Souad has a medical degree from Syria. She arrived in Germany in 2015 but found it difficult to find a job in the health field. In the first weeks and months after the end of her dangerous journey, she was filled with both relief and anxiety: Will she ever fit into her new environment? Will she ever lead a normal life and cease being “the refugee?”.
Life was scary and lonely at first but eventually, thanks to local NGOs and clubs, she met other women who were not just relief workers and refugees. She also began learning German in a social context, which was a welcome change from the dry, sterile manner of language classes. Staff and volunteers at the ‘refugee hotel’ where she first lived helped her with the paperwork, residents permit, finding schools for the children, booking hospital appointments and advising how she could ask for her qualifications to be assessed and recognised – not a straightforward process, as she quickly understood.
