Studying inWales is therapy and future for Syria refugee
From Syria to Wales – a Welsh college is helping a refugee follow her dream of becoming an architect. Education editor Abbie Wightwick reports
SEEING her house in Syria razed to the ground and fleeing with her two children might have made May Altkhatib pessimistic about the future – but with help from a college and university in Wales she now hopes to train as an architect and return to re-build her home country one day.
The mother of two is devastated at the destruction of her country, where she trained as a civil engineer and where her parents still live in Damascus.
Arriving in Wales a year ago May – who lived in Homs, one of the cities worst affected by pro and anti-government fighting in Syria’s civil war is studying English at Cardiff and Vale College and has been accepted to study Architecture at Cardiff University.
Escaping Syria via Lebanon the 33-year-old spent two months there with her children aged nine and six, before her Saudi-born husband Moghim, 38, who arrived in the UK in 2015, was able to arrange a family reunion visa.
Flying to the UK last year May says she is relieved and happy to be safe in Wales, where the family now live in Tongwynlais.
Recalling the horror of war she said people got used to the sound of bombs and many stopped looking at the news, not knowing who to believe any more as forces pro and anti President Assad along with so-called Islamic State fighters battle for power.
“There was the sound of bombs all the time in Homs. My house was destroyed. I was staying with my parents in Damascus when it was destroyed.
“I tried to go and collect stuff from my house but everything was rubble and destruction. It was very sad.
“But to be honest we were used to it and not sad anymore. It was just material things we lost. Everyone was safe. You stop caring about material things.
“It was a ghost city. Every family had lost someone and buildings were destroyed.”
With help from the Refugee Council she has been awarded the English UK Wales group scholarship to study on CAVC’s full time International English Language Test System.
The IELTS is the international standardised English language proficiency test for non-native speakers. After passing it May hopes to take up an offer from Cardiff University to study architecture.
“I had two offers with two conditions – A Level Maths and IELTS. I studied maths for a month and got 65% then I approached the Refugee Council about English and now I am at Cardiff and Vale College.
“Because of what was happening in Syria I could not complete my studies. I couldn’t send my children to school because of the troubles – and that was very important for me, their education.”
Her sons Rakan, nine and Amru, six are now happily enrolled at Tongwynlais Primary and adapting to life in Wales, she said.
“I find the college wonderful – it’s fantastic. It’s like I have come back to life and it has kept me busy from the first day.
“I am doing something all the day rather than sitting there thinking about the bad past. It is really helping me improve my English – it is getting much better now.
“I hope I can go back one day to rebuild my country. I am so sorry about the destruction.”
May says she was devastated by recent terror attacks here by IS militants.
“It is heart breaking. They are not human. They are animals. We worry because we had a lot of that in Syria and now it is everywhere. I was so sad and the attacks are wrongly associated with Islam. In Syria we call them Daesh. They are terrorists. We did not realise they would come here.”
And she wonders why Arab nations do not do more to help refugees from the bloodshed across her home region.
“Wales is very lovely and the people are so friendly. They have helped us which is something Arab countries did not do for us.”
Recalling her relatively easy journey to safety – an eight hour taxi ride, two months in Lebanon and a flight to Britain – she says she worries for family and friends back home. “I am so lucky. “I would now leave Syria if it meant coming by sea. Some people do it because they do not have anything and feel they have nothing to lose but we know many people who went by boat and never came back.”
CAVC, which is listed as one of the top companies for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the National Centre for Diversity’s 2016 Top 100 Index, said it was happy to help May.
English UK Wales Treasurer and CAVC Head of English for international students Jim Shields said: “We are delighted to support May with her IELTS studies at CAVC with this award – and are thrilled that she is making such good progress.”