Hassan Hussein - Changing Lenses

Hassan Hussein - Changing Lenses

The airplane is a migration route for many immigrants from many nationalities. Every day they arrive at Heathrow airport near where I work. Each time when you see the airplane you remember where you come from and you see the clouds and dream of being back home. You remember the day you came.

Mo Farah is doing something for the community and he empowers the community. Migrants come with talents. Mo Farah shows by example that migrants can succeed, that migrants contribute in the country. He is Somali and grew up in Hounslow, where this image is from and where I work. He is a role model for youth in the area, but he speaks to all migrants not just the Somali community.

Migrants are contributing money and talents. If you say you don't need immigrants you miss what we also bring to this country.
Some migrants believe that there is no opportunity to invest and stay here. They may get their education and leave again. But I believe there is much to contribute and to gain by staying here.
My community from British Somaliland came to the UK as early as 1884. The first community were seamen but others came later to join the army and fought in WW1 and WW2. When they finished the war they went back home. If they had stayed and invested here it would have created more wealth.

At the organisation I am part of – Ilays – we held a mental health awareness meeting. We are learning how to do counselling for migrant communities – for those who have trauma, addiction, etc. There is a cultural mistrust of counselling and we are finding ways to learn how to show the benefit of it for the community we work with -especially migrants from East Africa. On this day the counsellor was visiting to check how we are doing.

This photo is inside the UK parliament. My colleague was presenting a petition for welcoming migrants to the UK. She also works as an outreach worker for Ilays and doing advocacy for the community. It is important for migrants to reach policy makers. They need advocacy but they don’t always reach the policy makers so politicians don’t see what are our needs are  including all kinds of issues other citizens also face such as better systems for day care, schools, etc.

This photo has two messages for me. The reflection of the sky that day reminded me of the sky back home which I miss. It is a clear sky with the same kinds of clouds like in Africa. The reflection looks like water. It is a special day where the weather looks like Africa.
Inside Sainsburys they have a food section for global foods -  lots of canned food and drinks from all over the world which many  go to buy because they have a good selection of foods from our countries.

Art from East Africa – handmade from wood with natural colours. When you see this you remember your country. It is a traditional African art which is made in several countries.

On 13 November 2017, Somaliland held its third presidential election whose electoral procedures were observed by an international election observation mission.
I was one of the Electoral observers. We were 60 people from the international community. We took an exam and test to become observers. It was important for me to take part because I want to give awareness of what is the meaning of democracy. We come from a dictatorship but we are starting new democracies and it is important to help it thrive. The election took place without election fraud. It was the first election in Africa where they checked  biometric ID.
If we start to have peaceful elections in Africa with no fraud it would lead to less conflicts and war.

Grenfell Tower: People who died here, most of them are migrants.
The way they built that building it is not a safe place, they didn’t have sprinklers and safe exits when you compare to Canada where I lived before.
The children, the families, so many people died. There is a great sadness.
The people in there complained before and no one listened.
As a community we contributed water, food and volunteered there. But there are still people in the area who feel trauma. I volunteered there and we did broadcasts in our community language to let them know what was happening.
Two people from our community lived there and only one of them survived.

The light – a sign of the beauty at the beginning of new life.
When you move to another place then you start a new life.
When you leave from a war for example and you start a new life you feel the new life is bright. You have hope.

These photos and accompanying writing were made as part of the Changing Lenses; London stories of Integration project. You can listen to my podcast for the project here: https://soundcloud.com/migrant-voice/hassan-hussein