Where I did pointless work and kept my mouth shut for the first time

2023-08-08 16:51:12

I must have been 15 when my parents let me go to Wales with a youth group from the Evangelisches Jugendwerk in Heidelberg. It was a labor assignment in Tairgwaith, a former mining town. The coal mine had closed, the village was in decline and we would practice solidarity there and build a playground that should at least cheer up the children.

We took the train to London and from there we took the bus. But then it turned out that we could not find accommodation in Targwaith. Ultimately it was a stroke of luck. Instead, we moved into a house in the pretty coastal town of St. David’s. It belonged to the Anglican Church and we had to attend Sunday services in the huge and beautiful cathedral. Whitesand’s Bay was a short walk away.

At St David’s we learned the new hymn by Tairgwaith, which I only remember fragments of. It was about the future of this place, which many felt robbed by the closure of the mine, about the new face that the village wanted to give itself. With our help! The refrain is still there: “Tairgwaith shows new visions to this world.”

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We did as we were told and kept our mouths shut

In the end, we only went there once and were received in the community hall by the mayor and other people. We, about 25 young people from Heidelberg, sat on the floor, held Welsh flags in our hands, sang the song and, because of the heavy accent, didn’t understand a word of what the dignitaries were saying. Then it was off to the construction site.

My group of five girls was assigned the spot where the swings were already up. We should prepare the ground, namely dig up a little earth and fill in gravel. Gravel! It was black, with sharp corners and edges, and we imagined how the encounter of weak children’s knees would turn out with this material. We thought about who we could draw attention to, wanted to protest, but we didn’t dare. We did as we were told and in the end we had the sharp-edged rubble evenly distributed under the scaffolding with the four swings.

It is the first senseless, even absurd work of my life that I can remember doing. We had wanted to do good and done the opposite. And we kept our mouths shut. I’ve never forgotten that awful feeling we had when we drove back to St David’s.