Musa and Esme take to the stage with Michael Palin at the Royal Geographic Society
Since he applied for sanctuary in the UK on his birthday in January 2003, Musa Ibrahim has become all too accustomed to being interviewed. From his asylum interview and subsequent appeal hearings to his volunteering interview at Refugee Action and appearances on local radio, Musa has spent the past six years fielding questions posed by a whole host of British people.
Indeed as a volunteer with our Refugee Awareness Project in Bristol, talking to community groups about his experiences of being a refugee, he got pretty used to being grilled about why he fled Somalia by school children, youth workers and firefighters alike.
So when Michael Palin asked to interview him as part of a new series of talks at the Royal Geographical Society, he was more laid back than I was.
Mr Palin? Yes, what a lovely guy. An audience of 700 people? No problem. Members of the famous Royal Geographical Society? What an interesting crowd. By contrast, I was vomiting on my shoes as soon as the words ‘Ondaatje Theatre’ were mentioned.
Michael Palin first met Musa when we invited him to take part in the Simple Acts campaign for Refugee Week. The campaign inspires people to use small, everyday actions to change perceptions of refugees. When the campaign was first being developed, Michael Palin was one of the people we asked to tell us what they’d do to welcome a refugee.
Michael suggested learning a few words of another language, so when the campaign launched in 2009 we thought we’d ask him to put his language skills to the test. We dispatched Musa to teach him a few words of Somali and Swahili and they chattered away for hours about everything from Musa’s love of British libraries to navigating London’s underground system for the first time.
Michael is pleased to learn that 'sandwich' is the same in Somali and English
Musa said, “When I first met Michael Palin I was really surprised as I thought I was going to meet someone who was more posh. But he was really fun to be with and easy to talk to. I wasn’t brought up in this celebrity culture that you have here. For me it was just like meeting a normal person. He was really open and I had a very long chat with him. I taught him some words of Somali and his accent was good. I think through travelling his tongue is not so tied up and heavy. Some people have very heavy tongues when they try to speak other languages but he was very good.”
Meeting Musa and hearing about Somali culture and the reality of life as a refugee here clearly had an impact on globetrotter Michael Palin. Just a few weeks later, in his new role as president of the Royal Geographical Society, he invited Musa to launch ‘Michael meets…’, a series of talks for members in which he interviews someone he has met on his travels.
Michael and Musa relax after the talk
The inaugural ‘Michael meets…’ was held on Wednesday and was a great success despite our collective nerves. Musa kept his cool and brilliantly conveyed the ups and downs of the refugee experience from when he first fled his hometown in Somalia as a child, to his life as a teenager in Kenya’s refugee camps and rebuilding his life in the UK. I was also on stage to add a broader context to Musa’s personal story and thankfully managed to avoid the sort of Monty Python tourettes that being within a metre radius of Michael Palin seems to induce.
Musa said, “It was amazing how quickly the time on stage went. I tried to focus on just talking naturally to Michael and Esme and to forget about the 700 other people there! Afterwards I was surprised because so many of the Royal Geographical Society members came up to me and shook my hand, wishing me good luck. It made me feel so welcome. Now I know how it is for Michael Palin when everyone wants to shake his hand!”
We’d like to thank everyone who came on the night and to Dr Rita Gardner, Lisa Miller, and all the staff at the Royal Geographical Society who worked so hard to make the night a success. Most of all we’d like to thank Michael Palin for giving Musa and Refugee Action the opportunity to reach new audiences and for making us feel so welcome and relaxed on stage. After all, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition… Sorry, sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Some of our staff, supporters and refugee spokespeople from Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Zimbabwe came to cheer us on.
Tags: Michael Palin, Refugee Week, Simple Acts campaign, volunteering
Posted by Esme Peach
[...] The Observer’s coverage of the Michael Meets Musa event at the Royal Geographical Society was [...]