by Dame Dottoressa Anna Porcheddu, Chair Culture Café Unit
What an interesting morning we had on Thursday, 26th May, at our social hub Ta’ Detta Restaurant!
We had the honour have with us attending our Culture Café event H. E. Ms Linda Scott, High Commissioner of the Republic of Namibia, Hon. Dr Itah Kandjii-Murangi, Minister of Education of the Republic of Namibia, Lungensia Uaseuapuani, Personal Assistant to the Minister and H.E Linda Anne Scott, High Commissioner of Namibia to the UK.
After welcoming everyone, Dott.ssa Anna Porcheddu (Nwami International Malta, Culture & Community) gave a short introduction on the topic of the Culture Café of this month, “Teddy Memories”, and then we started sharing our experiences.
We all found the Minister’s memories of her childhood very moving, especially when she mentioned that during the difficult years of the Namibian struggle for independence children had to learn how to make toys out of very poor material, like a piece of wood.
We had all sorts of teddies, some of them very old indeed, such as a 70-year-old teddy bear one of our friends, Pat Salomone, had. Anna had a koala from Australia, Fluffy, who made it to Malta travelling through Ireland and the Czech Republic; Remigino, a bear with a nice hand-knitted cardigan, that her mum knitted for his school uniform some years ago; a big smiling bear called Abbraccio, that she met in her hometown, Cagliari. He immediately asked her to take him to Malta, as he loves travelling and discovering the world. Another friend, Teresa Bruno, from Brazil, had a very sweet Maltese teddy, wearing a red and white top, Maltese colours indeed.
It was an ideal way of socialising and learning more about our countries and creating meaningful cultural ties.
Looking forward to meeting you all again very soon to our next Culture Café.
