15th Day in Istanbul
14th of May, 2007

After yesterday's tour, we all took a nap to regain energy to get back to our individual projects. We had a quick meeting to help Tony to organise the last details of the workshop. Yoannis helped him with the cards (he drew some cute cards representing some topics we would like to approach during the workshop.E.g.: where do the Sulukule residents think that should have a football field or a 'creche', or a school...etc). Natalia, Meghna and me helped him to finish the model (Iyad came to rescue us later). The model was divided in 4 parts: 3 were done using Lego (:D) and the last one was done using styrofoam. We finished at 5 in the morning!!! We tried to clean up the boys' living room because there were pieces of styrofoam and paper everywhere.
So, we went to bed when the birds were already singing; we slept three hours and got ready for the meeting with the professors at 9:30. We discussed each project and were given positive and cnstructive feedback. Shame we didn't have much time to work on them during the day because we all had to leave the hotel at 1:30 to go to Sulukule. Tony, Meghna. Lantana, Iyad and Mi were working with the workshop at the cafe. They were expecting more residents to join us but few of them did. It wasn't a problem at all because the ones that participated were very interested and gave us some nice inputs.
Once again, people from Sulukule were extremelly warm and friendly to us! The kids were the best, full of energy!!

Around 3, 3:30 I went with Natalia and Yoannis to the streets together with a very nice Turkish girl. Yoannis had prepared a nice poster with pictures of the area and the objective was to walk around stopping to talk to random residents. We, actuallyYoannis asked most of the questions and took notes of everyhting!! Natalia and I were listening and trying to make communication with Murat, this Roma boy that loves Natalia, and other people that joined us. There were mainly children and women. People told us they like the way they live in Sulukule: they trust and help each other; the like busy streets where they can socialise, wash carpets, children can play, cars can park, etc. They don't like apartments! They prefer to live in houses the way they live now, but of course, in better conditions. The first person we spoke to was a 16 years old boy that lived in a house of 2 floors together with 8 people. They had a kitchen, bathroom and 2 more rooms. Another guy we met wasn't Romani but he told us he's been living there for many years and always inpeace with the Romani community. He also said he doesn't understand why the municipality wants to remove them from the area.
It was all very interesting!! I could write non-stop....
Assun, the community leader spoke, to us for a very long time.

At night, back at the hotel, we had a quick meeting and everybody was exhausted!!
So we went to bed early to have some good sleep and prepare for next days' meeting and projects' development......
Meetings, meetings, meetings........discussions, discussions, discussions.....
What are we going to do??? is it still a physical intervention?? Do we have enough time for everything?? What are we going to do after the final presentation?? Stay in istanbul or go to capadocia (to sleep because we are so tired)??
Help!!Help!! Can someone give us a light, please??


Renata