Six young people from Sandwell took part in an international youth exchange held in Le Blanc Mesnil – France, where they made new friends, experienced different cultures and discussed important topics such as world peace.

By Faith Whitehouse

Picture the scene, six young British ‘Sandwellies’ jumping off a minibus at Village Du Monde. Luggage labels hanging out with the stamped date of 8th July 2009, excitement kicking in, hands outstretched for hugs and  shakes from their fellow village buddies from Russia, Algeria, France and Ethiopia.   None of the young people would realise that an epic week of forging friendships, partying, blogging, debating and late    night trips to Paris were ahead of them. Welcome To Village Du Monde 2009!

Village Du Monde

Village Du Monde, or village of the world in English, was a camp set on the outskirts of Paris on an old farmyard that myself and 60 other young people were lucky enough to take part in. Not forgetting the great members of staff from Sabrina un and deux, to “Vinct my man” the grounds keeper. 

The goal of the camp was to bring young people together from all over the world and discuss how to achieve world peace! The group made progress but through Facebook and various future youth exchanges we aim to continue our work and achieve this epic goal.

The camp was set on an old farm  and had four tents, each having about ten beds which were laid out as bunk beds. The Sandwelly boys had their very own tent all to themselves. Whereas the Sandwelly girls, youth worker Shobha, plus Nat-al-ie, shared with the dancing Russian girls and the loud and bubbly French. There was a games room filled with old French games from ‘pick up sticks’ to ‘chess’.

There was a chill out area with a stage, where the Sandwelly girls woke everyone up on the fourth day with their amazing cabaret performance, and also where the village was entertained by Russian dancing, Ethiopian block throwing and being told that they were going to die in two years on the 5th night?!

There was a dining room, where without fail baguettes (French cuisine apparently) would be plonked on the table right in front of us every day to enjoy with our soggy cornflakes with condensed milk for breakfast, and our cold meat surprise. There was also a kitchen on the camp site where Ben, Tariq, Grace and I attempted to cook, or fail, with an English breakfast for the camp.

There was a vast green park right behind the big wooden doors where we would feed the ducks and avoid the pigeons at the same time, take part in a treasure hunt and play on the climbing frames. But it seemed the park was an escape route for some of the young people and by the third day we had lost two of the Ethiopian girls. I think that day showed everyone that they were lucky where they lived and encouraged us to maintain our goal of discussing how to achieve world peace.

World peace and how to achieve it were the main aims of the camp, and yes we did party and make friends, but on the Friday and Saturday we did blogging. This is where we were placed into groups with other young people on the exchange and had to design and create a blog; a bit like a mini facebook for the village. The blog also gave everyone a chance to discuss issues from violence in sport to young people and adult communication. For example, in Russia we learnt through the blogs that there is a lot of violence in sport and that many people get hurt attending football matches, etc.

To forge friendships and make the blogs more exciting, we illustrated them by taking photos. Even the most camera shy people at the village got involved and the end result were some really nice, lively group photos. Language was a problem that we had to overcome doing the blogs, but we had many translators helping each group out and if that failed we always had google translation.

Debating was also another activity that we did, not as regularly as first thought though. On the Friday night we hopped, skipped and jumped it over to the local youth cinema and there we had a debate that our very own Grace started. The debate was about religious dress code in France and how the young French people are not allowed to express themselves through religious clothing. The debate certainly fired up a lot of emotions, mixed in with translators translating from French to English and occasionally Russian, meant that the debate lasted well over two hours! And most of us were pretty glad when pizza was served afterwards.

A time on the trip that no one will ever forget was an extraordinary adventure out into Paris. We went on a Sunday afternoon and caught about four trains just to get to the centre of Paris. There we climbed the many steps of the Sacre Re Cour, stopping for drinks and water fights. We also explored the mini shops there filled with ‘I love Paris’ T-shirts and dodging the people who thrusted little Eiffel towers in our faces. Well, most of us tried to avoid the annoying Eiffel towers, but Vijay and Kuljit managed to barter down the price so the village came away with about 40 small metal Eiffel towers. 

Going on the river cruise on the ‘Seine river’ was also an exciting moment for us, as we got to check out the famous landmarks and wave at strangers, which you can’t do every day. Another thing that we did that was out of this world was walking the streets of Paris with the midnight moon behind us and tucking into a McDonalds feast of milkshakes, big Macs and real french fries. After everyone was stuffed from the familiar food we made it back to camp, which meant a long train journey home and this time we did not have a guy singing for us.

The camp wasn’t all about world peace, in fact we had a lot of free time.  We fed the ducks, learned new languages, played table tennis and expressed our creative skills through drumming and graffiti workshops. Skateboarding was also made available for the young people but it looked rather risky, skating on the thin silver pipe and having Ben filming you for future “You’ve Been Framed” moments didn’t help.

My favourite activity that was made available to us was not table tennis, but was the wall of expression! This was a wall where everyone had a chance to write, draw, colour in and graffiti their viewpoints about peace. It was a great opportunity to make friends over the paint pot, however, when patriotism came into play; a few scribbles over flags and writing would swallow up the wall. This was resolved by changing the boards regularly and the organisers choosing which words would go on the board.

There was no bedtime at the village and this was probably because the French were like batteries and never stopped. Dancing would be on offer from 11pm to about three or even four in the morning. It was an activity that everyone got involved in from the Russian boys jelly fish move to the conga around the bonfire. We even had regular tributes to Michael Jackson through attempts of the famous thriller routine that Anna, the dancer of the village, pretty much achieved. And who can forget the laughs and jokes that the ‘Sandwellies’ brought to the group from “fat camp” to “we shake da tent” and “pull the stars”. And one of the most memorable moments of the whole trip for us was staying up until the early hours on the last night and rolling our youth leader Tariq, whilst in his sleeping bag, down the hill at about three in the morning. It was hilarious.

I can safely say that the great memories from the village will remain with us forever, as will the friendships we formed there. Thank you to Shobha and Tariq for making the opportunity happen and thanks Ben for wasting six hours of film in the first two days with that precious camera of yours.