For the last few months I’ve been teaching Dutch at a refugee centre. Most of my adult pupils are from Syria and Eritrea. We meet twice a week and actually have a good time (Dutch is a difficult language so learning to pronounce it is often funny, we laugh a lot). I’ve grown fond of all my students, although I’m not allowed to have a friendly relationship with them. These are highly motivated people, they are more determined than any Dutch person I know. Sometimes one of them will share an intimate, secret story. The stories are often gruesome, worse than you might ever imagine. Lees meer…