Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Grenfell Tower

Paddington Bear stands in Portobello Road…….a place the beloved bear visited regularly in the Michael Bond series. Paddington and his family lived in one of the pastel colored row houses of this neighborhood. In London I am waking up at 4:30 in the morning to the same birdsongs that I heard in the East Anglian countryside. The difference morning and evening is the sound of voices rising up from the street. Last night I fell asleep to the beautiful Jamaican patois as a few locals ushered in the night.

This morning, I wish I was still sleeping. Despite the fact that I am in London and having a wonderful time with my daughter and as a tourist abroad, I am waking up with a heavy heart. It's impossible not to, and in the quiet of the morning I am taking time for prayer and silence to absorb the pain of this West London neighborhood. 

My host is a Brazilian woman, the restaurant across the street is the Fez Mahal. When you walk in this Nottinghill and Westbourne Park neighborhood, you walk with upper middle class British people who own their own row house, and you walk with immigrants from every place in the world. Wealth and poverty in one of the most eclectic neighborhoods in the world. This is the neighborhood my daughter lived in during her masters program here. To her, it is a part of what her memory calls “home”. 

London does not feel safe. There is the heaviness of worrying about random acts of terrorism. We have to think, watch and plan. Yet, like the people here we go forward with our days, and as tourists we are trying to take advantage of what the city offers. As we walked home last night we felt safe in the diversity of the immigrant population. We all fear terrorism…….but here, the reality of hate rhetoric toward immigrants and the reality of poverty hit home. West London’s issues are America’s issues too. The way we approach one another and the way we treat one another sinks deeply into the psyche here this month in Portobello Road.

Window after window in the neighborhood is filled with missing person photos……girls, boys, young men, young women, the elderly. People who will never be found. You walk on, but the grim reality of the immigrant experience in council house (low income housing) in one of the most expensive cities in the world, makes your chest congest as your rib cage sinks in horror. Down our lane, just about three blocks away stands the charred remains of Grenfell Tower. The tower where many poor and immigrant families died, a baby in mother's arms….somebody’s children, family, grandparent. The stench of burned chemicals sears your lungs even more than a week after the tragedy. 

It's a large scale disaster in the developed world. There's not a way to describe life in Council Housing, because the story would be different for each individual or family. Grenfell is coupled with yet another tragedy, and that is the break up of unique diasporic communities. Those who survived Grenfell, and those in housing that is being closed now because it is constructed like Grenfell are being relocated. Yes, Council Housing is being assigned, but where available, not in the place these people have a “collective memory” of being home.

Grenfell isn’t just London’s story. It is my time to hold my face in my hands in the morning dawn to grieve for these people, and for the many people making new lives in first, second and third generation immigrant communities in Europe and at home. Who are we? 


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