Excerpt from pages 167–175 of our book „Breaking Borders to Build Bridges“ available through Edition Assemblage

What role do Women in Exile and other groups play for us?

Iman: I don’t know. We’re actually here for them, but we also learn a lot and gain lots of experience, and all the knowledge we’ve acquired over time comes from childcare situations and communication with groups, and it’s always an opportunity for us to test what we’ve thought up. The ideas we develop in the process only come about through what we experience there. In that sense, maybe Women in Exile help keep us going. If they didn’t have at least one meeting a month, and sometimes more at short notice, we wouldn’t be able to get so much up and running – we’d definitely do a lot less childcare because, even if we didn’t have it, I don’t think we’d take on so many other things.

Do you see our childcare as having different significance in different contexts?

Iman: With Women in Exile, for example, I think some things wouldn’t work so well without childcare, while with others it’s less relevant if we’re there or not – because there are few children in the group anyway, because few people with children or few parents are in the group, or because few parents are actually approached. And yes, it also depends on whether, for example, Women in Exile has a meeting or something, where they’re fleshing out details, like, or if it’s a lecture, a reading or a panel discussion, where it’s a shame for the individuals if they can’t take part but basically of no real relevance for the work of the group. And then we kind of get the feeling that we’re being asked to provide childcare because it looks cool, not because it’s really needed and wanted.

What wishes do you have for Kiko and our cooperation with WiE?

Iman: I hope there will be more of us, and that we’ll become more practiced and experienced and gain even more knowledge about what we do. I hope the agreements with Women in Exile will work better and that we’ll always have enough people for their events, and that we’ll continue to build up relationships to the children and the parents who are there regularly, and I also hope that children, parents, childcare… that it will kind of become natural to think about it when you organize events or groups, and that it won’t be so hard to arrange it, and that it will be easier as a parent to be political despite having a child.