I’ve been in Germany for two and a half years now. First I came to Germany for two months, then to France for two months and then back again. I come from Bangladesh, but I was already a refugee there. I have no family, but friends. My parents have been dead for five years. I have another sister who is younger than me. I had political problems in Bangladesh. When I was 14 years old.
I went to India, I lived there for five years. For a while I was also in Pakistan, in 2015 in January I left Bangladesh. They tried to enter my house. Via a friend I went to India, via Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria – and then Germany.
I would like to stay in Europe because politics in Bangladesh really is a problem. If you ask journalists, there’s no problem, but in reality there is. There have been attacks and I should join a group. The police are corrupt, they’re very bad there. I’ve been out there since 2015 . In August I’ll be in Germany for three years.
I was briefly in France, but I think Germany is better. France has been a little tiring, it used to be good, but now it’s worse. In Cologne it is no problem to be on the road at three o’clock at night, but in France it was already like this. Here in Germany I have been working for 1.5 years. I work for Galeria Kaufhof, in the online shop. The work is good, it’s an easy one. People order from me, I finish it and forward it.
The Job Center hadn’t sent me any offers for six months, and I still don’t have a language course. I had an appointment at the job centre, but I was told that full-time work is difficult at the moment. With Google Translate and the help of a German teacher I learned a little German. I speak English quite well – and if you speak and write English well, German is not so difficult any more.
I worked for a company in Bangladesh for two years. It was a paper company at the camp. I worked in Pakistan for a year. In India I did different jobs, many different ones.
One problem here is that it’s not so easy to get papers.
Storyteller’s name: Pitu
Interviewer’s name: Sarah El Desoke and Sebastian Abresch
Country of origin: Bangladesh
Sex: m
Age: 25