Africa and Middle East
Rooted 2
Sierra Leone
Horacia Nicol Dundas is 13 and lives in South London. On Rooted she visits Sierra Leone, the country her parents came from. One of the highlights of her trip is meeting Alice, a young girl blinded during the civil war, who teaches Horacia to write her name in Braille. Horacia also spends time in a typical village, where she has to pluck and cook the chicken for supper. a job she finds difficult. Horacia finds her trip very moving, because she learns much more about her parents' background, and about how the civil war affected the lives of the people of Sierra Leone.
Somaliland
Ahmed Abdi is 11 years old, and lives in Bristol. His parents are from Hargeisa, Somaliland, and Ahmed goes there for the first time. It is the first time he has met his grandmother. uncles. cousins and other relatives and he enjoys spending time with them. He also plays in a football match, with a local boy's team, learns about some of the social problems facing Somaliland, meets the President, and experiences rural life with a new friend Mustafa, where a highlight of his stay is milking a camel.
Zambia
Mwila Chabala is 10 years old and grew up in London. On Rooted she visits Zambia, the country she was born in. She learns that in the capital Lusaka, children of her own age are allowed to do things like go shopping by themselves, but that many people are poor. She stays in a village where she helps with hoeing the maize fields, and realises that no-one in the village has electricity in their homes.
Lebanon
Rabeeh Moudallal's parents left Lebanon because of the civil war, and came to live in London. It's not the first time 10-year old Rabeeh has visited Lebanon, but on this trip he has new experiences including making new friends at a centre for street children in Beirut, staying with a Christian family in the Bekka valley where gets to know more about Lebanons many different communities, and learning more about his own religion, Islam, through attending prayers with Lebanese Muslims.
Rooted 1
Egypt
8 year old Heba El Sayed lives in London with her mum and dad, and twin brother and sister. Both her parents came from Egypt, and she went to Cairo and the countryside with her dad. She went to the Pyramids and the Sphinx, one of the things she’d always wanted to do.
Heba also visited Cairo’s main mosque, rode a camel (scary) and helped a new friend, Dooa, with her farm work.
Ethiopia
Fikir Assefa is 11 years old. She lives in Southall, West London. She went to Ethiopia with her mum. In Addis Ababa she met her relatives and attended a service at the Egyptian Orthodox church, because that’s where most of her relatives go, even though she’s Catholic
Also in Ethiopia she visited a village called Arerti, where she found she wasn’t that good at collecting water. And she travelled to Fantalle where she met people from the Korayu ethnic group.
Senegal
Mamadou Wane is 13 years oldHe lives in Oxford, but until 3 years ago he lived in France, so he speaks French and English. He went to Senegal, because that is where his father comes from.
Mamadou is Muslim, and in Senegal he celebrated the festival of Eid with his family. He also made friends with fishermen on the beach, and went to school in the village of Mboumba.
Kenya
Luke Laichena is 9 years old. He comes from Ealing, West London; his dad is from Kenya and his mum from England. Luke went to Kenya with his dad, and saw his grandmother and cousins. Luke wants to be a pilot, and he got to ride in the cockpit of an aeroplane. He also fed giraffes in the Arabuko Sokoke reserve, stood on the Equator, and stayed in a village, where he had to help the children with their work.
