Small Strangers at the School of Friendship
- “Why,” Francisca Isidro wonders, “did we have to leave our families and move so far away, only to come back as cooks, waitresses, sales assistants, and the like?” And she recalls: “We came back from our time in East Germany with professions that were not held in particu-larly high regard in Mozambique. Nobody understood why we didn’t return as engineers, doctors and teachers. ‘A waitress?,’ they would wonder. ‘Why, they could have become a waitress in Mozambique. Nobody needs to spend so many years in school for that.’”2And with that, Ms. Isidro puts her fi nger right on a misapprehension at the heart of an ambitious state-led education migration program that saw 900 Mozambican children attend the School of Friendship (Schule der Freundschaft , SdF) in Staßfurt in the district of Magdeburg, in what today is Saxony-Anhalt, in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) from 1982 to 1988.3 Ms. Isidro returned to Mozambique as a trained salesperson for clothing, a profession she neither chose nor ever worked in again“Why,” Francisca Isidro wonders, “did we have to leave our families and move so far away, only to come back as cooks, waitresses, sales assistants, and the like?” And she recalls: “We came back from our time in East Germany with professions that were not held in particu-larly high regard in Mozambique. Nobody understood why we didn’t return as engineers, doctors and teachers. ‘A waitress?,’ they would wonder. ‘Why, they could have become a waitress in Mozambique. Nobody needs to spend so many years in school for that.’”2And with that, Ms. Isidro puts her fi nger right on a misapprehension at the heart of an ambitious state-led education migration program that saw 900 Mozambican children attend the School of Friendship (Schule der Freundschaft , SdF) in Staßfurt in the district of Magdeburg, in what today is Saxony-Anhalt, in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) from 1982 to 1988.3 Ms. Isidro returned to Mozambique as a trained salesperson for clothing, a profession she neither chose nor ever worked in again subsequently. Like her, these 900 children had to navigate the diverging values that particular environments bestowed upon knowledge. What they learned was interpreted diff erently in their home communities, at the SdF, and in their German host families…
Author details: | Marcia C. SchenckORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-494614 |
URL: | https://perspectivia.net/publikationen/bulletin-of-the-ghi-washington-supplements |
Title of parent work (English): | German Historical Institute Bulletin: German Historical Institute Washington Bulletin |
Subtitle (English): | Memories of Mozambican School Students to the German Democratic Republic |
Publisher: | German Historical Institute |
Place of publishing: | Washington |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2020/01/01 |
Publication year: | 2020 |
Publishing institution: | Universität Potsdam |
Release date: | 2021/02/15 |
Tag: | Migration, Deutsche Demokratische Republik, Mosambik, Schule der Freundschaft |
Volume: | 2020 |
Issue: | 15: Histories of Migrant Knowledge: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives |
First page: | 41 |
Last Page: | 59 |
Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät |
DDC classification: | 9 Geschichte und Geografie / 96 Geschichte Afrikas |
3 Sozialwissenschaften / 30 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie / 300 Sozialwissenschaften | |
9 Geschichte und Geografie / 94 Geschichte Europas / 943 Geschichte Mitteleuropas; Deutschlands | |
License (German): | Keine öffentliche Lizenz: Unter Urheberrechtsschutz |