A Lot Lost, A Lot Gained

Abdul Rahim Nagibulla
works for housing association WBM (“Wohnungsbaugesellschaft Mitte mbH”) as a neighborhood assistant.

He is not one to give up. Abdul Rahim Nagibulla, born in 1987, worked for the German Armed Forces in Afghanistan, in constant fear of being murdered by the native population for doing so. He has been in Germany since 2009; his application for asylum was quickly approved. Today, he is very glad to finally have a long-term perspective as an SGE employee thanks to the Solidary Basic Income project.

When he was born, war was raging in his native country; Abdul Rahim Nagibulla, born in 1987, barely knew peace. When he was seven years old, a land mine injured his right leg.

Nagibulla’s family comes from a small village in the province of Zabul in the south of Afghanistan. After his accident, his village couldn’t provide him with the proper medical care; he was forced to travel to Kabul. But once he got there, the only thing the doctors could do for him was amputate his leg. Nagibulla didn’t get his first wheelchair until much later, in Germany.

He had quite an odyssey ahead of him. He first came to Germany because the Association for the Promotion of Afghanistan (“Verein für Afghanistan Förderung,” VAF) made it possible for him to come to Munich for a three-year stay to get medical treatment. He learned to speak German at the hospital and in his foster family; when his stay came to an end, he would have liked to stay and complete an apprenticeship, but the minor was not allowed to do so. However, a range of new possibilities opened up for Nagibulla when the German Armed Forces came to Afghanistan as part of their NATO mission.

The forces urgently needed Afghans who could speak German, so upon his return to Afghanistan, Nagibulla immediately began working as a translator for the German Armed Forces in Kabul and Mazar-i Sharif, performing these dangerous services for three years. Not permitted to tell a soul who he was working for, he had to move every couple of months, his life in permanent danger. “I was always afraid of being murdered, things like that happened all the time,” he says.

But he couldn’t really keep his work a secret; after all, he was a contact man, communicating with the local population on behalf of the German Armed Forces, all the while wearing a visible, official identity card. He didn’t really have an alternative, as “it’s very, very difficult to find work in Afghanistan with a walking impediment.”

The German Armed Forces supplied Nagibulla with references certifying diplomatic skills, even in difficult situations, and an exceptionally high level of commitment. In 2009, one of the doctors with the German Armed Forces finally got him into a second course of treatment in Germany.

“Since I was a child, until I came to Germany, all I had known was war.

Abdul Rahim Nagibulla

Nagibulla came to Berlin, where a high-quality prosthetic leg was made for him for the first time; until then, he had been forced to use crutches, which worked but was extremely arduous.

Meanwhile, the situation in Afghanistan worsened. Even the members of the German Armed Forces were being withdrawn, and suddenly (2009), Nagibulla was advised to stay in Germany, as the NATO and the German Armed Forces would be leaving the country at some point, and he would be outlawed. So he stayed – and has not seen his native country, his two siblings or their children since, although he keeps in touch by phone to this day.

Nagibulla applied for asylum, as this was the only way for him to reside legally in Germany. He was accommodated at the refugee camp in Eisenhüttenstadt for a while; in light of his case, his application for asylum was approved quickly, whereupon he soon found an apartment in Hennigsdorf near Berlin, which he called home for the next six years.

He didn’t have a job. When it came to applying for work on the primary labor market, his lack of a scholastic education without gaps and his walking impediment didn’t give him much of an edge, despite his undeniable fighting spirit and ability to speak Dari, Farsi and Pashto. However, he was able to find meaningful work in a neighborhood project funded by the EU in Hennigsdorf, where he was the point of contact for other refugees, supported projects that helped refugees and their neighbors get to know one another, and helped when people struggled with bureaucracy and the authorities. In the course of this, his German improved consistently.

In 2012 he also began training as a competitive athlete for the Berlin Disability and Rehabilitation Sports Association (“Behinderten- und Rehabilitiations-Sportverband Berlin”) at the Berlin Sports Forum (“Sportforum Berlin”) Olympic training center – in a racing wheelchair, due to his injured leg. He felt very much at home in the new community of athletes with disabilities, even though he was the only one in his discipline.

As a lone fighter, he needed twice the endurance, a feat Nagibulla, who calls himself an “active person who is always working towards a goal,” managed to achieve. Not only has he continued to train to this day, he has also come so far on his athletic journey that he has hopes of making it onto the Olympic team for the Paralympics.

After finishing work in Hennigsdorf, Nagibulla accepted the one-and-a-half-hour journey with public transport to train for at least two hours every day. Because this proved too strenuous in the long run, he moved to Berlin and has since lived in Hohenschönhausen. “I need my energy to train, not to travel back and forth.”

“Having a job is a beautiful thing, but finding work is twice as hard for people with walking impediments.”

Abdul Rahim Nagibulla

All the while, he tried to find work. “I always wanted to work in Berlin, and I tried for a long time,” he tells us. After almost six years in Germany, he found a job at the State Office for Refugee Affairs (“Landesamt für Flüchtlingsangelegenheiten”) in late 2015. “I worked there as a translator for two years. At the time, a lot of refugees were coming to Germany from Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan, and they were looking for translators.”

Then he was out of work once more. “I went to the job center, which pays benefits to and finds jobs for long-term unemployed persons, and told my placement officer, here’s the deal. I want to work, but I don’t want any more contracts for one or two years, I don’t want to have to go back and forth anymore.” Nagibulla wanted a full-time job, despite the obstacles, and he got lucky: the Solidary Basic Income (“Solidarisches Grundeinkommen,” SGE) project launched at that exact time. Nagibulla was to become one of the very first SGE employees.

The job center got in touch with the Berlin-Brandenburg branch of humanitarian association HVD (“Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands”), which runs “Hello, New Neighbors” (“Hallo neue Nachbarn”), an award-winning sponsorship project, in cooperation with municipal housing association WBM (“Wohnungsbaugesellschaft Berlin-Mitte mbH”). The project helps tenants with a refugee background in many different ways and arranges sponsorships between tenants and long-time residents of the neighborhood. WBM created an SGE position for this project which seemed tailor-made for Nagibulla, especially as he already had experience in this field.

He now has quite a lot to translate, during the weekly consultations as well as at appointments with authorities, explaining the German legal, health care and education systems on the side. “People get a tremendous amount of paperwork,” he says, “but a lot of the time, they don’t know what to do with it.” So Nagibulla sits down with them to explain the details on chemist’s receipts, demands for security deposits, and court summons; accompanies them to appointments with doctors, attorneys and the office for youth welfare; and offers Persian language support for informal exchanges at the Language Café, the first stop and meeting place for old and new tenants within the “Hello, New Neighbors” sponsorship project.

He joined in August 2019. “My colleagues at WBM welcomed me with open arms,” he says. “My wheelchair garners a lot of attention and respect and I cope very, very well.” After successfully starting work under normal conditions, Nagibulla was able to continue his work during the corona-related lockdowns via video conferences and by phone.

But normally, his work is up close and personal. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the project offered official consultation sessions for tenants with a refugee background on one afternoon per week. During these sessions, which are by phone only, Nagibulla fills his schedule for the rest of the week, when he provides assistance in individual cases and is available as a translator and interpreter for various situations.

The additional offer for refugees is accepted gratefully and yet is, in a certain respect, a luxury; ultimately, housing associations are not usually tasked with helping their tenants find someone to accompany them to appointments with their doctor or the authorities. But the position of neighborhood assistant, created as part of the SGE project, allows WBM to offer these services and thus support their tenants.

“I accompany our tenants everywhere, to the office for youth welfare, to the job center, to attorneys, basically wherever I’m needed.”

Abdul Rahim Nagibulla

Today, that is Nagibulla’s official title: neighborhood assistant. A secure job for five years, funded by the state of Berlin. To ensure it becomes a springboard to enter the primary labor market, and maybe even helps him get a permanent position at WBM, Nagibulla has already set himself long-term goals. Above all, he wants to take his reading and writing abilities to a professional level and improve his written correspondence skills.

“That’s the most difficult part for me at the moment, the biggest challenge,” says Nagibulla, who missed long periods of his already short time at school, as his injuries forced him to spend long periods in the hospital, far from his home village. A training offered by the Reading and Writing Association (“Verein Lesen und Schreiben e.V.”) in Neukölln was limited to smartphone exercises due to the coronavirus pandemic; Nagibulla hopes to take a much greater leap forward by completing a six-month intensive course – a professional qualification WBM is allowing him to take part in during working hours, and would have even paid for if it had not been financed by EU funds.

The SGE position is a key step, and his further career will depend considerably on Nagibulla’s professional and personal development within these five years. WBM is just as grateful as he is for this opportunity, as Nagibulla’s SGE work covers services that are in high demand and exceed the traditional offers of a housing association.

If Nagibulla expands his skills and abilities as intended, a permanent position and full employment with WBM are realistic perspectives. “I certainly love and enjoy my job,” he says, “and I want to keep on doing it in the long run.”

Copy: Katrin Rohnstock / Rohnstock Biografien