In this personal account refugee Senia Bachir Abderahman reflects on her own educational sojourn in Algeria and Norway, the cultural beauty of the El-melhfa fabric as well as those Cubaraui who left their homeland to study in Cuba and returned with considerable skills to help the Saharawis in their struggle for freedom

‘I spent my whole childhood, or at least until I was six, thinking that living in refugee camps was all that existed for any person,’ writes Senia Bachir Abderahman, in an account that describes how her family came to live in the south-west Algerian desert, following the Morrocan occupation of Western Sahara in 1976. For Abderahman, ‘home is a far-fetched, ideal, dream-come-true state of mind’.

Young Senia has spoken before delegates of the UN Special Political and Decolonization Committee and met with politicians and NGOs in the UK, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Here she explains parallels between the Sahrawi tea ritual and the people’s quest for freedom.