Ei pidä lannistua. Aina voi lentää, liitää ja liihottaa!
(You shouldn’t get bugged down, you can always fly, glide and soar!)

This is the wisdom of the little monkey in the kids’ cartoon I watched this morning. The TV was on in the common room of our bungalow, and I joined a teenage volunteer while we were both waiting for our shower turn.

We’re in Vesala, the Jyväskylä Lutheran parish camp property, 15 kilometers west of Jyväskylä. Rafu and I are among the volunteers for this weekend camp, called Maahanmuuttajaleiri – immigrant camp. We are altogether over 60 people. The maahanmuuttajat (literally: intothecountrymovers) come from places we find immigrants anywhere: Congo, Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, Liberia, etc. The native languages I have encountered include Dari, Kituba, Bassa, and naturally Arabic, French, etc. But we all communicate in Finnish. Some things are interpreted into French, Arabic or Dari, and. Sometimes someone falls into little bits of broken English, but mostly it’s Finnish.

So many things impress me. The facility, of course, is modern, clean and light. It’s a set of larger buildings and smaller bungalows set by the shores of Lake Vesanka. It’s absolutely gorgeous, peaceful and well designed. When I entered the room I’m sharing with Rafu, I remarked about the Marimekko bedspreads and curtains to the director of the camp, Kutti. She had never noticed, she replied. When you live in the middle of this quiet, peaceful design heaven, you can probably easily overlook it. For me, coming from a culture of overwhelming visual mess, this seems quite paradise-like.

We started at 5 PM on Friday. Since Rafu has a drumming lesson until 6:30, I decided to go back to Jyväskylä later to pick him up. When I told that to Kutti, the leader of the camp, she immediately exclaimed, great! You could maybe help the Congolese brothers. OK! Sure! I promised – but with what? They forgot their card cable card at home, and there’s a Manchester United vs. Chelsea game on Saturday afternoon. So, I had an opportunity to meet the handsome brothers, William and Patrick, and make their wide smiles even wider. They came along, and we had a pleasant trip to Patrick’s apartment to pick up the invaluable card. The brothers had first made it to Ethiopia for a few months where they were accepted by Finland as refugees. The handsome brothers were university students in Congo and hoped to continue their studies in Jyväskylä after mastering Finnish.
                    
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                                             My new friends, Patrick and William

Samantha, 15 easily switched from Finnish youth slang into Spanish, Italian or English when teasing Rafu. She was going to school, living in Finland without her parents who were in Venezuela. I never found out how she had ended up in her mother’s home country as a 13-year-old. The exciting volleyball match hooked together Samantha, Rafael, and Emmanuel from Sudan as well as Sohaila from Afghanistan, who was trying to keep her headscarf in place in the fast game. Sohaila’s sisters and mother with a granddaughter were eager spectators. But volleyball wasn’t the only outdoor activity. We had our very own Olympics with challenging tasks; such as racing who could find a pine cone the fastest – a task that proved to be almost impossible. .

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                                                 The cool trio

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                                           Participating in the Olympics is hard work

The Saturday night sauna didn’t scare a couple of Irani men who not only enjoyed sauna but jumped into the ice lake several times. When in Rome . . .  

 
I had a nice chat with an Estonian mother of two who was at the camp in an official capacity. She seemed extremely competent and well adjusted but confided the difficulties about living in the third culture to me.

Kutti, the camp leader, had been busy and arranged along with a handful of volunteers, a full schedule. We laughed a lot, ate all the time, played, sang, drummed, danced and talked. We got to shop at a free flea market, and the newcomers learned how to make real Finnish pulla, the national coffee-companion, cardamomy coffee bread.  The amazing weekend got it culmination in the international church service held in a small log cabin chapel with the most amazing alter piece – a window with a lake view.

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                             A serious pulla baker

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                                                  An Afghani bargain hunter

 I took a break and hiked to a little point across. What gorgeous countryside! It was a perfect place to give us, weary people a weekend of rest, laughter and new Finnish experiences.

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                                     A Liberian mom

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                   Birch forest starts from the yard

Rafael, who had muttered to me in advance about the weird stuff I force him to participate in, happily exchanged mobile numbers with his newfound friends.
- And we got a message that due to our outstanding intercultural skills and open attitudes we are now part of the team that will travel all to way up to the very top of Lapland in June with a busload of new immigrants. We’ll even get to climb a feel, Saana-tunturi.

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                                         The altar