Home Stories with Manchán Magan
Storytelling Podcasts
Ireland has been gifted with an influx of people from a range of fascinating and exotic cultures in recent years. Most of them were fleeing some form of trauma and are now making their way (slowly) through the Direct Provision system. These new members of our communities offer us an opportunity to get to know different parts of the world and different cultures. Join Manchán Magan as he learns about the lives of Ireland's newest residents in Home Stories.
Location:
United States
Genres:
Storytelling Podcasts
Description:
Ireland has been gifted with an influx of people from a range of fascinating and exotic cultures in recent years. Most of them were fleeing some form of trauma and are now making their way (slowly) through the Direct Provision system. These new members of our communities offer us an opportunity to get to know different parts of the world and different cultures. Join Manchán Magan as he learns about the lives of Ireland's newest residents in Home Stories.
Language:
English
Website:
https://manchan.com/
Episodes
Tika from Malawi
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán speaks with Tika from in a town in the southern part of Malawi, Blantyre. Her happiest memories are of her secondary school and the beautiful places they visited, ‘like Mount Mulanje which translates in the local language as ‘you don’t go there’, as people believed there were ghosts there that used to take people. This is because you need a guide there, or you won’t easily find your way back.
She speaks the national language in Malawi, Chichewa, and a local language,...
Duration:00:10:45
Fortunate from Zimbabwe
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán sits down with Fortunate from Zimbabwe. Fortunate grew up in a village in a mountainous region of Zimbabwe with many dangerous snakes, ‘All the mambas that you've ever heard about are in those mountains: black mamba, green mamba, white mamba. And we've got baboons - when we plough our maize they come to steal from us.’
She insists that snakes aren’t dangerous, ‘sometimes when you go to the field to cultivate with horses you might step on a snake, but they realise...
Duration:00:17:42
Ivann from Guatemala
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán speaks with Ivann from from the Guatemalan city of Quetzaltenango. He had to flee his home when drug cartels moved into the region. ‘It's close to the border with Mexico and five or ten years ago terrorists with guns set up in the area with drugs, and it changed everything, especially for the kids. Now it is very dangerous.’
His grandmother spoke the traditional Mayan languages K'iche' and Katchiqua. She mixed aspects of Christianity with Mayan practise. ‘In...
Duration:00:12:57
Lwandise from Zimbabwe
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán speaks with Lwandise from Zimbabwe. Lwandise comes from a small farm of cattle, sheep, goats and other animals in Matebeleland South, Zimbabwe. His family also ‘grew grains so that we can feed our families throughout the year until the next rains.’ His father practised polygamy and so Lwandise had five siblings from his mother’s side and twelve from his father’s. Everyone was reared as part of the one family, ‘boys have their own rooms and girls have theirs,...
Duration:00:07:47
Ndidi from Nigeria
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán has a chat with Nididi from Nigeria. Ndididi is from the eastern part of Nigeria from a village ‘that is like a city also, as all the amenities of the city are there. My own village even has a university. There is a big thick forest there, and a river, and a market and schools. There is electricity also. It is very beautiful.’ Their local market is renowned and people ‘from other cities, far and wide come to do their market there. People bring many foods and some...
Duration:00:13:14
Noma from Zimbabwe
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán speaks with Noma from Zimbabwe. Noma, a model, grew up in rural Zimbabwe, tending cattle and growing vegetables and cereals. At age twelve she moved to South Africa with her parents and ‘was exposed to many things there. We used to go to the library to study, and play netball, and go swimming.’ There was more freedom than with her grandmother but still, ‘I prefer my grandmother’s way because the respect was there. In a rural area when you meet someone you greet them,...
Duration:00:08:06
Adam from Morocco
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán has a chat with Adam from Morocco. Adam comes from Safi, a Moroccan coastal town famous for its seafood barbecues. ‘Everyone in the city knows how to swim and how to fish, and the sardines we catch are known throughout Morocco.’ He tried cooking fish from Irish rivers, ‘but it’s not the same’.
He works in a barber shop in Athlone and has made good friends. He says the Irish are similar to Moroccans in that both are easy going and like to joke. The main difference is...
Duration:00:12:42
Kemi from Nigeria
4/15/2022
This episode Manchán sits down with Kemi from Nigeria. Kemi, grew up in Igarra Eclo State in rural Nigeria before moving to a city after her mother died when she was twelve. Her town is famous for its natural beauty, with vast rocky outcrops amidst glistening streams. It’s also known for an edible land snail that is a sought-after delicacy. ‘The snail can be as large as a sausage inside a shell that is as big as an orange.’
She speaks four languages as well as English, ‘Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa...
Duration:00:12:20
Feza from the Democratic Republic of Congo
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán speaks with Feza form the Democratic Republic of Congo. Feza, is from Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where her mother, step-brothers and sisters still live. She has fond memories of ‘my grandmother who used to cook beans mixed with cassava leaves and we’d have it with rice, and of the wonderful smoked fish from Lake Kivu.’ She used to love swimming in the lake and going to visit Virunga National Park there the mountain gorillas live. 'We used to...
Duration:00:08:32
David from South Africa - Part 2
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán again sits down with David from South Africa. David was born in Lompopo province, South Africa into a family descended from kings and so who were regularly consulted for guidance and justice. He learnt from his father and uncle that ‘everyone must come to a point where they compromise. When this is implemented, the results are wonderful. They transform the entire community to good from bad.’
Having worked alongside Mandela at conferences with the ANC, David is...
Duration:00:16:23
David from South Africa - Part 1
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán speaks with David from South Africa. David was born in Lompopo province, South Africa into a family descended from kings and so who were regularly consulted for guidance and justice. He learnt from his father and uncle that ‘everyone must come to a point where they compromise. When this is implemented, the results are wonderful. They transform the entire community to good from bad.’
Having worked alongside Mandela at conferences with the ANC, David is passionate...
Duration:00:15:35
Sandra from Zimbabwe
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán speaks with Sandra from Zimbabwe. Her home town has a strong sense of communal identity. ‘If one family cooks they say come and eat to everyone. When you are sick you can call your neighbour and they will help you.’ All the female elders were like mothers, aunties or grandmothers to her.
It surprises her how in Ireland people keep to themselves and she regrets that she must call people by their first names, and not just ‘sister’ or ‘brother’. She’d love to go home,...
Duration:00:10:26
Oyeyemi from Nigeria
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán talks to Oyeyemi from the Yoruba tribe in southwestern Nigeria. ‘To be a Yoruba is a thing to be proud of. We are ready to learn new things and open to new cultures.’ Christianity and Islam are the principal faiths, but a traditional belief known as ifa, based on divination, is still practised. ‘There’s a god of iron, a god of thunder, a god of commerce, and also a god of the river and waters. I think we have the god of the forest too, that people worship and make...
Duration:00:11:02
Sie from Zimbabwe
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán speaks to Sie from Zimbabwe. 'I’d appreciate for Irish people to understand me as a person, not me as an African, or me as a continent,’ says Sie who comes from a village without electricity in a northern province of Zimbabwe called Lubane. She stresses that her family had access to a bore hole for water but other neighbours still fetch it daily from the river. She says it was a difficult life of long trips to fetch firewood and a 6km hike to school each day through...
Duration:00:14:36
Aruna from the Democratic Republic of Congo
4/15/2022
This episode Manchán talks to Aruna from the Democratic Republic of Congo. ‘I was born in the east of Congo, in a war zone. I grew up in Goma in my mother's family. You’ve got the big mountain in the centre called Mont Goma. On the far side you have the volcano, Virunga. Ngorgongo is the oldest one. Sometimes you see them burning and you have earthquakes.’ Life was hard growing up as his father wasn’t present and his mother’s family were poor. His uncle who was paying his school fees died in...
Duration:00:10:23
Pauline from South Africa
4/15/2022
This episode Manchán speaks to Pauline South Africa. Pauline is from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and ‘grew up relatively poor, but happy. I remember my dad let us watch a python eat a dik-dik (small deer) and for seven days we returned to watch it as it lay there digesting. We only ate wild meat when we were growing up. My young brother started to hunt when he was four years old.’
She moved to South Africa and now has five children and nine grandchildren. They lived outside...
Duration:00:13:31
Naledi from Botswana
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán speaks with Naledi from Botswana. Naledi grew up in the town of Francistown, Botswana as her grandmother was a teacher there. ‘My mum had me when she was twenty so she went to university, so I had to stay with my grandmother. I remember the times sitting by the gate at the time she came home and I’d be standing there singing songs.
As regards her hopes, ‘I like to work with people, which is why I decided to be a healthcare assistant, to assist people who cannot...
Duration:00:13:19
Rosemary from Malawi
4/15/2022
In this episode Manchán speaks with Rosemary from Malawi. Rosemary runs a social enterprise called Dignity Partnership that encourages Direct Provision residents to acquire new skills and set up businesses. Her goal is to expand the enterprise and be able to help encourage and motivate more Direct Provision people. She realises she lost so much of her own confidence when she was in the Direct Provision system and sees so many people suffering from trauma and undiagnosed depression and...
Duration:00:14:32
Welcome to Home Stories
4/2/2022
Ireland has been gifted with a precious influx of people from a range of fascinating and exotic cultures in recent years. Most of them were fleeing some form of trauma and are currently making their way slowly through the Direct Provision system. These new members of our communities offer us a wonderful opportunity to get to know different parts of the world and different cultural practises that are often full of wisdom and new perspectives.
Home Stories is a podcast that aims to help us...
Duration:00:01:18