"Towards Poland" - Description
This documentary series presents people who have chosen Poland as their new homeland. Each episode is dedicated to a different person. The characters come from different countries, graduated from different schools, had different reasons for coming to Poland, they live in different parts of the country and also their opinion on their new homeland differs. Individual episodes present one day of the character at their current living place in Poland, the reasons for coming there, opinion of the people from their surrounding, the portrait of the place the character came from and also their own opinion about those places and their present life situation.
Characters
Mamadou Diouf – veterinary medicine doctor, musician and DJ from Senegal
He was born in Senegal in a small village without school. His life chance was given to him by his cousin, who took him with him to Dakar. It was there, where brought up as a Christian Mamadou got to know Islam. He attended simultaneously French school and Madrasah. In 1983 the government of Senegal sent him to Poland to study veterinary medicine. After graduation he returned to Senegal, but he could not find job in his profession. He decided to come back to Poland for PhD. He got his degree in 2000 but he has actually never worked in his profession.
Mauritanian Becaye Aw, musician and student at the Warsaw School of Economics encouraged him to singing and playing an instrument. For the first time Mamadou performed at the student hostel in Madalińskiego Street. With the help of the Polish Radio journalist Włodzimierz Kleszcz he started a band called Pol-Ska. He had co-worked with Włodzimierz Kiniorski (“Kinor”) and for over 5 years played with Wojtek Waglewski’s Voo Voo. He sung with singer Anna Maria Jopek and rap artist Fisz. Currently he is singing and playing percussion instruments in groups Tam Tam Project and Djolof-Man. He has his own programme on the Jazz Radio, where he promotes Arabian, Indian, Caribbean and African rhythms. He also works as a DJ in music clubs. On the web site www.afryka.org which has been established in order to improve the image of Africa, he publishes poems and music album reviews. He has released couple of his own records and a few video clips.
Being single he is helping his family in Senegal. He is a polish citizen – he jokes that as well of the 3rd and 4th Republic of Poland, since the document of receiving the citizenship was signed by both polish presidents Kwasniewski and Kaczynski.
Miho Iwata – dancer from Japan
She was born 1962 in Ichinmiya-shi in Japan. She is a performance artist, scenographer and choreographer. Since 1986 Miho has been living in Kraków. She received a degree in architecture at Kyoto Prefectural University and studied Polish philology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Currently she performes at theater and arts festivals throughout Poland and abroad. She works with polish composers and musicians.
Simon Lucas – businessman from Australia
He is the head of the pharmaceutical company and charity foundation SymPhar which conducts music therapy. SymPhar is a young pharmaceutical company with Australian roots run by Beata Durczak, Michael Seegy and Simon Lucas. They supply polish market with medicine and support the Pajacyk campaign of the Polska Akcja Humanitarna, which main goal is to help malnourished children. SymPhar sponsors exhibitions, supports artists and collects art. Their most recent campaign, lead in co-operation with Nowa Orkiestra Kameralna, is series of concerts Music Therapy In Hospitals which aims at helping patients to recover.
Peter Stratenwerth – farmer from Switzerland
Together with his wife Ewa Smuk-Stratenwerth, who is an anthropologist, they run an organic-farm in a village Grzybów, near Płock. His father is teaching law at the university and his mother is a psychotherapist, his brother a theatrical director and his sister a journalist. He didn’t want to lead a life like they did. From his earliest years he took part in Green Peace and Green parties demonstrations – against nuclear power stations and in defense of endangered animal species.
On one of such demonstrations he met people who told him about Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian naturalist and philosopher, who already in the 1920s predicted dangers resulting from modern methods applied in farming and effects of using pesticides, which change the composition of soil, water and atmosphere.
For eight years Peter had been learning organic farming and its methods. After graduating from the school of biodynamic farming (one of the first in the world) his father awarded him a trip to anywhere in the world. Peter chose Kobierzyce near Wrocław, where 1924 first ecologic conference was held, where Rudolf Steiner lectured.
After several years Peter loaded an old truck with green table, nut-tree commode, books, and drove towards Poland, where he bought some land. It was hard during the first years. He lived in one room together with chickens, didn’t have current water or sewage system. He dedicated himself wholly to his farm. He purified the soil, baked bread, made cheese that each week he would bring to the capital and sell.
Currently he is running an organic farm and selling home-made bread in Warsaw.
John Borell – journalist from England
He was born in England, but while aged two he went with his parents to the USA. Later the family moved to New Zealand. John was 5 by that time. That’s why he doesn’t consider himself an Englishman but a New Zealander. He owns two passports – English and New Zealand.
He began his work as a journalist at the age of 18. When he was 20 he left for Australia, where he was employed in a country-wide newspaper. After Australia Africa came and work at Reuters, The Economist, BBC, The Guardian and Time Magazine. He was head of the Time Magazine Africa office and later Near East office – he was in Beirut during the Israeli Invasion. He was also a war correspondent. Then he became head of the South American office of Time Magazine – he lived in Mexico, but attended the whole continent. That’s when he had met Ryszard Kapuściński, who by that time worked in Ethiopia and Angola just as John. Next was job in New York and after that Vienna, where he acted head of the Eastern Europe Time Magazine office. It was already the year 1989. He wrote about the Polish Round Table Agreement and had interviewed politicians: Wojciech Jaruzelski, Lech Wałęsa and Tadeusz Mazowiecki.
In 1989 he decided to move to Kashubia (northern Poland). He owns a guest house, imports wine and runs a local newspaper Express Kaszubski.
He has a polish wife, who he met in Africa and two sons – 13 and 15 years old.
Katja Sadziak – interior designer from Sweden
She was born in Smaland, province in southern Sweden. She studied interior design at the Kingston University in London. Her thesis was entitled „Warsaw, a city of change”, and was about the postwar reconstruction and changes that this city had gone through.
She has been working for 9 years now as interior designer. She has made architectural designs in Great Britain and then Warsaw for Agora publishing house. She has worked in Dom Studio in Warsaw and also in the company Svoboda, which produces office furniture. Currently she is working on projects in Poland, Sweden and Croatia. She is a co-founder of Scandinavian Living – design studio in Konstancin near Warsaw with which she regularly co-operates.
Her main interests are architecture and design, especially the Scandinavian of the 50s. She collects old furniture, which she mixes with contemporary decoration. She also occupies herself with renovation.
She rides horses, bicycles, skies, exercises in the gym. She is married to a financier Adam and has two sons: 6-year Oskar and 4-year Noel.
Wasyl Iwasyutyn – construction worker from Ukraine
Ukrainian citizen, lives in Wroclaw. He is about 40 years old. It was 17 years ago that he came to Poland for the first time. He has been living there permanently for 9 years. He is running a construction company which specializes in finishing works, i.e. laying tiles. He employs dozen people. He has taught many people, also Poles, this profession. He is fighting one major problem – although he has a company that is acting legally, he still has not been granted a permanent resident status in Poland.
Jim Parton – writer from England
Londoner, 48 years old. In 2007 he bought a ruined 50-room palace in Piotrowice Niskie, small village next to the Czech border. He is married to a Pole. They have four children and live in a few rooms of the castle that qualify for that. They want to renovate and bring back the former beauty to the palace. In the time spare from renovation he is writing.
Saeid Abdelrazek – medicine doctor from Libya
Medicine doctor, research worker at the Medical University of Białystok, football player.
He was a very good student at school, which enabled him the admission to university. After graduation he came to Poland, where he finished a polish language course. After that he became a medical specialist at the Medical University of Białystok. He stayed there at the nuclear medicine unit. Saeid is still studying, he attends many conferences and symposia, and he is teaching students. He is in the course of preparing for postdoctoral thesis but still hasn’t started the postdoctoral degree conferral procedures. He is the only research worker in the history of the Medicine University that has 3 medical specializations: nuclear medicine, endocrinology and internal medicine. His hobby is football. He played in Libyan premiership, currently he plays in local division and medical tournaments.
Hugo Kowalczuk – teacher from Argentina
He was born in 1967 in La Plata, a town to the south of Buenos Aires. He spent there first two years of his life, later his family moved to Argentina’s capital. As he graduated from technical college, he was fascinated by science, but at the university he found out that he was more a humanist. He started to be interested with sociology, psychology and history. He studied sociology in Buenos Aires. At that time he started to think about coming to Europe for 3 month holidays, also to visit Poland, because of his father who was Polish. He collected money for that aim for couple of years. He planned only holidays but he stayed permanently. First he reached Moscow, than Warsaw.
What he wanted most was to learn polish. So he went to Łódź to take Polish for Foreigners course at the University of Łódź. First he attended a month, then again a year course. He liked it a lot. During that course he learned much about Poland, he met many people – famous Łódź student dormitory gave such a possibility. In the ten floors there lived people from all over the world with whom one speaks only English, that’s the best way to learn.
Next he got a scholarship at the philological faculty in Sosnowiec. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree, then after a break he wrote his master thesis. Meanwhile at the canteen he met a girl named Ola. She was studying German philology and he studied Spanish and Russian, which he adores. They started to talk and got to know each other better. They got married and in 2004 their son was born. Ola teaches German in high school in Wisła, currently she is on a maternity leave – their second child was born.
Two years ago Hugo started to work as a Spanish teacher at the University of Bielsko Biała. He focuses mainly on the translation aspects. He also teaches in a private language school Europa 2000 in Tychy and Katowice – there he focuses mainly on the communication aspect on various levels.
Rafael Hiroshi Akahira – artist from z France (half Japanese)
Graphic designer and painter. His father is Japanese and his mother French. He was born in Paris but grew up in Tokyo. For five months now he has been living in Łódź. He is married to a woman from Łódź, who he met in France. They had lived there for 5 years. They used to come to Poland to visit her parents. Poland intrigued him from the very beginning. Wiola told him a lot about the polish mentality, and he understood little. One day she said: “If you don’t live here some time, you won’t understand”. Rafael is fascinated by Łódź. He works there a lot, he paints. He loves Łódź spots and pubs. They live in Bema street in Julianów district.
Barbara Różycka – nurse from Russia (Kaliningrad Oblast)
She is about 35 years old. Smart blonde with pleasant appearance, she has been living in Poland for 12 years. Her husband Peter is a crane operator in Gdańsk. Barbara works in the tuberculosis unit at the Isolation Hospital in Gdańsk. One of the pair’s hobbies is riding a big and fast motorcycle, another one – yachting. She considers herself polish, she has polish citizenship.