Mohammad Al Balout: ”I can be prime minister one day”
I started at Kb Mosaik in the middle of February 2016. The first issue was due to appear on 2nd April. There were only two of us on the editorial staff.
”My time at Kb Mosaik developed my language and me as a person”Mohammad Al Balout
We carried out a survey, I interviewed Shaaban Abou Zur, the imam. There were lots of mistakes in the first paper. We didn't have time to read through everything. But the paper came out, that was really exciting. Later the same year we got an office at Gamlegården, and we started a blog that later became a web-site.
I learned a lot at that time, both doing my job in a Swedish workplace, with coffee-breaks and lively chats with colleagues, and the way of working.
”Here I can be critical, I can meet and interview anyone at all”Mohammad Al Balout
What works? What doesn't work? My time at Kb Mosaik developed my language and me as a person.
Working in a Swedish editorial office is much more free than in an Arabic one. Here I can be critical, I can meet and interview anyone at all, from the chairman of the local council to the county governor or people in high positions in the community. There's no problem asking concrete, critical questions.
”I was also an asset. As a new arrival, from another country, I could write about and explain things from a different perspective,”Mohammad Al Balout
I was also an asset. As a new arrival, from another country, I could write about and explain things from a different perspective, which was useful in avoiding cultural crashes. For example it was good that I went along with a journalist to an interview with a man who spoke Arabic and whose wife had died in childbirth. He was left alone with newly-born twins.
In the spring of 2017 I was invited to Vellinge municipality to talk about Kb Mosaik. They were looking for a coach to help people get established, and a teacher of social studies. I got the job in May 2017. Now I am integration co-ordinator in the municipality.
”My name isn't Kalle Svensson or Bengtsson, and I'm proud that I come from Syria”Mohammad Al Balout
I try to do my best for integration in Vellinge, so that new arrivals get a proper start in the community. Everyone is equal. No matter where they live they must get the right help at the right time, from homes to jobs. But the aim is for them to find their way into the community.
My name isn't Kalle Svensson or Bengtsson, and I'm proud that I come from Syria. But I'm a Swedish citizen now, with rights and obligations, I'm part of the community. I have the right to live a free life.
My wife has a good job as a pharmacist, we have a daughter whom I love and like to take care of. I work full-time and am studying at university, in my fourth term of political science, politics and leadership. I've passed all my exams, I've still got two terms to go.
One day I can be prime minister. Although being a diplomat is perhaps more realistic.
