Norwich High School for Girls - Letters to Europe

Writers Centre Norwich organised for over 200 students at schools across Norfolk to work with a professional writer and a refugee to compose a series of Letters to Europe. These letters form part of an international conversation about the future of Europe, and the hopes and dreams young people harbour for it.

We're delighted to post a selection of the letters by Norwich High School for Girls.

Dear Europe,

I want to be in your safe green lands, away from war and sadness, a place to forget my past, wash it away like a finger print on a window. A happy new place to enjoy my life, unlike where I am now.

I dream of what you would be like, green with spots for towns and cities or filled with lakes, river and mountains. People everywhere  or scarcely spread.

A place you can really call Home, not just a place of refuge. A place you belong in, and take for granted other than the place you have always dreamed of, far away. What would it be like to be a European? Someone who belongs in that happy far away place?

I would love to be accepted into that wonderful land, treated like others and not given weird glances and stared at. A normal person not someone who doesn’t belong, please Europe accept me for who I am!.

Jennifer, Norwich High School for Girls - Letters to Europe Workshop November 2010.

Dear Europe,

I used to love the days when I could walk freely through your lush green fields and narrow roads. Now from the hilltop I can see your scarred face below.

I miss the days when the sea was calm, the forests quiet and peace all around. Where there was once a great forest, now a great mound of dirt. Now my beloved land is one colour. Brown.

The days when I would run barefooted in your lovely grass seemed so long ago. I feel alone out here. Behind me looms the snow capped mountains and what used to be my home, now a big pile of rubble. I shall never see my family rubble. I shall never see my family again.

Alone, with no colours to comfort me. Will I ever see your colours again.

Chelsea, Norwich High School for Girls - Letters to Europe Workshop November 2010

 Dear Europe,

You offer me so much yet others so little. I wonder what it would be like to stare out of a window of a house and not to be looking at you as a homeland but as a continent I do not belong in.

As I trudge home, from that house, I am standing on rich soil when not so far away from me there  is just dust. I meet other passers by, who are looking around them, lapping up every small detail of what’s around them, but, no, they are not wondering about all the dirt a few metres away from us like I did. I think to myself how familiar this is; how much I’ve somehow seen all of this before, just in a much larger space. Then I realise, it is just like the world. Your land offers hope, like the sun, opportunities, like the moon, and freedom like the starts. I hate to think what other lands offer: fear, pain and insecurity, and people just ignore the fact that other countries are like this, and they just turn their heads and pretend it’s not happening, instead of trying to help them change.

As I gaze at clouds, it is like gazing at your face, old and wise, like time has made your clothes newer, but your insides older.

I am glad you offer me a home, but today, when I hear the news about some people being sent back to Zimbabwe I wonder why you don’t offer them a home too.

Ella, Norwich High Schools for Girls - Letters to Europe Workshop November 2010.

Find out more about the Shahrazad Project.