One of the goals of our blog is to give a light of the way of life of the Circassians today, and in this context we found it appropriate to publish on our blog the article written by Blan Jalouqa about the establishment of a Circassian association in the Netherlands a few years ago. He was among the initiators of the establishment of the association and currently serves as the president of the Circassian Association of the Netherlands. You can follow the activities of the association through the Facebook page of Blan Jalouqa: facebook.com.
The cost of living in diaspora.
Together with a group of active people, I founded this khase. From nothing, we gathered and met with a lot of people in the Netherlands. After a lot of debates and discussions, we established it. Since 2016, we are conducting different activities such as mother tongue courses and cultural presentations, dance and music as well as handcraft courses, gatherings etc.
I remember sitting in this room with a member or two from the board a lot of times waiting for people to come. Without any one coming or one or two people. I remember writing over and over in a lot of whatsapp groups, inviting people in person, calling them. We had eventually a group of people up to 40-50 in every gathering. After the Corona we went back to building from zero.
I have seen people working against us by telling others not to go to our khase, people smiling in our face and stab us from the back, others that are always "busy" and don't show up even one day, people that share all kinds of negative things and do zero work for the community. People that leave without saying any word or giving any reasons.
But we kept standing no matter what. This small khase has done as big and old khase's have done in Europe if not more!
We kept standing because we believe that without a Khase, we have nothing. We are lost. And here unfortunately, you can see the true meaning of the sentence: the cost of living in diaspora! A lot of people lost any root or relationship they have with their roots. They are very very far from the Circassian culture unfortunately. No matter how good you try to facilitate things, they aren't going to show up(unless its free food).
Circassian Khase's are our second home, without them we are completely lost.
Talking is easy and anyone can do it. But working for the sake of your nation is something few can achieve to do.
Hats off to anyone who volunteered and volunteers to save our culture, mother tongue and our roots in all countries where Circassians live.
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