us - it was all lies and so my life was... I was in their hands and mercy but at the same time they were selling us a very dangerous truth. We could have just lost our lives. In the Mediterranean we could have easily been drowned because they put 120 people in a boat designed for 20. Either they were doing it purposely or they were just hoping that we will survive – which we did actually we survived but there are other people who didn't. There were 15,000 or so deaths in the last five years.
So, there were there were a lot of unkindness and inhumanity from people and as well as the smugglers and authority specifically on the journey but a lot of kindness and humanity from people as well. When I arrived in Greece, for example, and when we were in the Mediterranean – the Aegean Sea, the local people brought us food and water which was a really wonderful act of kindness, but there are other occasions where you just, you know, you felt unwanted and not perceived well by the people generally like walking on the street.
So, you know I felt... I always I had this feeling about being hopeful and faithful but... I expected kindness or maybe I thought we are all humans and sometimes we don't know what somebody's going through. I mean like now even when I'm walking on the street in London or in the UK, in Manchester when I see homeless people, when I see people in distress, I'll always feel the least I could do is to acknowledge them and to smile at them. If I can't help them, at least I need to acknowledge they exist. But there were occasions on the journey where I felt that I was not even acknowledged by people and so... certainly it was not a nice feeling.
But there was also a lot of positives from people so you know I would be doing an injustice to it – I think there were a lot of wonderful people who came to give us food and sometimes money and some just like a human touch a human connection. I think on the journey here were a lot more nice people than they were bad people.
You know, when people ask me how I feel about the UK, does it feel home – yes and no. I mean even though I'm not a citizen, I have very few rights, but I have a lot of obligations as a refugee. I know Britain better than I do Afghanistan; I know London better than I do Kabul. I feel comfortable here, I definitely see it as my adapted home, adapted country and I would certainly see it as a second home and no matter what people think of me, I love this country. It's given me so much opportunities and enabled me to go to university to study, and to support me through the process. I never thought I'd go to university and then graduate from Manchester Uni with a politics degree then to go do my master's at Coventry. All those things I never thought was possible for a child and for somebody like me. And the help that I received through school and fostering and everything else which I'm in debt of gratitude for, but at the same time there has been... it has been a struggle, it has not been easy. It has been difficult so I feel you know there are times I feel fifty-fifty, there are times I feel more Afghan than British, but I would describe myself as a global citizen.
Teacher Notes
Gulwali was born in Afghanistan and in this extract from a longer interview he describes how the rich agricultural land of his family became a battleground. With the dangers increasing his grandparents and parents took the difficult decision to pay smugglers to take Gulwali and his brother out of Afghanistan. Gulwali endured a ‘hellish, difficult journey’ before finally arriving in the UK.
Download the Teacher Notes for background information to his story and guidance on how to help support students respond to the film and its themes through the suggested activities below.
Curriculum Links
Find out more about how this resource is mapped against some of the themes and content topics found in the curricula for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Suggested Activities
Discuss Gulwali’s film and his description of what made Afghanistan home and what has helped to make Britain feel like home; Students could have two different coloured pens or post-it notes to differentiate both locations. What do students think are the most important features that makes a place feel like home? Which of these features relates to their own sense of what makes a home? Are there any other features or qualities that they would need to make a place feel like it was home?
To explore this third question students should pair up with each one taking it in turns to describe their home as if they are leading their partner on a virtual tour. They should ‘walk’ them into each room using as much description as they feel comfortable with and which conveys a sense of ‘home’, pointing out key details within the rooms that they feel their partner should take note of as they tour. The person being toured should be actively listening for what is highlighted as this would suggest what is important to their partner’s sense of what makes this place feel like home to them. When each partner has completed their ‘tour’ they each note down the five or six key features that they heard mentioned that seem to them to be the key factors that make the place they toured home for their partner. Looking back at their notes on Gulwali, are there any commonalities between their and his sense of ‘what makes a home’? As a class is it possible to summarise what collectively they feel are the most important factors in what makes a home?
Gulwali mentions feeling himself to be a Global Citizen, this could be used as a starting point for discussing what the students thinks this means. Part of being a Global Citizen is to develop critical thinking skills and engage with real world issues and the two activities below take Gulwali’s film as a case study for ways of teaching students to do this.
Each student has an index card. Read the following statement to the class:
‘Refugees come to Britain seeking safety and refuge from violence, they should be given support.’
Ask students to think about their position on the statement, they should write down their view on their card and put a number between one and five alongside it. A one would be written if their viewpoint is in ‘strong disagreement with the statement’ and a five if their position is in ‘strong agreement with the statement’. Moving around the room, students should now find someone who shares their viewpoint and discuss the statement for three minutes. The card could be used to note down if their view changes during this discussion.
Students then move on to find someone whose position is one step removed from their original position and discuss the statement for a further three minutes, and finally someone who has a very different view from them.
Finally, come together as a class and discuss the process. Ask how many pupils have found that they changed their position? If they did change their position, what led them to change their mind? Discuss too what they think are the benefits of this process.
Watch the film of Gulwali and sitting as a group in a circle, ask the students to think about the film individually before sharing anything they found interesting. With the person beside them or in a small group, ask them to come up with a question based on what they have heard in the film; they should negotiate with their partner or small group as to which question they choose.
Once the choice is agreed each group explains why they think that this is the key question to ask and tries to encourage the rest of the class to select their question as the focus for the ‘Community of Enquiry’. Ask the students if any questions are linked by similar themes and allow plenty of time for the process of decision-making so that a communal decision is made.
The group whose question has been chosen share their thoughts on answering it before the discussion is widened to the whole class.
If students are less confident, the first step could be missed out and pre-prepared questions could be distributed to each partnership or small group, or the class could collaborate on suggesting questions which are taken down before each group is given one to complete step two. Questions could focus on reactions to asylum seekers, such as: ‘Why do some people have negative views of asylum seekers?’ to addressing the point of view of the asylum seekers: ‘Why do people work illegally?’ or ‘What challenges does an asylum seeker face in another country?’
The activity ends with a final debrief where the students are asked for a final statement in relation to the question. This is followed by a chance to discuss the process and what went well, what other issues were raised, what was fun and what was annoying. What factual errors or misconceptions emerged? These could be the focus for further enquiry.