Letter from Poland.

 

Emigrating to London through the eyes of a child

02.04.2008

Ania Piwowarska writes and performs a story for a special Polish Day, which took place in London.

Towards the end of last year I was contacted by a lovely lady from Wood Green Library in London, to ask whether I would be interested in taking part in a special Polish day organised by the Haringey Council in Spring 2008. I was overjoyed at the prospect. For me, the integration of the Polish community into London life is a very important issue. I decided to prepare something that would be specifically aimed at the children of Polish immigrant parents – a modern tale of immigration. And as writing children’s stories is another thing that’s very close to my heart, I happily started work on it straight away.
Easier said than done… How do you convey the trials and tribulations of modern-day emigration to London in a way that is entertaining to children yet also includes a meaningful message? I knew that I wanted to include a number of issues that I remembered from my on emigration to the UK as a child. The feeling of upheaval, the fear of starting a new school, the oddness of not knowing the language spoken by children around you, and the disgust/fascination of trying the food of one’s new country – is to name just a few. Now, as you can see all most of these issues are difficult to turn into something entertaining for children, and even more difficult to prevent from sounding sentimental or clichéd. This is why I chose my starting point to be a child’s reaction to the food of the new country compared to that of their country of origin. I decided that the notion of an odd-tasting Polish delicacy that only a Polish child would eat would be a good way of accentuating his individuality. After toying with an idea of a children’s story about kabanos sausages, I settled for the story of the ‘Magic Pickled Cucumbers’.
The story starts off in the town of Zakopane. The main character is eight-year-old Janek who lives there with his parents, grandfather Józef and dog Zbój. One day he finds out that he is going to London on a trip. Excited at the prospect of a new adventure, he is not yet aware of the fact that he is going to live and go to school in the UK. Before he leaves, he is given a jar of magic pickled cucumbers by his Grandpa who instructs him to open them if he’s ever in trouble. Only later does Janek understand the purpose of this gift, and that is when the cucumbers give him the courage to overcome the school bullies as well as the confidence to say his first words in English…
Of course, writing the story was only half the work. The other, was performing it. I decided that reading for half an hour might be a little boring so I assembled a ‘storyteller’ costume that would distract my audience if their mind wandered. This consisted of a white peasant blouse, four colourful folk scarves, a few strings of wooden beads, and my ‘piece de resistance’ – a spring crown made up of a bird’s nest complete with wooden birds, fake wild flowers, butterflies and some plastic grass. Surely I couldn’t fail to get their attention wearing such head gear. And of course there was the all-important jar of magic pickled cucumbers (picked up at a Polish shop in Hammersmith for 2.50 pounds).
The Polish Day itself was held in a room within Wood green Library. I’ve never seen such a busy library, particularly on a Sunday. The borough is known to be heavily populated with immigrants – over two hundred languages are spoken in the area. It was truly wonderful to see Poles, Albanians, Somalians and many more nationalities reading and studying together in one community centre in North London.
Apart from my performance, the Polish Day consisted of a performance by a young up-and-coming Polish musician, a buffet of traditional Polish food and a display of dual language Polish-English books that are available in the library. It all looked very promising. However, then we realised that the clocks went forward an hour and this meant that people might not turn up at the right time. As I had a plane to catch this was not good news. When we finally started the turnout was less than we expected and I must say the performance itself was more challenging that I had imagined. It’s hard to keep an audience riveted for half an hour, even if you are wearing birds nest on your head.
After it was all over, I was a little bit deflated by the whole experience. My story had not quite had the desired effect of evoking nostalgia for their homeland, on the Polish audience. Thankfully, most people by now were happily dancing to the music and eating homemade bigos. I decided to slip away quietly to catch my plane. Just as I was leaving, the mother of an eight-year-old boy came to me “Can my son have another one of your cucumbers please?” she asked” He’s from the mountains, just like the boy in your story.” And with that a grinning, cheeky looking boy grabbed a handful of cucumbers from my giant jar. “Where did you get these cucumbers from?” asked another woman, “My boy never eats them normally but he loves these ones.” So, it seems that my 2.50 pound prop may have been more effective than my whole story. Never mind - the sight of Polish children chomping on pickled cucumbers in the middle of a North London library was enough to make me happy.