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The Food Programme

Food Stories From Syria (3)

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4976 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Europe's migrant crisis is far from over. Already in 2018, the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) estimate that more than 24, 475 people have arrived in Europe by sea. 609 people are dead or missing since January*. The conflict in Syria is now into its 7th year.

With an ongoing backdrop of war and violence, and more people arriving into Europe from Syria and elsewhere, Sheila Dillon wants to hear how people fleeing the crisis are living, eating and using food to tell the stories of the journeys they have made. In summer 2017, she travelled to Greece to speak to people living the migrant crisis every day.

In Greece, Sheila spends a day with a man who since arriving in the country has volunteered all his time to coordinating a vast network of volunteers distributing food to thousands of migrants and refugees in Northern Greece. She travels to refugee camps, meeting people distributing and receiving the food donations which supplement any support payments.

In a remote, coastal refugee camp, she meets a teenager with his mind firmly set on travelling to the UK to reunite his family with his father. Sheila hears how the family cook and eat every day, how they found food during their journey to Greece, and asks whether the family ever make it to the UK.

And in London, Sheila meets a chef from Damascus who has found a way back to cooking the food he was once famous for in his own city. She hears how he is spreading the message and raising money for people who have stayed in war-torn Syria.

Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced in Bristol by Clare Salisbury

* UNHCR figure last updated 7th May 2018.

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:04.7

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0:16.8

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0:19.5

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0:23.4

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0:26.6

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0:29.4

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0:35.0

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0:42.0

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0:47.0

We hope you enjoy it.

0:50.0

My name is Aslame Obed. I'm from Syria. I arrived in Greece two years ago and I stayed as a volunteer over here.

0:57.0

We were driving through the suburbs of Thessaloniki, Greece's second city.

1:02.0

Well, I come with a friend to go to Germany, and we didn't have any idea what's going on in Europe.

1:07.0

You came on a boat or you?

1:09.0

From Turkey.

1:10.0

Yeah, smuggling.

1:11.0

And then I arrived and I felt like it will be I won't say easy but it will be a

1:16.1

known process like there wasn't even like anyone like anyone at all the only people

1:21.4

they were it was they were volunteers.

1:24.0

Yeah so I stayed in Greece and they really liked the country.

...

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