The Happy Pod: Success stories of former refugees

**Holly Gibbs** (0:00)
This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.
I'm Holly Gibbs, and in this special edition, we are marking World Refugee Day. We'll be bringing you some extraordinary stories of people who have fled their homes in search of safety and have thrived despite their difficult beginnings. I'm joined by Tam Patachako, a BBC journalist who's recently joined our team. Tam, tell us why this episode is particularly relevant to you.

**Tam Patachako** (0:35)
Well, I was actually born in a refugee camp. I lived in Nyarugusu, which is one of the biggest refugee camps in the world, according to the UN, and I lived there for the first eight years of my life. We all used to listen to the radio and one of the most popular radio stations that we used to listen to was BBC Swahili. For the first eight years of my life, I just thought the BBC was a Tanzanian broadcasting channel.
And so to be sitting here today, it's kind of like a full circle moment for me.

**Holly Gibbs** (1:00)
And for those listening, can you describe what the camp looks like?

**Tam Patachako** (1:04)
Well, Nyarugusu is in the middle of the savannas in West Tanzania. So whenever I close my eyes, the first thing I can see is the red soil. Everything is red from the mud brick houses to the thatched roofs. And I can actually almost smell the ripe fruits. We had mango trees on every single corner. At night, it was so beautiful because we didn't have streetlights.
And so each night, you would have a full set of stars in the sky. And it was honestly something I took for granted. Whenever I close my eyes and picture Nyarugusu once again, those are the first things that come to mind. It wasn't perfect, but it was beautiful for what it was.

**Holly Gibbs** (1:40)
You've painted quite a happy picture there. But for some people, they might imagine a refugee camp to be quite a scary place.

**Tam Patachako** (1:47)
The thing that you have to understand is that refugee camp was one big family. Everyone there was from the same part of the DRC.
We all were basically somewhat related. We all spoke the same language. We all ate the same food. And we all had just each other to help each other out. And yes, it was in the middle of a savanna. So at night, under that starry sky I mentioned, you do also get to hear wolves howling in the distance. And sometimes you would hear them outside of your house sniffing. But it was a beautiful place because we had each other.

**Holly Gibbs** (2:20)
And as you say, you moved here 17 years ago. What is your first memory of arriving to England?

**Tam Patachako** (2:26)
The first thing was how cold it was. And yeah, it's shocking that I'm talking about how bad English weather was. But that is genuinely the first thing I can remember when I came off the plane was the hairs on my body kind of just froze because it felt so cold. And bear in mind, this was in the middle of spring in 2009
So for the first couple of days after we arrived in England, we were in a small hotel in South London. And every single morning, we would be obviously we were given breakfast and it was a full English breakfast and it was baked beans. I wanted something that reminded me of Tanzania again. I wanted something that was comforting, something that I'd been used to for the first eight years of my life.

**Holly Gibbs** (3:04)
Well, that brings us on to our first story of Razan Alsous, who fled Syria and moved to Yorkshire in the north of England. Like Tam, she wanted a taste of home and now runs a cheese business.

**Razan Alsous** (3:20)
So, what makes a squeaky cheese different from other cheeses? We coagulate the milk first, then cook it. And this is where the character of the cheese is developed and you will have the sounds of squeakiness when you eat it.

**Holly Gibbs** (3:36)
Razan told us what gave her the idea.

**Razan Alsous** (3:39)
So I had my residency within a month, but for my husband it took him around two years. So basically after a year searching for a job and no one hired me or were interested in hiring me, I just thought I need to do something. And I started to think of how to become a self-employed. I came across different ideas until I spotted once that halloumi was seasonal product in the supermarket. At the same time, I loved the milk in the UK. And from this point, the ideas start to sparkle and I start to think about how about making halloumi cheese. I applied for a start-up loan and we managed with this £2,500 to find second-hand equipment not being made to make cheese. Here where my husband support, because he's an engineer, he managed to change the usage of this equipment to make cheese.